The Many Lawyers of Hannah Dugan

Principal Deputy Solicitor General of the United States Paul D. Clement with Vice President Dick Cheney. Photo taken 3/14/2003. (Public Domain)

Could Judge Hannah Dugan have put together a stronger team of defense attorneys? We first learned who’s on the team from the Journal Sentinel and the top name could be the best lawyer in America.

Paul Clement is a Wisconsin native who grew up in Cedarburg, and served as the Solicitor General of the United States for three years under Republican President George W. Bush. He has argued over 100 cases before the United States Supreme Court since 2000, “more than any lawyer in or out of government,” as his bio notes.

He’s been called “the best lawyer of his generation,” who should have been appointed to the Supreme Court, but never will be because he’s litigated too many controversial cases. “When other lawyers speak about Clement, they just gush,” as Nina Totenberg reported for National Public Radio.

He was the lead lawyer for the lawsuit by 26 states attempting to overturn the Affordable Care Act in 2012. “Paul truly is the best lawyer of his generation, and if he can’t win the case, no one can,” Neal Katyal, the former acting solicitor general under Barack Obama, told New York Magazine.

Clement has also been very involved in gun rights cases, winning the watershed New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v Bruen decision, whereby the Supreme Court greatly expanded gun rights. He has become “the go-to lawyer for some of the Republican Party’s most significant, and polarizing, legal causes,” the magazine declared. He also deep connections to conservative policy makers: He is a board member of the Milwaukee’s Bradley Foundation, the nation’s leading funder of right-wing policy making.

The second attorney involved also has strong GOP credentials: Steven Biskupic, the former U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Wisconsin from 2002 to 2009, who was also appointed by President George W. Bush. Biskupic was a one-man wrecking crew, successfully prosecuting several Milwaukee Common Council members, one former alderman and Democratic state Sen. Gary George. He also successfully prosecuted Milwaukee police involved in the beating of Frank Jude, Jr., gaining convictions of seven officers. He has since worked in private practice and represented the campaign committee of Republican Governor Scott Walker during the John Doe investigations related to Walker.

Dugan has been charged with obstruction of ICE agents who came to her courtroom seeking to arrest immigrant Eduardo Flores-Ruiz. Her original attorney was Craig Mastantuono of Mastantuono Coffee & Thomas, a longtime criminal defense lawyer in Milwaukee. Jason Luczak and Nicole Masnica, both partners with the prominent Milwaukee law firm Gimbel, Reilly, Guerin & Brown have also joined the defense team.

How did Dugan manage to land Clement and Biskupic as attorneys? One local legal insider tells Urban Milwaukee that Mastantuono knows Biskupic and asked him to get involved. Biskupic happens to have appointed the two assistant U.S. Attorneys who are prosecuting the case against Dugan: Keith Alexander and Kelly Brown Watzka. And Biskupic also knows Clement and likely recruited him to join the case.

That said, it may not have taken much to sell other attorneys to join the cause. The arrest of Dugan is part of a pattern of the Trump administration and his supporters attacking judges and the legal system. Trump’s call to impeach judges he disagrees with received a rebuke from U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. The American Bar Association has released a statement warning that “Our courts and judges are under attack… National leaders and private citizens are making false statements and scurrilous accusations against judges for partisan, personal gain.”

The issue goes back to 2018 when the first Trump administration went after Massachusetts Judge Shelley Joseph, charging her with helping an immigrant evade immigration agents. “But unlike Dugan, Joseph wasn’t arrested. She wasn’t handcuffed by federal agents, taken away and processed at a jail,” Governing Magazine has reported.

Even so, in response to the charges against Joseph, the story noted, “68 former state and federal judges asked the Trump administration to include courthouses on the list of ‘sensitive locations,’ such as schools and hospitals, where agents won’t plan arrests. ‘We know that judges simply cannot do their jobs — and our justice system cannot function effectively — if victims, defendants, witnesses, and family members do not feel secure,’ the former judges wrote. ‘This sense of security requires that courts remain open to all and, just as important, that courts appear open to all.’”

The case against Joseph was later dropped by the Biden administration. But Dugan is going to trial, in a case that is meant to intimidate all judges who dare to stand in the way of the Trump administration.

Trump has also gone after top Washington D.C.- based law firms that dared to oppose him, with executive orders revoking their security clearances and/or restricting attorneys from entering government buildings — all meant to cripple their business. One of those firms is WilmerHale, which decided to fight the action in court and asked Paul Clement to represent the firm. He agreed.

“Securing Clement on the side of WilmerHale sent a powerful signal to judges—including the Justices of the Supreme Court, who seem all but certain to eventually consider the case—that the battle over the executive order is not a fight of left versus right, of Democrat versus Republican,” a story by New Yorker magazine noted.

Clement’s decision to represent Dugan may send out just as powerful a signal.