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No, not in this case:
First, a criminal complaint is most often used to obtain an arrest warrant in cases where agents and prosecutors are worried about either ongoing criminal conduct or risk to the public at large or, as is not infrequently true, both. Take a recent example. On the same day that Dugan was arrested, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Missouri announced that a day after a search of his house, a man was charged by criminal complaint for distributing and possessing child pornography. A criminal complaint under those circumstances is vitally important to ensure that the arrested individual can no longer continue to endanger child victims during the period it would take to secure an indictment from a grand jury.
It is hard to see how that rationale would apply in Judge Dugan’s case. Nothing in the criminal complaint suggests Dugan was involved in any kind of ongoing criminal conduct, let alone conduct that jeopardized the public at large. Even taken in a light most charitable to the government, the facts in the criminal complaint instead describe a judge unsympathetic to an effort by federal agents to enforce immigration laws in the Milwaukee County Courthouse. The complaint itself, however, notes that the chief judge was developing a policy for precisely such matters, and the criminal complaint nowhere suggests that Dugan would willfully resist such a policy once in place.
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Third, the move to quickly seek a criminal complaint in this case appears out of step with Justice Department policy. Under the Justice Manual, prosecutors must recognize “the fact that resort to the criminal process is not necessarily the only appropriate response to serious forms of antisocial activity.” Among the alternatives that prosecutors should explore is whether to refer matters to “licensing authorities or to professional organizations such as bar associations.” That appears to be exactly what happened—albeit after prosecutors dismissed criminal charges they had initially brought—in the just-mentioned case of Judge Joseph. It may be that after exploring alternatives to seeking criminal charges, the government would decide to press forward with prosecution nonetheless. But it is hard to take seriously the notion that prosecutors oversaw a complete investigation and engaged in a good-faith assessment of noncriminal alternatives to prosecution in a mere six days.
The Judge Dugan Case Is More Complicated Than It Seems
Some see the prosecution of the Wisconsin circuit court judge as vindicating the rule of law, and others as an attack on it. They’re both wrong.www.lawfaremedia.org
Trump's fascistic effort to crush the judiciary isn't limited to intimidating judges, which is what we have here. He is extorting law firms and buying off indicted politicians, like Eric Adams.
We've already seen Eric Holder's DOJ and the weaponization of the FBI, so I can understand grave suspicion of ICE.
