Nearly 650 people gave donations or gifts worth more than $50 to former Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan in 2025, newly released state records show.
But because of how the state law is written, Dugan did not have to disclose how much anyone gave or the total she received.
The document, known as a Statement of Economic Interests, listed 648 donors, including two out-of-state nonprofit organizations. Just 111 contributors – or 17% – were from Wisconsin, records show.
It’s likely most of the donors gave to the legal defense fund Dugan created to help her pay the high-powered team she hired to fight federal charges that she helped an undocumented immigrant escape arrest, but the state records did not say what the money was for.
The list of donors, which Dugan filed in February with the state Ethics Commission, does not include the dollar amounts or the dates that the donations were made, as neither is required to be disclosed, a spokesman with the commission said.
Officials in Wisconsin are not required to report gifts or donations totaling less than $50, or gifts for family members.
Dugan announced her resignation on Jan. 3, meaning she isn’t required to report donors to her legal defense fund after that date.
Dugan’s legal team declined to comment about the fund’s donors.
Bill Lueders, president of the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council, said, “It’s terribly unfortunate that the law allows people to basically give secret sums of money.”
“The more transparency on that kind of thing, the better,” Lueders said. “I don’t know why the legal threshold would be set so low that you don’t really have to say how much you gave, you just have to say that you gave. But it doesn’t seem to me like good public policy.”
Split verdict and appeal looms
A federal jury in December found Dugan guilty of obstructing federal immigration agents, a felony. The former judge was found not guilty on a misdemeanor count of concealing an undocumented immigrant whom agents were seeking to arrest.
Dugan, 67, was charged with trying to help Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, elude a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrest team on April 18, 2025.
U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman set sentencing for June 3. Dugan’s lawyers said they will appeal to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals following her sentencing. Dugan’s attorneys argued she was acting within the scope of her job when Flores-Ruiz appeared in her courtroom, and argued that she was caught up in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
In June 2025, Dugan’s team released figures showing that her legal defense fund received $137,812 in donations from 2,806 people, including small dollar donors. That works out to an average of $49 per contributor.
Dugan established a legal defense fund in May 2025, about a month after she was arrested and charged with two federal counts.
Those barred from donating to the fund include Milwaukee County residents, attorneys who practice in Milwaukee, lobbyists and lobbying firms, Wisconsin judges, people who have pending cases in Milwaukee County Circuit Court and county employees, Dugan’s team said when the fund was created. Only U.S. citizens are allowed to donate.
Dugan is represented by more than a half-dozen attorneys, including former U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic and lawyers from the prominent law firms of Gimbel, Reilly, Guerin & Brown and Mastantuono Coffee & Thomas in Milwaukee and Strang Bradley in Madison. The biggest name on her team is former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement.
Donors from around the country
Donations to Dugan came from throughout the United States.
Donors included the Urban Justice Center, a New York-based nonprofit that advocates for a “just, fair, and decent society,” its website says. The group, which lists the City of New York among its top donors, has a program called “United for Freedoms LDF,” which provides financial and technical support for “organizations and individuals facing litigation and other government actions that threaten their rights,” its website says.
Another organization listed as a Dugan donor, the State Democracy Defenders Fund, is a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit that says its aim is “stopping the assault on democracy and restoring American democracy.”
The Democracy Defenders Fund, which according to OpenSecrets counts venture capitalist and prolific Democratic donor Reid Hoffman among its top contributors in 2024, declined to comment on its donation.
Wisconsin donors included former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk, a Democrat who previously ran for Wisconsin governor. She could not be reached immediately for comment.
Another Dugan donor, Maxwell Love − a longtime union activist based in Madison − told the Journal Sentinel that he gave between $50 and $100 to Dugan’s defense fund.
“I am worried that a lot of what we’re seeing from the [Trump] administration is aimed at striking fear at the heart of the judiciary and other branches of government, especially at the lower court levels,” he said.
Love added that he had never heard of Dugan before the incident with federal officials, but remembers getting the news alert that she had been arrested.
“She was doing something that she believed was morally right,” he said. “I’ll always stand with people who are following their conscience, especially when it means helping people.”
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin releases names of donors to Hannah Dugan, but not amounts
Reporting by Mary Spicuzza and John Diedrich, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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