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Paul Drew Clement has achieved the American dream: Being labeled the "LeBron James of Lawyers"
Judge Hannah Dugan has all-star legal team, including 'LeBron James of lawyers'
- Former U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic and former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement lead Judge Hannah Dugan's defense team.
- The prosecution is led by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Keith Alexander and Kelly Brown Watkza.
- The trial judge will be chosen randomly after the indictment.
The federal obstruction case against Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan has drawn an all-star team of legal talent.
Leading Dugan's legal team is Steven Biskupic, the former U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Wisconsin from 2002 to 2009. Republican President George W. Bush selected Biskupic, who oversaw a series of public high-profile corruption and police misconduct cases, including the convictions of seven Milwaukee police officers in the beating of Frank Jude Jr. Biskupic was a career prosecutor before his term as U.S. attorney. He is now in private practice.
The most prominent member of the defense team is former U.S. Solicitor General Paul Clement, a Cedarburg native. As solicitor general from 2005 to 2008, Clement argued more than 100 cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Clement, a conservative who was appointed by former Republican President George W. Bush, currently represents the law firm WilmerHale, which is suing the Trump administration after it was targeted by an executive order. Clement has been dubbed by some "the LeBron James of lawyers."
Jason Luczak and Nicole Masnica, both partners with the prominent Milwaukee law firm Gimbel, Reilly, Guerin & Brown, are also on the defense team. Luczak leads the firm's criminal and white-collar defense team, and Masnica specializes in complex trial litigation and appeals, according to the firm's website.
Craig Mastantuono of Mastantuono Coffee & Thomas, another attorney for Dugan, has long been a go-to criminal defense attorney in Milwaukee. He is known for helping Baron Walker, a man sentenced to 60 years in prison for being part of a pair of bank robberies, win his release in 2018. His case was profiled in the 2016 documentary film "Milwaukee 53206."
Here are the members of the team prosecuting Judge Dugan
The federal team is led by Assistant U.S. Attorney Keith Alexander, a veteran prosecutor of more than 15 years, who heads the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Milwaukee, and Assistant U.S. AttorneyKelly Brown Watzka, deputy chief of the criminal division in charge of financial, public corruption and other white-collar cases. Brown Watzka has been a prosecutor for more than 20 years.
It is unknown whether a prosecutor from the U.S. Department of Justice headquarters in Washington, D.C., will join the team, as sometimes happens in high-profile cases.
Richard Frohling, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, oversees the federal team. He has spent much of his career as a prosecutor. After graduating from the University of Wisconsin Law School and working as a law clerk and in private practice, Frohling joined the U.S. Attorney's Office in Milwaukee in 2000. He was named first assistant in 2015. He has twice been the Acting U.S. Attorney and briefly served as U.S. attorney in 2022.
Currently overseeing the Dugan case is U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen Dries. Dugan appeared before Dries on April 25 and is due back May 15. In the Milwaukee federal court, magistrate judges handle many of the pretrial matters. The trial judge will be determined by random selection after indictment.
Contact Daniel Bice at (414) 313-6684 or dbice@gannett.com. Contact John Diedrich at (414) 224-2408 or jdiedrich@gannett.com. Contact Cary Spivak at (414) 550-0070 or cspivak@gannett.com
