A bipartisan group of more than 150 former federal and state judges sharply criticized the Trump administration for its handling of the arrest of Milwaukee County Judge Hannah Dugan in a May 5 letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi.

"Seeing a judge handcuffed, photographed and perp walked highlights the authoritarian playbook of the Trump administration," said Nancy Gertner, a former federal judge and Democratic President Bill Clinton appointee who helped write and signed the letter. "It is something we should never tolerate in the United States."

Another lead signer, J. Michael Luttig, a conservative former federal appeals court judge, said: "I have spent my career upholding the Constitution. I never imagined I'd see a judge treated like this in America. The arrest and prosecution of judges is where rule by law ends and authoritarianism begins. The judiciary is the last obstacle to a president with designs on tyrannical rule."