John P. Wesley retired in 2015 as a trial judge of the Vermont Superior Court after serving 22 years overseeing cases in the family, criminal and civil divisions, mostly in Windham and Bennington counties.
BRATTLEBORO-On Feb. 3, in an extraordinary session in the Vermont Senate, Gov. Scott’s nomination of First Assistant United States Attorney Michael Drescher to fill one of two vacancies on the Vermont Supreme Court was confirmed by the tie-breaking vote of Republican Lt. Gov. John Rodgers, after the Senate vote was evenly divided, 15–15.
The division was largely along party lines. All 13 Republican senators voted to confirm. Fifteen of the 17 Senate Democrats opposed the nomination. The equal division was caused when both Democratic senators from Bennington County, Seth Bongartz and Rob Plunkett, voted to confirm.
Remarkably, in lengthy remarks on the floor explaining his vote, each senator said that he began considering Drescher’s nomination with the expectation that he would oppose it.
I write to take issue with the reasons Sen. Bongartz and Sen. Plunkett gave for each one’s failure to shore up his initial instincts.
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“The process had become distastefully political”: Sen. Kesha Ram-Hinsdale rebutted this claim convincingly. The process was only politicized because Gov. Scott and all 13 Republican senators refused to acknowledge that the constitutional rights of Rümeysa Öztürk and Mohsen Mahdawi had been blatantly violated, aggravated by the illegal deprivation of their freedom.
Critically, Drescher raised no substantive basis for these outrages. He resisted plaintiffs’ requests for release pending further proceedings at every step.
He continued to rely only on the claim that the federal court was without jurisdiction, even after that issue had been decided against him. He admitted during the Senate Judiciary proceedings that the U.S. Justice Department is out of control, and that the two cases he undertook to defend stemmed from those untenable policies.
Yet plaintiffs’ detention was prolonged for weeks while Drescher continued “doing his job,” as he said to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
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“To have taken any other course would have made a bad situation worse”: Sen. Phil Baruth asked Drescher to assess this claim from the point of view of the detained plaintiffs. How were their rights any better vindicated by Drescher, than would have been the case if someone else had made essentially the same arguments?
No, to redress what he knew were fundamental constitutional violations, Drescher could have admitted the petitions. At the very least, he could have agreed to releasing the petitioners pending further proceedings. That was the only honorable action, even if it risked being fired.
If there were to be a fight for the soul of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Vermont, Drescher should have taken up that cause waving a banner he believed in. Instead, he capitulated by going along to get along.
Sen. Bongartz related an anecdote he said Drescher told him in a private meeting the weekend before the vote, to the effect that Drescher claimed responsibility for intervening on behalf of Öztürk when it seemed her release was being delayed due to ICE’s insistence she wear a GPS monitor.
Drescher made no mention of this role during his Senate Judiciary hearings. In his May 16, 2025 opinion, restating his May 9, 2025 bench ruling, Judge Sessions emphasizes that his conditions of release did not include wearing a GPS monitor. There is no mention of any concession of the part of Drescher in that written opinion.
In any event, it is clear that Drescher never conceded that Öztürk was entitled to bail until Judge Sessions overruled his persistent objections to release.
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“The insistence that Drescher be disqualified by his representation of the government in the Öztürk and Malawi petitions unfairly elevates those cases in disregard of a distinguished career”: This lament was characterized by Sen. Bongartz as spurring his distaste for “letting Mr. Drescher hang out to dry.” Others, including Lt. Gov. Rodgers, have insisted that the Judicial Nominating Board’s recommendation ought to be given great, if not determinative, weight as to Drescher’s character and fitness.
Of course, if that were the test, there would be no reason to continue making judicial appointments subject to Senate confirmation.
And it is here that the nub of the divide is truly revealed. As Sen. Nader Hashim (D-Windham), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, explained, “At what point is the argument of ‘I was just doing my job’ no longer acceptable?”
It is now.
No one is comfortable with the comparisons. But the actions prompting the petitions for extraordinary relief by Rümeysa Öztürk and Mohsen Mahdawi — coupled with repetitions of such tactics across the country and culminating with the armed occupation of one of our great cities by government agents acting far outside any legitimate authority — force us to admit the obvious.
To refuse to acknowledge a great wrong — a wrong that is in your power to correct — is to condone that wrong.
That is “the banality of evil” our culture is in danger of tolerating.
The example is starkly posed by Drescher’s nomination and confirmation. He lacks the moral fiber to serve on the Vermont Supreme Court.
This Voices Viewpoint was submitted to The Commons.
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