SPRINGFIELD – The Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission alleges Belleville attorney Margaret Lowery made false or reckless statements about Twentieth Circuit Chief Judge Andrew Gleeson.
Commission counsel Peter Rotskoff based the charges, filed March 18, partly on conversation between Lowery and an operator for domain registrar Go Daddy.
Rotskoff quoted Lowery saying, “This part of the United States, politics is a blood sport.”
He quoted her saying Gleeson hurt a lot of people.
He inserted a bit of her interview with investigators, showing she identified former judge Ron Duebbert as creator of a campaign website in 2018, an election year in which Gleeson was seeking to be retained by voters.
For that, Rotskoff added a charge of making false statements to the commission.
Lowery responded on March 25, stating, “I am saddened by the complaint filed by the ARDC, and I take the matter very seriously.”
She stated she had every faith in the legal system and the integrity of the process.
“My response shall be made formally through my counsel within the process prescribed by the rules,” she stated.
According to Rotskoff, Lowery used Go Daddy to create a website with domain name “firetheliarjudge.com” on Sept. 11, 2018.
He wrote that she did it as part of a campaign against Gleeson’s retention.
He wrote that she linked it to a Facebook page of Madeline M. Dinmont, a fictitious name she allegedly created and used.
The complaint also cites a group known as Justice for Kane, organized by Lori Friess as a campaign against the retention of Circuit Judge Zina Cruse in the same election cycle. The group’s focus involved the death of Friess’s grandson and the release of a suspect after Cruse set bond at $150,000.
On Oct. 4, Rotskoff alleges Lowery posted on her website that, “Kane’s founder has a vendetta against a judge who followed the law. Why Judge Gleeson must go!”
Rotskoff wrote that Lowery called the campaign “the brain child of Gleeson & others to run a female minority judge off the bench in order to preserve their white male privilege.”
“Judge Gleeson had no involvement in the Justice for Kane group or any group or effort seeking to remove Judge Cruse from the bench,” Rotskoff wrote.
The complaint further alleges that Lowery called Justice for Kane a front for the National Association for Majority Equality, which she called a white supremacist group.
Rotskoff wrote that Gleeson didn’t support the group or have any involvement with it or any white supremacist group.
He wrote that on Oct. 5, Lowery posted on the Madeline Dinmont page of Facebook that Gleeson was part of the St. Clair County Secret Order of the Hibernians.
He wrote that she posted a photograph of a Ku Klux Klansman with “Gleeson” on his chest and depicted a noose and a confederate flag.
He wrote that Gleeson wasn’t a member of the Hibernian Order or the Klan, and the person in the photograph wasn’t him.
According to the complaint, Lowery appeared at the ARDC office in Springfield last July 2, to provide sworn testimony.
The complaint includes two portions of a transcript.
In the first, Lowery was asked who set up the website and she said she didn’t know.
Lowery was asked about her role and she said, “I was asked how you go about setting up a domain name and I suggested that they go through Go Daddy.”
Lowery was asked who asked her, and she said, “Judge Duebbert.”
She was asked if he set it up and she said, “I don’t know if he did it or if he had somebody else do it.”
Lowery was asked, “You had no involvement in setting up the site?”
She said, “No, and I didn’t manage it either.”
She was asked if she ever posted anything to the site, and she said no.
In the second transcript excerpt, Lowery was asked if she had anything to do with the entries.
“No, I tried to help them set it up and then it was taken over by somebody who was a nonlawyer,” Lowery said, according to the transcript.
She was asked who she was talking about, and she said people in the campaign.
“Who specifically are you talking about?” Lowery was asked.
“It was Judge Duebbert and his web person,” Lowery said.
She was asked who that was, and she said she didn’t know.
She was asked if she owned the domain name, and she said no.
Rotskoff wrote that she set it up, paid for it, and linked it to the Dinmont page and to another website she created, “firejudgegleeson.com.”
He inserted a bit of a conversation between Lowery and Go Daddy.
The operator said, “You hope these people read and do the right thing, right?”
Lowery said, “If you only knew.”
The operator said she glanced through the website and Lowery said, “It’s not a very nice person and he’s done a lot of things to hurt a lot of people.”
Lowery said politics was a blood sport in this part of the United States.
“I will tell you how evil it is,” Lowery said. “They attempted to set up another judge of a different political party for murder if that tells you anything.”
The operator said wow and Lowery said, “This is the guy who orchestrated it.”
Rotskoff wrote, “Judge Gleeson never engaged in the conduct which respondent described to the operator.”
The reference to murder pertains to the death of Carl Silas in 2016.
Officers questioned Duebbert, whose answers resulted in charges that he made false statements.
St. Clair County grand jurors heard his testimony and didn’t indict him, but Illinois court commissioners who heard his testimony removed him in January.