Wisconsin attorney general adds 10 charges against defendants in Trump fake elector case
MADISON – Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul's office filed 10 additional felony charges Tuesday against two attorneys and an aide who worked for President-elect Donald Trump over their roles in a plan to submit paperwork falsely claiming that the former president won Wisconsin in 2020.
The additional charges were filed in Dane County Circuit Court against Kenneth Chesebro, a Wisconsin native and lead architect of the 2020 elector scheme; former Dane County Judge Jim Troupis, who represented Trump in Wisconsin during the 2020 election; and Mike Roman, a former Trump aide who allegedly delivered Wisconsin's slate of false elector paperwork to a Pennsylvania congressman's staffer in order to get them to Vice President Mike Pence on Jan. 6, 2021.
The charges also allege forgery to defraud the Republican electors who cast their ballots for Trump in 2020, even though Joe Biden won the state.
The new charges join the original single charge of felony forgery filed earlier this year. Chesebro, Troupis and Roman are scheduled to appear in court in Madison on Thursday.
Troupis appeared on conservative talk show host Vicki McKenna's show on WISN-AM Tuesday afternoon, making some of his first public comments in months.
"There isn't a single morning or a single night since early in 2021 that I have not worried about this case, that I have not thought about it," Troupis said. "They're coming after me and every member of my family. They're coming after my law license. They're coming after my bankers."
Defense for the civil case cost "well more than half a million dollars," Troupis said, adding he had to get a lawyer from Kansas City. "If you don't think they were trying to bankrupt me, you don't understand what's going on."
Troupis encouraged people to show up to the Dane County Courthouse Thursday morning. He said the fellow judges he served with are "good judges" and "honest people" who are "put in a very difficult political problem."
"It's not laughable to me, because I can go to jail for six years. And I don't doubt they would love to do that, to make me that poster child," Troupis said.
Each of the now 11 charges leveled against the three carries the same maximum penalty of six years in prison, in addition to a $10,000 fine.
According to the complaint, most of the electors said they did not consent have to their signatures presented as if Trump had won the state without a court ruling saying so. The complaint also describes how Chesebro, Troupis and Roman allegedly created a fake document that said Trump won Wisconsin's 10 Electoral College votes and then attempted to deliver it to Pence for certification.
There are pending charges related to the fake elector scheme in state and federal courts in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Georgia, according to the Associated Press. Federal prosecutors have said the fake elector plot originated in Wisconsin.
Biden beat Trump by about 21,000 votes in Wisconsin. Trump sought recounts in Dane and Milwaukee counties, which confirmed Biden's win. Trump sued and the state Supreme Court upheld the results on a 4-3 vote on Dec. 14, 2020. Troupis represented the Trump campaign in the case.
Less than an hour later, Democrats met in the state Capitol to cast the state's 10 electoral votes for Biden.
At the same time, the Republican fake electors gathered in another part of the Capitol to fill out paperwork claiming Trump had won. They submitted their filings to Congress, the National Archives, a federal judge and then-Wisconsin Secretary of State Doug La Follette. Chesebro was in the room during the meeting.
At the time, the fake electors said they held the meeting only to ensure the state's electoral votes were cast for Trump if a court later determined he was the true winner of the state.
Troupis filed four motions to dismiss the Dane County case ahead of the hearing this week. First, he claimed the electors met and cast their ballots only to preserve their legal options, in case the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Trump the winner of Wisconsin.
The second motion stated that federal law should take precedence, preventing state court charges. Troupis also argued that no evidence of a crime had been presented and emphasized that only a district attorney has the authority to initiate prosecution for election-related crimes and, therefore, the case should be dismissed.
The 10 electors have not been charged criminally related to the fake documents. Last year, the group settled a lawsuit filed by the real Biden electors against them over their role in the scheme. As a part of the settlement, the false electors acknowledged their actions were used in an attempt to overturn an election.
The hearing comes a little over a month after Trump carried Wisconsin in this year's presidential election and as he is set to return to office next month.
Laura Schulte can be reached at leschulte@jrn.com and on X at @SchulteLaura.