The legal scrutiny over efforts to overturn the 2020 election results has intensified in Wisconsin, a key battleground state.
Three former aides to President Donald Trump now face multiple felony forgery charges related to their alleged roles in the fake elector scheme.
The three charged individuals are:
- Kenneth Chesebro, an attorney who advised the Trump campaign and is widely credited as the architect of the multi-state fake elector plan.
- Jim Troupis, who served as Trump’s campaign attorney in Wisconsin in 2020.
- Mike Roman, who was the Trump campaign’s director of Election Day operations.
The Scope of the Indictment
The defendants each face 11 felony charges.
The central allegation is that they used forgery in an attempt to defraud each of the ten Republican electors who cast their ballots for Trump in 2020.
This was part of a plan to submit official-looking paperwork that falsely claimed Trump had won Wisconsin’s ten Electoral College votes, despite the state’s results showing a narrow victory for Joe Biden.
The charges, filed by Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, stem from the alleged conspiracy to submit documents that would ultimately be delivered to then-Vice President Mike Pence on January 6, 2021, in an attempt to disrupt the official counting of the Electoral College votes.
Each of the 11 felony charges carries a maximum penalty of six years in prison and a substantial fine.
Procedural Battles and Judicial Scrutiny
The case has been marked by recent procedural contention. The defendants, particularly Jim Troupis, have unsuccessfully sought to have the presiding Dane County Circuit Judge step aside, alleging misconduct.
The motion argued for the case to be postponed and moved out of the county, but the judge refused the request, allowing the preliminary hearing to proceed as scheduled this week.
This case is significant as the charges against these three individuals are the only ones brought by the state of Wisconsin related to the fake elector plot.
Notably, none of the actual Republican electors who signed the fraudulent certificate have been charged criminally in the state.
However, those electors and the two attorneys, Chesebro and Troupis, did settle a civil lawsuit brought against them in 2023.
The Wisconsin complaint details how Chesebro, Troupis, and Roman allegedly created the document falsely asserting a Trump victory and attempted to have it delivered to Congress.
The defendants have consistently maintained that their actions constituted a lawful effort to preserve legal options while challenges to the election results were ongoing, arguing that no crime was committed.
The legal proceedings in Wisconsin continue to be a key element of the nationwide accountability efforts stemming from the 2020 election.
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