Wisconsin Attorney General Files Charges Against Three Involved in False Electors Scheme

Wednesday, June 5th, 2024 -- 10:00 AM

(Anya van Wagtendonk and Sarah Lehr, Wisconsin Public Radio) Wisconsin’s attorney general filed felony charges Tuesday against three people in connection with a 2020 scheme to submit a slate of false electors in support of former President Donald Trump.

According to Anya van Wagtendonk and Sarah Lehr with Wisconsin Public Radio, Attorneys Kenneth Chesebro and Jim Troupis, as well as political operative Michael Roman, each face one count of felony forgery for their roles in the scheme, which involved signing official-looking documentation claiming that Trump won Wisconsin in 2020, even though he had narrowly lost.

The felony charges were filed Tuesday morning by Attorney General Josh Kaul in Dane County Circuit Court. Chesebro is considered the mastermind behind the plot, which extended to multiple swing states that Trump had lost in the days following the 2020 presidential election.

In a memo he sent to Troupis, who was then the lead attorney for the Trump campaign in Wisconsin, he laid out a strategy to use “alternate” electors to contest the election results. Chesebro and Troupis recently settled a civil lawsuit related to their actions in Wisconsin.

In December, the 10 Wisconsin Republicans who signed onto the false elector documents also settled that lawsuit, which alleged the plot helped pave the way to the deadly Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol.

The false electors admitted no wrongdoing but said their actions were “part of an attempt to improperly overturn the 2020 presidential election results.” Defendants in that case have said they were attempting to preserve Trump’s legal options as court cases challenging the election results made their way through the courts.

Dozens of such cases in both state and federal courts were either tossed or resolved in favor of President Joe Biden’s victory in the contested battleground states. Gov. Tony Evers responded to the news Tuesday with a one-word statement: “Good.”

Roman, the third person charged, is a former Trump campaign aide who was also indicted in Trump’s federal election interference case in Georgia. The three men are due in court on Sept. 19, according to public court documents.

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