MADISON, Wis. – Wisconsin prosecutors on Tuesday filed 10 additional felony charges against two lawyers and an aide to President-elect Donald Trump who advised Trump in 2020 as part of a scheme to file paperwork falsely claiming the Republican had won. the state of battle that year.
Jim Troupis, who was Trump’s attorney in Wisconsin, Kenneth Chesebro, a lawyer who advised the campaign, and Mike Roman, Trump’s director of Election Day operations in 2020, initially faced a single count of felony forgery in Wisconsin . Those charges were filed in June.
But on Tuesday, two days before the three were scheduled to appear in court initially, the Wisconsin Department of Justice filed 10 additional felony charges against each of them. The charges are for forgery in an attempt to defraud each of the 10 Republican electors who voted for Trump that year.
Each of the 11 felony counts they face carries the same maximum penalty of six years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
Lawyers for each of the defendants did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment.
The state charges against Trump’s lawyers and aides are the only ones in Wisconsin. None of the voters have been charged. Wisconsin’s 10 electors, Chesebro and Troupis, settled a lawsuit filed against them in 2023.
Charges related to the phony voter scheme are pending in state and federal courts in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Georgia. Federal prosecutors, who are investigating Trump’s conduct related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, said the fake elector scheme originated in Wisconsin.
Electors are people appointed to represent voters in presidential elections. The winner of the popular vote in each state determines which party’s electors are sent to the Electoral College, which meets in December after the election to certify the result. Two states, Maine and Nebraska, allow their electoral votes to be divided among candidates.
The Wisconsin complaint details how Troupis, Chesebro and Roman created a document that falsely said Trump had won Wisconsin’s 10 Electoral College votes and then attempted to deliver it to then-Vice President Mike Pence.
In the amended complaint filed Tuesday, prosecutors said most of the 10 electors told investigators they had to sign the elector certificate indicating Trump had won just to preserve their legal options if a court changed the election result. in Wisconsin. Most voters told investigators they did not believe their signatures on the electoral certificate would be submitted to Congress without a court ruling, according to the complaint.
Additionally, most electors said they did not consent to having their signatures presented as if Trump had won without such a court ruling, according to the complaint.
Troupis filed four motions to dismiss the charge against him before Thursday’s hearing and before the amended complaint was filed. He maintains that having Republican electors gather and cast their ballots was to preserve his legal options in case the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Trump’s favor in a lawsuit challenging Wisconsin’s vote. No crime was committed with this action, so the complaint should be dismissed, Troupis maintains.
In another motion to dismiss, he argues that federal law should take precedence in this case and therefore such charges cannot legally be brought in state court.
In a third motion, Troupis argues that the case should be dismissed because facts showing that no crime had been committed were left out of the complaint. In a fourth motion, Troupis argues that it should be dismissed because prosecutions for election crimes can only be brought by the county district attorney, not the state attorney general.
The Wisconsin charges were brought by Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat. They were introduced in June, five months before Trump won Wisconsin in November. He also won the state in 2016, but lost it in 2020.
The fake voters’ efforts were central to a federal racketeering charge filed in 2023 against Trump, alleging that he tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election. But special counsel Jack Smith decided to drop that case last month, acknowledging that the return of Trump to the White House will prevent attempts to prosecute him at the federal level.
Trump was also indicted in Georgia along with 18 other people accused of participating in a sprawling scheme to illegally overturn the 2020 presidential election there. Trump is trying to get that case dismissed, arguing that state courts will have no jurisdiction over it when he returns to the White House next month.