Wisconsin judge rules Trump aides must face trial in 2020 fake elector scheme

A Dane County Circuit judge ruled Monday there is enough evidence to proceed to trial in a felony forgery case against two former Trump aides involved in the 2020 fake elector scheme. Dane County Circuit Judge John Hyland ruled there is probable cause to proceed on 11 felony forgery charges against Jim Troupis, Trump’s campaign attorney in Wisconsin, and Mike Roman, the campaign’s director of Election Day operations in 2020.

The charges allege that the two sought to present a slate of Republican electors to Congress and to submit a certificate declaring that Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes had been awarded to Trump, even though President Joe Biden won the state in the 2020 election. The defendants have said they were trying to preserve options in case a court later ruled that Trump had won Wisconsin.

The Wisconsin case is moving forward even as others in the battleground states of Michigan and Georgia have faltered. A special prosecutor last year dropped a federal case alleging Trump conspired to overturn the 2020 election. Another case in Nevada is still alive. The charges against Troupis, Roman, and Ken Chesebro, a former Trump attorney, were brought by Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul’s Department of Justice, which contends the defendants defrauded the state’s 10 electors who cast their ballots for Trump in 2020. The state’s only witness thus far has been a special agent with the state Department of Justice who described the allegations in court records.

Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard Law School professor testifying for the defense, argued that if a court later ruled Trump had won Wisconsin, the electors’ certificate could still be valid if submitted on time and signed by the Republican electors. Lessig testified that he did not see how the certificates could fairly be deemed fraudulent under the circumstances.

Monday’s hearing came a week after Troupis alleged misconduct by the judge and sought unsuccessfully to have Hyland step down and move the case to another county. Troupis asserted that the judge did not write a prior August order declining to dismiss the case, instead pointing to purported comments by the judge’s law clerk’s father, a retired judge. Hyland said he and a staff attorney wrote the order and rejected the claim of bias, noting that Troupis presented no evidence to support it.

The charges against the Wisconsin trio are the only ones in the state related to the fake-elector plan. None of the 10 electors have been charged, and the electors and Chesebro and Troupis settled a civil lawsuit that sought damages. The federal case in Wisconsin alleging a conspiracy to overturn the election was dropped last year, while related cases in Michigan and Georgia have faced setbacks.

Sen. Ron Johnson has publicly asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the allegations surrounding the fake electors, though no new federal case has been filed in Wisconsin on the matter. The proceedings in Hyland’s court are ongoing, with no immediate trial date set while additional hearings and pretrial motions continue.