A Reckoning for Fake Elector Masterminds in Wisconsin
In the state where the fake elector scheme was born, criminal charges have finally been brought against the three men who planned it all out.
WISCONSIN ATTORNEY GENERAL JOSH KAUL was ready for the question: Why was his office only just now getting around to criminally charging three individuals who orchestrated a plan to steal the 2020 election for Donald Trump, more than three years after it happened and months before the former president will face voters as a convicted felon?
“Our focus in any investigation and any prosecution is not on the speed with which something’s done,” he said during a press conference last week on the steps of the Wisconsin State Capitol, hours after the charges were announced. “It’s on doing high-quality investigations, conducting high-quality prosecutions, and getting things right. That’s the approach we have taken. That’s the approach we will continue to take, both in this case and in any other cases that we investigate or prosecute.”
The three men charged in Wisconsin for conspiracy to commit forgery, a felony punishable by up to six years in prison, are former Trump attorneys Jim Troupis and Kenneth Chesebro, and former Trump campaign staffer Mike Roman. Troupis is a former judge appointed to the bench by Republican Governor Scott Walker. Chesebro is a Wisconsin native widely known as the architect of the fake electors scheme. And Roman was Trump’s director of Election Day operations when ballots were cast in 2020.
Kaul noted that none of the three is running for office and all are entitled to the presumption of innocence. He also said, eight times in as many minutes, that the investigation is “ongoing.” He vowed, “We will continue to move forward based on the facts, the law, and the best interest of justice.”
The fake electors scheme, hatched in Wisconsin, played out in seven states. In two of them, New Mexico and Pennsylvania, the certificates declaring Trump the winner included explicit provisos that made clear they would be valid only if Trump prevailed in subsequent litigation. No charges have been filed or are expected in those two states.
In the remaining five states—Michigan, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, and Wisconsin—there was no such conditional wording and evidently no conditional intent. Charges against the participants have now been filed in all five of those states. In Georgia, Chesebro pleaded guilty to a single felony charge of conspiracy and was sentenced to five years’ probation. In Arizona, Roman has been charged with nine felonies, along with Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows, for their roles in that state’s fake electors scheme. On Friday, both pleaded not guilty; a trial has been set for October 31. Roman is also facing charges in Georgia’s elections interference case, now on hold as the courts review whether District Attorney Fani Willis ought to be allowed to prosecute the case.
Wisconsin is different from these other states in that the only people charged—so far—are the Trump campaign officials who hatched and implemented the fake electors plan, not any of the state’s ten fake electors. In Arizona, Michigan, and Nevada, all but one of the fake electors were charged; in Georgia, three fake electors were charged along with Trump, while others cut immunity deals.
It appears as though Kaul’s office is not unsympathetic to arguments that Wisconsin’s fake electors were “tricked” into believing that the document they signed would not be used unless a court sided with Trump. Its 47-page criminal complaint quotes media accounts where this is argued, including a 60 Minutes segment that aired in mid-February. It shows Andrew Hitt (referred to in the complaint as “Individual B”), then-chairman of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, saying he was told the certificate would “only count if a court ruled in our favor.”
Troupis, Chesebro, and Roman recognized no such constraint. As the complaint spells out, they eagerly proceeded with plans to use the certificates to overturn the election result without the concurrence of any court. And, it appears, this determination was cemented after Troupis and Chesebro met with Donald Trump in the Oval Office.
ACCORDING TO THE COMPLAINT, the idea of convening groups of fake electors was raised in a memorandum dated November 18, 2020 that Chesebro sent to Troupis, who was working as a lawyer for Trump’s Wisconsin campaign. They then proceeded to enlist others and hammer out the details.
On December 7, 2020, Troupis sent a copy of the memorandum to a Trump campaign consultant referred to in the complaint as “Individual A.” Troupis’s accompanying message stated that this memo was “prepared for me on appointing a second slate of electors in Wisconsin. There is no need for the legislators to act. The second slate just shows up at noon on Monday and votes and then transmits the results. It is up to Pence on Jan 6 to open them.”
The next day, December 8, Chesebro sent Troupis an email with further thoughts about “how leverage might be exerted” during the joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021. He added: “Court challenges pending on Jan. 6 really not necessary.” Troupis responded: “This is an excellent summary of the end game. Thank you.”
And on December 9, “Individual A” asked Troupis to prepare a “sample elector ballot” for Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico. According to the complaint, “Defendant Troupis forwarded this email to Defendant Chesebro and others.”
The fake electors convened, in Wisconsin and these other states, on December 14, 2020. Chesebro attended the Wisconsin meeting in the state capitol.
Two days later, on December 16, Troupis and Chesebro flew to Washington for a meeting at the White House with then-President Trump. The meeting in the Oval Office had been arranged by Reince Preibus, Trump’s former chief of staff. Prior to this meeting, Troupis sent Chesebro a note: “Ken, Just a reminder: Reince was very explicit in his admonition that nothing about our meeting with the President can be shared with anyone. The political cross-currents are deep and fast and neither you or I have any ability to swim through them. Jim.”
The New York Times, in its article on the released documents, reported that Chesebro gave an account of this meeting to prosecutors in Michigan who were investigating that state’s fake electors scheme. He recalled telling Trump “we had until January 6 to win.” Chesebro also said that Priebus warned him and Troupis “not to get Mr. Trump’s hopes up about his chances for victory,” as the paper put it, adding, “but Mr. Chesebro acknowledged he had not listened to that advice.”
A source with knowledge of this meeting claimed to the paper it was a mere “photo op” arranged at Troupis’s request. But it appears that Chesebro and Troupis did indeed manage to “get Mr. Trump’s hopes up,” and that paved the way for what followed.
At 1:42 a.m. on December 19, 2020, Trump tweeted his now-infamous call to action: “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!” A few hours later, Chesebro sent a message to Troupis in response: “Wow. Based on 3 days ago, I think we have a unique understanding of this.”
FOR YEARS, JEFF MANDELL of the progressive Madison law firm Law Forward has been pushing Kaul and others to take action against the fake electors and the lawyers who organized them. In May 2022, the firm sued Troupis, Chesebro, and ten false electors, accusing them of breaking multiple laws, including creating counterfeit public records and illegally interfering with the election. The lawsuit led to two settlements.
The first, announced in December 2023, was with the ten fake electors; they acknowledged that the certificate was created as “part of an attempt to improperly overturn the 2020 presidential election results.” The second, announced in March, was with Troupis and Chesebro; they paid the law firm an undisclosed sum and released a 1,439-page file of primary documents, but made no admissions of wrongdoing.
In an email, Mandell says that while he has not spoken to anyone at Wisconsin DOJ about this, “it is clear to me from reading the complaint” that the Trump campaign consultant mentioned a half-dozen times as “Individual A” is Boris Epshteyn. Epshteyn has also been identified by the New York Times as “Co-Conspirator 6” in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of Trump for conspiring to overturn the 2020 election. Among other things, Co-Conspirator 6 took part in a conference call in which Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani pressed electors in Pennsylvania to take part in the fake electors scheme.
In 2021, Epshteyn was arrested in Arizona after being accused of groping two women at a nightclub. (“I have no idea what’s going on. I have no idea who these women are,” Epshteyn told police. Remind you of anyone?) He ultimately pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct.
For Mandell, the charges were welcome news.
“Wisconsin voters have been waiting for accountability for more than three years, seeking to hold responsible for their actions both the fake electors and those who helped them perpetrate this scheme,” he said after the charges were announced. “This coordinated and deliberate effort to subvert democratic votes must not happen again. Today is a good step towards protecting our democracy and ensuring accountability.”
THE CRIMINAL COMPLAINT filed by Kaul’s office against the three Trump associates includes references to communications that were not included in the document dump secured by Law Forward. Mandell said the settlement included the release of “all text exchanges between Chesebro and Troupis.” A key text message from December 17, the day after the Oval Office meeting with Trump, was sent by Chesebro to Roman and Epshteyn without Troupis being included; hence, it “falls outside of that agreement.” (No wonder it took the Wisconsin DOJ so long to pull its case together.)
That text message from Chesbro reads:
Things might have been different if we’d won Wisconsin, and that had led other courts, and state legislatures, to take a closer look, but now the idea of the President of the Senate [Mike Pence] throwing a wrench into the Electoral Count Act process seems even less plausible than before, for both legal and political reasons.
But I think the Act can be weaponized.
In response to this missive, Epshteyn asked Chesebro: “What’s the bottom line?” Chesebro answered: “If the Trump campaign were to weaponize the Electoral Count Act in this fashion it could put the Biden camp in a no-win situation.”
The concept of “weaponization,” admitted to as a goal by these pro-Trump plotters, is now being used widely by Trump allies to avoid accountability. Here’s how Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson reacted to news that Kaul had brought charges against the three Trump associates:
It’s hard to imagine that Johnson himself is not worried about facing charges for his role in this scheme. He has publicly claimed he had no idea what was in the envelope from Troupis that he attempted to deliver to Pence. But the documents unearthed by Law Forward tell a different story.
In an email to Chesebro on December 8, 2020, Troupis wrote that he “spoke with Senator Johnson late last night about the Pence angle at the end,” adding, “Just wanted to take his temperature.” And in a text to Chesebro on the morning of January 6, Troupis said he had “been on phone w Mike Roman and Senator Johnson and Johnson’s COS to get an original copy of Wi slate to VP.” Johnson did try to deliver the original copy of the fraudulent certificate, but an aide to Pence rebuffed this attempt.
Chesebro, Troupis, and Roman are due in court on September 19. In the meantime, Troupis continues to serve as an adviser on a state judicial ethics panel, the Wisconsin Judicial Conduct Advisory Committee. It is a position he was reappointed to in 2023, long after his role in the fake electors scheme was known, by what was at the time a majority-conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court.
“Troupis should have stepped down or been removed from his seat overseeing judicial ethics months ago when he admitted to his role in the fake elector plot of 2020,” said Mike Browne, deputy director of A Better Wisconsin Together, an advocacy group that backs Democrats, in a statement last week. “That he now has been formally charged at a felony level for his schemes yet continues to advise on judicial ethics in Wisconsin is wholly unacceptable.” [Update: On the afternoon of June 11, 2024, hours after this article was published, the Wisconsin Supreme Court “temporarily suspended” attorney Jim Troupis from its Judicial Conduct Advisory Committee.]
Meanwhile, one of Wisconsin’s ten fake electors, Robert Spindell, continues to sit on the Wisconsin Elections Commission, which will decide contested issues in the upcoming election.
As it prepares to host the Republican National Convention next month in Milwaukee, the state of Wisconsin still has a lot of cleaning up to do.
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