From left, former Gov. Tommy Thompson and Republican Party of Wisconsin Chair Brian Schimming speak to reporters after casting their Electoral College votes for President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday. (Erik Gunn | Wisconsin Examiner)

Wisconsin’s 10 Republican presidential electors — meeting officially Tuesday for the first time since 2016 — cast their votes shortly after 12 noon for President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect J.D. Vance.

Afterward, state GOP Chair Brian Schimming and former Gov. Tommy Thompson cheerfully asserted their party was on a roll and declared that the Democratic Party of Wisconsin was in for a period of soul-searching after having been “completely captured by the left” and taken over by “elitists.”

“I don’t know if everybody realizes this as much as I do, but there’s been a complete transformation of the political parties — in the state of Wisconsin, across this country,” Thompson told a swarm of reporters who gathered in the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee meeting room on fourth floor of the state Capitol.

“The Republican Party is the party of the working man and woman,” Thompson said. “The Republican Party is the party of the downtrodden and the individuals that need help. The Democrat Party has become a party of elitists, and their policies show that. The Republican Party has been out there asking, what are the problems? What are the questions? Inflation, taxes, regulation. They’re also talking about how you can improve schools, education, and Republicans are there, front and center with ideas and answers, and the Democrats have been vacant. They’ve been vacuous in the last four years.”

The press gaggle followed a formal procedure in which each of the 10 electors signed six copies of the papers documenting Wisconsin’s Electoral College votes for Trump and Vance in 2024. The documents will be forwarded to Washington as part of the Congressional procedure in early January certifying the election results.  

In 2020, 10 Republicans also met in the Capitol and signed forms asserting that Trump, then the incumbent president, had  won Wisconsin’s electoral votes in that year’s presidential race. In fact, President Joe Biden had defeated Trump in Wisconsin by about 20,600 votes, and the state’s official electors were Democrats led by Gov. Tony Evers.

Legal ramifications of the Republicans’ 2020 false electors scheme are still playing out. In June, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul filed felony forgery charges against three people accused of developing the 2020 plan to have false slates of electors vote for Trump. The defendants had their first court appearance Dec. 12.

Asked his reaction to those latest charges, Thompson said Tuesday  prosecutors and the country should move on.

“Isn’t it about time to turn the page?” Thompson said. “I mean, we can fight over the election of 2020 for the next four years. What does it get us? Isn’t about time to say, you know, we’ve had, we’ve had a lot of differences. This is time to start trying to mend ways in solving America’s problems, Wisconsin’s problems.”

“No one is above the law — not lawyers for former presidents or elected officials themselves,” said Democratic Party of Wisconsin Executive Director Sarah Abel in a statement responding to the GOP press conference. “We can’t move forward unless we learn from the mistakes of the past, and that includes holding accountable those who undermined our democracy and tried to overturn a free and fair election because they didn’t like the outcome.”

Schimming described the Republicans’ victories this year , in which they captured the White House, the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate, as evidence that the party connected with voters  outside as well as inside the GOP. And, he added, those voters remain enthusiastic supporters and volunteers who will power the party forward.

“As I travel across the state, the folks that we identified as Trump voters — not just Republicans, but a lot of people who were concerned about the direction of the country — are extremely motivated,” Schimming said.

“Donald Trump is the face of the Republican Party right now,” Thompson said. “We have control of the Congress and the presidency — we got to deliver to the American people,” he added. “It’s up to us now to show America that we’re going to be able to do it, and I’m confident we’re going to be able to do that without any doubt whatsoever.”

Abel pointed to the divided results in Wisconsin, in which Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin won reelection even as Trump was elected by a slim margin and Democrats picked up seats in the state Legislature, to reject the Republicans’ depiction of the outcome. 

“Let’s not pretend that the Republican Party has a monopoly over Wisconsin,” Abel said. “Neither party swept the state in 2024, and the GOP is grasping at straws as they see their grip on power here fading away. Wisconsin Democrats are built to last. We have a progressive identity that exists separately from the leader of our party — and Republicans can’t say the same.”

Thompson, who headed the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under President George W. Bush, also stood by his previous endorsement of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s choice to head the agency.

Kennedy has been widely criticized for anti-vaccine positions. On Dec. 9, dozens of Nobel laureates released a letter opposing Kennedy’s nomination because of his opposition to vaccines as well as to other public health measures.

Thompson said the suggestion that Kennedy harbored hostility toward vaccines is “misreading what he said,” adding, “I’m hoping what he said is not correct.” Kennedy’s past criticisms of vaccines included the “implied” question, “is that based upon science?” Thompson argued. “I think everything has got to be based on science.”

Thompson said he supported Kennedy because the nominee’s stated goals include improving Americans’ health, ensuring foods are healthier, “trying to make sure that all medicines are based upon science — who’s against that?” and that he favors speeding up the process of approving new drugs. “I’m in favor of all of those,” Thompson said, “and that’s why I support him.”

Asked about Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Ben Wikler’s campaign to head the national party, Thompson joked, “I’m going to contribute to it,” then later said Wikler “is a very good politician” whom he wished well.

Schimming called Wikler “obviously a talented guy,” but asserted that the party needed more dramatic change. “The Democratic Party has been completely captured by the left, and they can’t seem to figure out that that’s part of their problem,” he said. “And if they continue not figuring it out, that’s fine.”

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Former Dane County Judge James Troupis appears in court on Dec. 12. He faces felony forgery charges for his role in developing the 2020 false elector scheme to overturn the election results for Donald Trump. (Screenshot | WisEye)

Two former attorneys and a campaign staff member for President-elect Donald Trump made their initial appearance in Dane County Circuit Court Thursday in the felony cases against them for their roles in hatching the scheme to cast false Electoral College votes for Trump following the 2020 election. 

Of the three men charged, Michael Roman, James Troupis and Kenneth Chesebro, only Troupis appeared in court in person. The other two appeared over the phone. All three were granted signature bonds with the condition that they not have any contact with the ten Wisconsin Republicans who cast Electoral College votes for Trump in 2020. 

All three men face 11 counts of felony forgery. 

Multiple recounts, lawsuits and investigations have found that Trump lost the 2020 election in Wisconsin. Still, after that election, the three men worked to develop the plan that involved false slates of electors casting votes for Trump in Wisconsin and other states. The false slates of electors provided a pretext for  the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. 

After the hearing, Troupis called the charges “lawfare in all its despicable forms,” saying Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul has “doubled down on a vicious strategy to destroy our very faith in the system of justice by using the courts for his own personal political game.”

On Wednesday, the voting rights focused firm Law Forward filed an ethics complaint against Troupis, a former Dane County Circuit Court judge, with the state Office of Lawyer Regulation. The grievance alleges that Troupis’ role in developing the fake elector scheme subverted the will of the people and violated state rules for attorney conduct. 

“Our democracy depends on attorneys adhering to their ethical obligations,” Jeff Mandell, President and General Counsel of Law Forward, said in a statement. “Troupis violated those obligations by advancing falsehoods, enabling fraud, and undermining the rule of law. This grievance seeks to hold him accountable and ensure that such abuses of the legal profession are never repeated.”

The three men are next scheduled to appear in court on Jan. 28.

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Special counsel Jack Smith delivers remarks on a recently unsealed indictment including four felony counts against former U.S. President Donald Trump at the Justice Department on Aug. 1, 2023, in Washington, DC. (Alex Wong | Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan unsealed a lengthy and partly redacted motion Wednesday that charts special counsel Jack Smith’s final argument before November that former President Donald Trump acted in a private capacity when he co-conspired to overturn the 2020 election.

Much of the motion concerns Trump’s interactions with individuals in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as he sought to disrupt election results, Smith alleged.

The document, due on Chutkan’s desk late last month, is central to reanimating the case after months of delay as Trump argued for complete criminal immunity from the government’s fraud and obstruction charges related to his actions after the 2020 presidential contest, which Joe Biden won.

The U.S. Supreme Court returned Trump’s case to Chutkan after ruling that former presidents enjoy criminal immunity for core constitutional acts, presumed immunity for acts on the perimeter of official duties, and no immunity for personal ones. At that point it became clear that the case against the Republican presidential nominee would not be tried prior to Election Day.

Smith’s superseding indictment shortly thereafter retained all four felony counts against Trump, and Chutkan is tasked with parsing which allegations can stand in light of the Supreme Court decision.

In his unsealed 165-page motion, Smith outlines Trump’s alleged plots with private lawyers and political allies — names redacted — to ultimately deliver false slates of electors to Congress so that he appeared the winner over Biden in the seven states.

“Working with a team of private co-conspirators, the defendant acted as a candidate when he pursued multiple criminal means to disrupt, through fraud and deceit, the government function by which votes are collected and counted — a function in which the defendant, as President, had no official role,” Smith wrote.

Trump slammed the court filing on social media in numerous posts, writing in a mix of upper and lowercase letters that “Democrats are Weaponizing the Justice Department against me because they know I am WINNING, and they are desperate to prop up their failing Candidate, Kamala Harris.”

“The DOJ pushed out this latest ‘hit job’ today because JD Vance humiliated Tim Walz last night in the Debate. The DOJ has become nothing more than an extension of Joe’s, and now Kamala’s, Campaign. This is egregious PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT, and should not have been released right before the Election,” he continued in just one of his many reactions on his platform, Truth Social.

Trump’s running mate, Ohio GOP Sen. J.D. Vance, faced Harris’ running mate, Tim Walz, in a vice presidential debate on Tuesday night.

Here are key arguments from Smith’s filing, which alleges efforts by Trump and allies to subvert voters’ will during the last presidential election:

Arizona

Smith detailed calls to and communications with various Arizona officials, including the governor and speaker of the Arizona state House, arguing the interactions were made in Trump’s “capacity as a candidate.”

• “The defendant and his co-conspirators also demonstrated their deliberate disregard for the truth — and thus their knowledge of falsity — when they repeatedly changed the numbers in their baseless fraud allegations from day to day. At trial, the Government will introduce several instances of this pattern, in which the defendant and conspirators’ lies were proved by the fact that they made up figures from whole cloth. One example concerns the defendant and conspirators’ claims about non-citizen voters in Arizona. The conspirators started with the allegation that 36,000 non-citizens voted in Arizona; five days later, it was ‘beyond credulity that a few hundred thousand didn’t vote’: three weeks later, ‘the bare minimum [was] 40 or 50,000. The reality is about 250,000’; days after that, the assertion was 32,000; and ultimately the conspirators landed back where they started at 36,000 — a false figure that they never verified or corroborated.”

Georgia

Smith plans to introduce into evidence Trump’s communications, in his personal capacity, with Georgia’s attorney general, including a call on Dec. 8, 2020, and to the secretary of state.

• Trump “had early notice that his claims of election fraud in Georgia were false. Around mid-November, Campaign advisor [redacted] told the defendant that his claim that a large number of dead people had voted in Georgia was false. The defendant continued to press the claim anyway, including in a press appearance on November 29, when he suggested that a large enough number of dead voters had cast ballots to change the outcome of the election in Georgia.”

• “In the post-election period, [redacted] also took on the role of updating the defendant on a near-daily basis on the Campaign’s unsuccessful efforts to support any fraud claims…. He told the defendant that if the Campaign took these claims to court, they would get slaughtered, because the claims are all ‘bullshit.’ [Redacted] was privy in real time to the findings of the two expert consulting firms the Campaign retained to investigate fraud claims — [redacted] and [redacted] — and discussed with the defendant their debunkings on all major claims. For example, [redacted] told the defendant that Georgia’s audit disproved claims that [redacted] had altered votes.”

Michigan

The document details an Oval Office meeting Trump held with Michigan’s Senate majority leader and speaker of the House on Nov. 20, 2020, during which Trump tried to acquire evidence of voter fraud in Detroit.

• “Despite failing to establish any valid fraud claims, [redacted] followed up with [redacted] and [redacted] and attempted to pressure them to use the Michigan legislature to overturn the valid election result.”

Michigan and Pennsylvania

The filing said that directly following the 2020 election, Trump and his “private operatives sought to create chaos, rather than seek clarity, at polling places where states were continuing to tabulate votes.”

• “For example, on November 4, [redacted]—a Campaign employee, agent, and co-conspirator of the defendant—tried to sow confusion when the ongoing vote count at the TCF Center in Detroit, Michigan, looked unfavorable for the defendant.”

• “When a colleague suggested that there was about to be unrest reminiscent of the Brooks Brothers Riot, a violent effort to stop the vote count in Florida after the 2000 presidential election, [redacted] responded ‘Make them riot’ and ‘Do it!!!’ The defendant’s Campaign operatives and supporters used similar tactics at other tabulation centers, including in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the defendant sometimes used the resulting confrontations to falsely claim that his election observers were being denied proper access, thus serving as a predicate to the defendant’s claim that fraud must have occurred in the observers’ absence.”

Michigan voting machines

Smith will argue that Trump, outside his official presidential duties, tried to persuade political allies in Michigan to sway the election in his favor.

• Among the evidence he will introduce: The former president held a meeting, “private in nature,” with Michigan legislators at the White House.

• Smith also wrote that “In mid-December, the defendant spoke with RNC Chairwoman [redacted] and asked her to publicize and promote a private report that had been related on December 13 that purported to identify flaws in the use of [redacted] machines in Antrim County, Michigan. [Redacted] refused, telling the defendant that she already had discussed this report with [redacted] Michigan’s Speaker of the House, who had told her that the report was inaccurate. [Redacted] conveyed to the defendant [redacted] exact assessment: the report was ‘f—— nuts.’”

Nevada

In Nevada, Trump allegedly ignored warnings about spreading lies about the state’s election results. Smith wrote: “Notwithstanding the RNC Chief Counsel’s warning, the defendant re-tweeted and amplified news of the lawsuit on November 24, calling it ‘Big News!’ that a Nevada Court had agreed to hear it. But the defendant did not similarly promote the fact that within two weeks, on December 4, the Nevada District Court dismissed Law v. Whitmer, finding in a detailed opinion that ‘there is no credible or reliable evidence that the 2020 General Election in Nevada was affected by fraud,’ including through the signature-match machines, and that Biden won the election in the state.”

• Trump continued to repeat false claims in tweets and speeches “as a candidate, not as an office holder,” Smith wrote.

Pennsylvania 

In the Keystone State, officials warned Trump there was no smoke and no fire related to election fraud in the commonwealth, Smith wrote.

• “Two days after the election, on November 6, the defendant called [redacted], the Chairman of the Pennsylvania Republican Party—the entity responsible for supporting Republican candidates in the commonwealth at the federal, state and local level. [Redacted] had a prior relationship with the defendant, including having represented him in litigation in Pennsylvania after the 2016 presidential election. The defendant asked [redacted] how, without fraud, he had gone from winning Pennsylvania on election day to trailing in the day afterward. Consistent with what Campaign staff already had told the defendant, [redacted] confirmed that it was not fraud; it was that there were roughly 1,750,000 mail-in ballots still being counted in Pennsylvania, which were expected to be eighty percent for Biden. Over the following two months, the defendant spread false claims of fraud in Pennsylvania anyway.”

• “In early November, in a Campaign meeting, when the defendant suggested that more people in Pennsylvania voted than had checked in to vote, Deputy Campaign Manager [redacted] corrected him.”

Wisconsin

Smith wrote Trump ignored reality in Wisconsin as well.

• “On November 29, a recount that the defendant’s campaign had petitioned and paid for confirmed that Biden had won in Wisconsin — and increased the defendant’s margin of defeat. On December 14, the Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected the Campaign’s election lawsuit there. As a result, on December 21, Wisconsin’s Governor signed a certificate of final determination confirming the prior certificate of ascertainment that established Biden’s electors as the valid electors for the state.”

Trump responded by rebuking the Wisconsin Supreme Court justice who had signed the majority opinion that rejected the lawsuit, forcing the state marshals responsible for the judge’s security to enhance protection due to a rise in “threatening communications.”

Fake electors 

Smith alleged that as Trump and co-conspirators faltered at overturning states’ official election results, they turned their attention to fake slates of electors.

As early as December 2020, Trump and his allies “developed a new plan regarding targeted states that the defendant had lost (Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin): to organize the people who would have served as the defendant’s electors had he won the popular vote, and cause them to sign and send to Pence, as President of the Senate, certificates in which they falsely represent themselves as legitimate electors who had cast electoral votes for the defendant,” Smith wrote.

Trump and his allies lied to Vice President Mike Pence heading toward Jan. 6, “telling him that there was substantial election fraud and concealing their orchestration of the plan to manufacture fraudulent elector slates, as well as their intention to use the fake slates to attempt to obstruct the congressional certification.”

Trump’s alleged lies to Pence and the public “created a tinderbox that he purposely ignited on January 6.”

The filing details numerous people, including Trump, pressuring Pence for weeks to use his role overseeing Congress’ certification of the Electoral College vote to overturn the election results.

On the morning of Jan. 6, Pence, once again, told Trump he would not go along with the plan.

“So on January 6, the defendant sent to the Capitol a crowd of angry supporters, whom the defendant had called to the city and inundated with false claims of outcome-determinative election fraud, to induce Pence not to certify the legitimate electoral vote and to obstruct the certification.”

“Although the attack on the Capitol successfully delayed the certification for approximately six hours, the House and Senate resumed the Joint Session at 11:35 p.m. But the conspirators were not done.”

The filing alleges a co-conspirator once again urged Pence to “violate the law” by delaying the certification for 10 days. He refused.

Pressure on Pence

Smith must prove that Trump’s pressure on Pence was outside of their official duties together, and therefore can not be considered immune from prosecution.

Smith plans to introduce evidence of private phone calls and conversations between Trump and his VP, including some with campaign staff, essentially tying their interactions to their interests as those seeking office again, “as running mates in the post-election period.” Smith also plans to highlight that Pence’s role in certifying the election was largely ceremonial and within the realm of the Senate, and strictly outside the bounds of the Oval Office.  Among Smith’s points made in his motion:

• “Because the Vice President’s role is and has always been ministerial, rather than substantive or discretionary, it is difficult to imagine an occasion in which a President would have any valid reason to try to influence it. As such, criminalizing a President’s efforts to affect the Vice President’s role as the President of the Senate overseeing the certification of Electoral College results would not jeopardize an Executive Branch function or authority.”

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