Former Dane County Judge James Troupis and a pair of other former Trump aides pleaded not guilty Tuesday to felony forgery charges for their role in planning the fake elector plot that played an instrumental role in what became the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. 

Troupis, attorney Kenneth Cheseboro and Trump campaign aide Mike Roman entered the pleas in Dane County Circuit Court Tuesday. The trio is accused of falsifying Electoral College documents to say President Donald Trump won the 2020 election in the state. 

The three men face 11 felony forgery charges which are each punishable by up to six years in prison and a $10,000 fine. They argue they committed no crime and were just keeping the president’s appeal options open. 

Prosecutors argue that the three men misled Wisconsin’s 10 Republican electors, telling them the Electoral College votes for Trump were only being cast in case the various court challenges against the election results were successful. Those challenges ultimately failed, but the Electoral College votes were presented to Congress as a pretense to reject the certification of Joe Biden’s victory. 

Troupis has spent months trying to avoid his prosecution. He penned a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice late last month asking for more than $3 million from Trump’s since-scrapped “anti-weaponization” fund to compensate him for the “nightmare” of facing the charges against him. Last week, he filed a motion seeking to have his case moved to Jefferson County Court, arguing he can’t receive a fair trial from the liberal jurors in  Dane County. He’s also filed to have the case against him dismissed because he was pardoned by Trump for any potential federal charges related to the fake electors scheme.

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This article was originally published by Votebeat, a nonprofit news organization covering local election administration and voting access.

As three alleged planners of Wisconsin’s fake elector scheme pleaded not guilty Tuesday to 11 forgery-related criminal charges in Dane County court, the criminal charges against them are moving forward in a national legal and political landscape that looks dramatically different from the one in which they were filed.

When Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul filed the charges in June 2024, Joe Biden was president, Donald Trump was battling a criminal case brought by the U.S. Department of Justice over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, and state prosecutors in Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, and Nevada were bringing criminal cases tied to the fake elector scheme.

That scheme arose in the aftermath of the 2020 election, when Trump allies tried to keep him in power despite his loss. Those allies, who became known as fake or false electors, attempted to cast electoral votes for Trump in multiple states he lost and submit those certificates to Congress.

Now, as the three defendants in the Wisconsin case await trial, the case enters what is expected to be a lengthy legal process. It will unfold as Trump has regained the presidency, and he and his allies are undertaking extensive efforts to rewrite what happened in the 2020 election.

Since returning to office, Trump has issued a federal pardon to those involved in the 2020 scheme, and his administration has sent the FBI to investigate the 2020 election in Wisconsin and elsewhere.

The federal criminal case against Trump over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election has been dismissed. And, until recently, his administration had plans to allocate $1.8 billion to compensate people it claimed had been unfairly prosecuted by the federal government, raising questions about whether participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot and those involved in the fake elector schemes could receive taxpayer funds.

Other state cases have also faltered. Georgia’s election interference case has been dismissed, though not before the prosecution secured some guilty pleas from Trump’s allies. Michigan’s false elector case has also been dismissed. Arizona’s remains unresolved after a major setback for the prosecution, and Nevada’s just resumed after its Supreme Court revived charges that a lower court had thrown out.

Kaul faced criticism for filing his charges so late — it was the last criminal case to be filed regarding the fake electors. But two years later, that timing has left Wisconsin’s as one of the last cases standing in the broader, mostly failed effort to prosecute Trump and his allies for their attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

“The direction of activity has completely flipped, from prosecuting the people who were disrupting the election or inhibiting the normal flow of events to now going after Trump’s adversaries,” said Barry Burden, a UW-Madison political science professor who founded the Elections Research Center.

The Trump administration’s new investigation into the 2020 election in Wisconsin and elsewhere, Burden said, “seems to be a targeted effort at people who were mostly upholding the law and trying to administer an election in a very difficult environment.”

Amid the federal government’s current activity, and nearly six years removed from the 2020 election, Burden said any guilty finding in the Wisconsin fake elector case would likely have a muted effect.

“If we wanted the public to believe that there were ramifications for that kind of unlawful behavior, it would have to happen quickly and publicly, and feel like it was an immediate response to what people had done after the 2020 election,” he said. “But that’s not where we are six years later.”

‘Shocking’ if there are no ramifications in Wisconsin

The Wisconsin criminal case is still in its preliminary stages. Although it was filed two years ago, a number of motions and an appeal have set the case back significantly.

The defendants — former Dane County Judge Jim Troupis, who was Trump’s Wisconsin campaign attorney in 2020; attorney Kenneth Chesebro, who advised Trump on legal matters; and former Trump aide Mike Roman — each face 11 felony charges for his part in allegedly guiding Wisconsin’s 10 fake electors to send documents to the U.S. Capitol falsely stating that Trump had won Wisconsin in the 2020 election.

All entered not-guilty pleas on Tuesday during a brief proceeding attended by a couple dozen people in attendance in the several pews in the back of the courtroom.

Chesebro and Roman appeared virtually. Troupis, who briefly worked in the same courthouse where he was arraigned, was there in person. He showed little emotion during the quick arraignment but smiled as he greeted supporters afterward. He told the press after the proceeding that he didn’t have anything to say.

The 10 false electors from 2020 aren’t defendants in the current case, but they separately settled a civil lawsuit in Wisconsin by acknowledging that Biden won the 2020 election and pledging not to violate election laws in the future.

Chesebro and Troupis separately reached a settlement in that case, turning over a trove of documents outlining their role in 2020 and agreeing not to participate in similar schemes in future elections.

Text messages and emails show that Chesebro was a primary architect behind the 2020 plan to have Wisconsin’s GOP electors attest that Trump won the state while Trump’s court challenges seeking to overturn the election were still ongoing. Troupis discussed that plan with the Trump campaign, and Roman helped craft the language of the documents Republicans planned to send to the Capitol from states that Biden won.

Troupis has since asked the federal government to reimburse him $3.2 million from the proposed $1.8 billion fund, saying his life has been a “nightmare” since he stepped up to represent Trump.

“My experience is a poster-child for what weaponization can do,” he wrote in a letter to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, adding that “the entire legal system is at risk if compensation is not paid.”

Attorneys for Chesebro and Roman didn’t respond to requests for comment, and Troupis’ attorney declined to comment.

Burden said it is striking that the case is still ongoing nearly six years after the election, but he said the conduct at issue remains extraordinary.

“These were among the most serious challenges to elections we’ve seen in modern times,” Burden said.

“To think that there might be no ramifications of that really would be shocking,” he said, “and, I think, at odds with how the American criminal justice system has typically operated.”

Alexander Shur is a reporter for Votebeat based in Wisconsin. Contact Shur at ashur@votebeat.org.

Votebeat is a nonprofit news organization reporting on voting access and election administration across the U.S. Sign up for Votebeat Wisconsin’s free newsletter here.

Alleged Wisconsin fake elector accomplices plead not guilty as Trump seeks to rewrite 2020 election is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

The Florida Supreme Court has declined to suspend the Florida law license of Kenneth Chesebro, convicted in Georgia of filing a false list of electors there to undermine Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.

Instead, the justices issued a reprimand over the objection of Justice Jorge Labarga, the sole member of the court not appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis. (Former Gov. Charlie Crist placed him on the Supreme Court in January 2009.)

“In my view, the intentional commission of fraud upon the court is one of the most egregious ethical transgressions a lawyer can commit, and such serious misconduct necessitates the imposition of severe professional sanctions,” Labarga wrote.

Labarga said a written reprimand is “disproportionate to the severity of Chesebro’s grave ethical violations” and called Chesebro’s actions “an intolerable breach of professional ethics.” 

Chesebro was a key figure in the plot to submit fraudulent certificates claiming that Trump won the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, instead of Biden.

He was among 77 people pardoned by Trump for any federal crimes shortly after Trump resumed office. The pardon would not preclude any state charges.

Chesebro pleaded guilty in October 2023 in Fulton County, Ga., Superior Court to a felony charge of conspiracy to commit filing false documents for his role in the fake electors plan, Phoenix affiliate Georgia Recorder has reported. He was sentenced to five years’ probation.

“However, because the conviction was entered pursuant to Georgia’s First Offender Act, and Chesebro’s probation was later terminated early, he was ultimately ‘exonerated of guilt’ and now ‘stand[s] discharged as a matter of law.’ Indeed, upon entering a consent order terminating probation, the Georgia trial court declared that Chesebro ‘shall not be considered to have ever had a criminal conviction,’” Florida’s high court noted.

‘Unique’

The unsigned majority opinion said the court was “bound to respect the judgments of sister states under principles of comity.”

However,  “we must fashion a remedy appropriate to the unique facts of this case and, after careful deliberation, find that a reprimand is appropriate,” the opinion says. “Suspension or a more serious sanction would have been fitting had Chesebro not been exonerated under the distinct circumstance presented here; Chesebro’s full discharge under the Georgia First Offender Act, however, is a fact we do not ignore.”

Florida’s attorney ethics standards hold a reprimand appropriate “when a lawyer negligently engages in conduct that is a violation of a duty owed as a professional and causes injury or potential injury to a client, the public, or the legal system,” Labarga wrote.

“Because the discharge of Chesebro’s conviction pursuant to Georgia’s First Offender Act does not undo his admitted act of misconduct, I disagree with the majority’s conclusion that suspension is inappropriate,” he concluded.

 

James Troupis, the former attorney for President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign who played an instrumental role in the fake elector scheme that led to the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, has applied for $3.2 million through Trump’s “weaponization” fund. 

Troupis, a former Dane County Circuit Court judge, was part of the trio of Trump campaign aides who conceived the plan to have Republicans posing as members of the Electoral College cast ballots for Trump and send those ballots to Washington D.C. to be certified by Congress as the official results. The false slates of electors were the mechanism through which the Trump-aligned “stop the steal” efforts were organized — culminating in the Jan. 6 attack aimed at forcing Congress and then-Vice President Mike Pence to certify Trump as the winner of the 2020 election. 

Troupis also represented Trump in the campaign’s failed lawsuit seeking to have the Wisconsin Supreme Court overturn the 2020 election results. 

After participating in the plan, Troupis was investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice under President Joe Biden and is currently facing felony charges of forgery for his role in the fake elector plot. He also settled a civil lawsuit against him for his involvement in the plan. 

In a letter to Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche, Troupis complains that his life has been upended because of the justice system’s effort to investigate and charge him with crimes. 

“I was honored to represent President Trump in the Wisconsin Recount,” Troupis wrote in the letter posted to social media by right-wing radio host Vicki McKenna. “Sadly, my life (and the lives of my entire family) has been a nightmare since I stepped forward to represent President Trump … The total real financial cost now exceeds $1.7 million, the annihilation of my reputation and law practice, thousands of hours in preparation and response to those legal actions, five years of time lost with my children and grandchildren, loss of retirement funds used for defense costs and ongoing legal expenses that will likely cost me our family home and the balance of my retirement funds. I now face spending the rest of my life in prison!” 

Troupis adds that he’s become a “poster-child” for the weaponization of the law. Last year, a Dane County judge denied Troupis’ effort to have the state criminal charges against him dismissed. 

“Troupis does not show that the First Amendment protects the right to commit forgery, does not show that the government violated his right to due process by entrapping him into that forgery, and does not show prosecutors must exercise discretion to charge an accused of his preferred offense,” Judge John Hyland wrote. 

Troupis’ cause has become a favorite of right-wing figures, including U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson — who himself was involved in the fake elector scheme. 

The $1.776 billion fund created by the DOJ as part of a settlement in Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS has been criticized as a tool the Trump administration can use to pay out its allies and the foot soldiers of the Jan. 6 attack. Figures such as Enrique Tarrior, the former leader of the militia group the Proud Boys, have applied for funds through the fund. 

Jeff Mandell, the president and general counsel of Law Forward, a voting rights-focused firm that brought the civil lawsuit against Troupis, said that the request for $3.2 million in taxpayer money continues Troupis’ pattern of refusing to accept the consequences of his actions.

“Wisconsin attorney and former judge Jim Troupis was the primary architect of the national fraudulent-electors scheme,” Mandell said. “As Law Forward’s groundbreaking civil litigation discovered and made clear, absent Troupis’s actions, there never would have been an insurrection on January 6. He is facing criminally prosecution, and we have a pending ethics complaint seeking his disbarment. On January 6, Troupis texted congratulations to one of his colleagues on the fruits of their labor. Troupis was paid by the Trump campaign for the work he did then, has consistently been unwilling to accept personal responsibility for his misconduct since, and now wants to be paid again by the American taxpayers. His actions now continue to be as disgraceful as his misconduct was in the wake of the 2020 election.”

On Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the Republican nominee in the race for governor of Wisconsin, said at an event that he believes some people charged with crimes after Jan. 6 could “possibly” be entitled to compensation — though not if they assaulted law enforcement officers. 

Wisconsin Senate Minority Leader Diane Hesselbein (D-Middleton) responded to the fund Wednesday by introducing the “No Taxpayer Dollars for Insurrectionists Act” which would apply a 100% state income tax on any money Wisconsinites receive through the fund. She said the fund was the “height of corruption.” 

“Put simply — if you’re from Wisconsin and you stormed the Capitol, you will not receive money from the slush fund,” Hesselbein said in a statement. “Wisconsinites are tired of the chaos and corruption caused by the Trump administration. From reckless tariffs to the conflict with Iran, the President continues to harm hard-working Wisconsin families and businesses by driving up costs. At a time when Wisconsinites continue to struggle with the rising cost of groceries, gas, and housing, our taxpayers must not foot the bill.”

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