MADISON, Wis. (AP) – A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Monday involving two former attorneys and an aide from President Donald Trump's 2020 campaign, facing felony forgery charges linked to a fake elector scheme in Wisconsin. This case is progressing despite setbacks for similar actions in battleground states like Michigan and Georgia.
Filed over a year ago, the Wisconsin case has been delayed as the Trump associates have sought, so far unsuccessfully, to dismiss the charges against them. The charges emerged following allegations that they defrauded Republican electors who cast ballots for Trump in the 2020 presidential election. This hearing comes shortly after attorney Jim Troupis, one of the defendants, attempted to have the presiding judge step down and the case moved to another county, citing bias against him.
Troupis, who previously served as a judge in the same county, accused not only the judge but also alleged that the opinion issued in August, which denied the dismissal of charges, was not authored by the judge himself. According to his claims, a retired judge—who is the father of the current judge's law clerk—actually wrote the opinion. However, Dane County Circuit Judge John Hyland asserted that he and a staff attorney were solely responsible for the order's content and rejected Troupis's request to recuse himself or postpone the hearing.
Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, has called on the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Troupis's allegations of bias. Judge Hyland is charged with determining whether sufficient evidence exists to proceed against the three defendants during this preliminary hearing.
The three defendants—Jim Troupis, Kenneth Chesebro, who advised Trump's campaign, and Mike Roman, the campaign's director of Election Day operations in 2020—each face eleven felony charges pertaining to their involvement in the alleged fake elector scheme. The Wisconsin Department of Justice, under Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul, brought forth the forgery charges in 2024, alleging that the trio misled Republican electors about the intended use of the certificate they signed.
According to the prosecutors, the three defendants led the Republican electors to believe that signing the certificate was merely a precautionary measure, preserving Trump’s legal options should court rulings alter the election's outcome in Wisconsin. The complaint reveals that most of these electors did not intend for their signatures to be submitted to Congress as proof of Trump's victory without an official court ruling and maintained that they had not consented to their signatures being used in such a manner.
The investigation into Trump’s conduct surrounding the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot purported that the scheme was initiated in Wisconsin. Despite the defendants claiming no crime was committed, the judge disallowed their arguments in a prior hearing, allowing the case to advance to this preliminary stage.
Trump lost Wisconsin in the 2020 election but has since won the state in both the 2016 and 2024 elections. Notably, the charges levied against the Trump aides and attorneys represent the only legal actions in Wisconsin regarding this matter. None of the ten Republican electors involved have faced criminal charges, and in a separate lawsuit, the Wisconsin electors, along with Chesebro and Troupis, reached a settlement seeking damages.
