Kenneth Chesebro and Jim Troupis, former Trump lawyers, and Mike Roman, former Trump aide, had an unbelievably bad week and it was glorious. These three have been indicted in the Wisconsin fake elector scheme from the 2020 elections. Their first appearance on those charges was scheduled for Thursday. But they had a helluva time making it that far first.
On Tuesday, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul lowered the boom and added ten more charges to each of the defendants:
The additional charges allege forgery to defraud the Republican electors who cast their ballots for Trump in 2020, even though Joe Biden won the state.
The new charges join the original single charge of felony forgery filed earlier this year. Chesebro, Troupis and Roman are scheduled to appear in court in Madison on Thursday.
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According to the complaint, most of the electors said they did not consent to having their signatures presented as if Trump had won the state without a court ruling saying so. The complaint also describes how Chesebro, Troupis and Roman allegedly created a fake document that said Trump won Wisconsin's 10 Electoral College votes and then attempted to deliver it to then-Vice President Mike Pence for certification.
Each of the eleven charges carries a penalty of up to $10,000 and up to six years in prison.
Then on Wednesday, the good people at Law Forward stepped up and filed a formal grievance against Troupis with the Office of Lawyer Regulation. Troupis is still an attorney and a former circuit court judge.
“Troupis was the quarterback of a calculated scheme to overturn a presidential election—an extraordinary abuse of legal expertise aimed at undermining our democracy, ” said Scott Thompson, Staff Attorney for Law Forward. “Pursuing accountability today sends a clear message to anyone who might consider disrupting the rule of law in the future.”
The grievance asks the OLR to investigate Troupis’s conduct and file a disciplinary complaint to address violations, including dishonesty, deceit, and improper influence, which breach the core principles of Wisconsin’s professional ethics rules.
At Thursday's hearing, Troupis was the only one of the three to show up for the hearing. But judging by the act he put on outside the courtroom after the hearing, he only showed up for the theatrics in appealing to the court of public opinion. Before a crowd of reporters and a handful of supporters, he cried about "lawfare" and how they were so "savagely attacked" and how his poor wife was worried that agents would break down the doors to come and arrest them. He also claimed to have spent a half a million dollars on his legal defense even though Thursday was just the initial appearance. Go figure.
But as they say, if you can't do the time, don't do the crime.
