The Wisconsin Department of Justice on Tuesday filed 10 additional charges against three allies of Donald Trump who led the “fake voters” scheme to aid the president-elect in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The three men, Kenneth Chesebro, Michael Roman and James Troupis, were charged with forgery in June for their role in the plot. The additional charges include conspiracy to commit a crime and numerous counts of fraud.
In Wisconsin, the individual fake electors have faced civil penalties and have agreed never to serve as electors while Trump is voting, and to make a public statement acknowledging that their vote was cast in an effort to secure Joe Biden’s victory to disrupt in 2020.
Republicans have submitted fake voter rolls in seven swing states, but only some have faced civil and criminal penalties.
Unlike Michigan, Georgia and Arizona, where voters were charged with crimes for participating in the fraudulent election system, Wisconsin’s fake voters have not faced criminal charges. Instead, the state has hit the plan’s architects with the harshest penalties.
According to the complaint and documents previously released in civil court, Chesebro led the effort by distributing a memo titled “The Real Deadline for Settlement of a State’s Electoral Votes,” which urged Trump’s electors to to submit false election certificates – despite the fact that Trump did not win the election.
The complaint explains how Chesebro and Troupis, both attorneys, coordinated with Roman, a Trump aide, to establish the plot in states across the country. It notes that while in some states the fake electors had included qualifying language in their certificates indicating that they had submitted their names in case Trump was ultimately declared the winner of the election, voters in Wisconsin had no such language included.
Troupis, Roman and Chesebro have been prosecuted for their involvement in the bogus 2020 election schemes in other states, including Arizona and Georgia, where Chesebro pleaded guilty to conspiracy to file false documents. Troupis remained a member of a judicial ethics panel in Wisconsin after the false election episode and was not suspended until June, when he was first charged with felony falsification in connection with the plot.
