Ron Johnson asks US DOJ to intervene in Wisconsin false electors case

A hearing in the felony case against a key figure in Wisconsin’s false electors scheme will proceed Monday — even as allies of President Donald Trump have ramped up pressure to stall the proceeding.

Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, a Trump ally, asked the U.S. Department of Justice to review the case against Jim Troupis, an attorney who faces 11 counts of felony forgery tied to his role as Trump’s Wisconsin campaign lawyer in 2020.

Troupis is alleged to have worked with Trump campaign attorney Ken Chesebro and campaign aide Mike Roman to develop and implement the false electors plot, where Republican electors from key swing states gathered in 2020 and signed official-looking documentation asserting Trump’s victory in states that he had lost.

Last year, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul brought felony charges against the three men, alleging they had duped Wisconsin’s 10 false electors into a scheme that they had masterminded. Documents made public as part of a related lawsuit suggested Troupis and Chesebro developed the strategy using Wisconsin as a testing ground.

Johnson’s letter is the latest in a series of efforts by the Troupis camp to get the case against him dismissed or delayed.

In his appeal to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, Johnson said it is “difficult to understand” how the judge in the case can be impartial.

“Therefore, I respectfully request that the Department of Justice review Mr. Troupis’ case to determine whether any wrongdoing has occurred,” Johnson wrote in a letter dated Thursday. It’s signed in his capacity sitting on the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Johnson has repeatedly called for the charges against Troupis to be dropped, and Troupis supporters have said he’s a victim of overzealous “lawfare.”

Earlier this week, Troupis’ attorney launched a failed attempt to delay the case on allegations that Dane County judges are politically biased against Troupis and his codefendants.

Troupis’ attorney, Joseph Bugni, also asserted that the presiding judge, Dane County Circuit Court Judge John Hyland, did not personally author an August order declining to throw out the case. Instead, Bugni asserted, the order was mostly ghostwritten by retired Judge Frank Remington — a claim Hyland rebuffed.

Hyland dismissed Bugni’s call to move the case to another county, writing, “no person other than the assigned staff attorney and I had a hand in drafting or editing the decision which this Court signed and entered.”

Hyland’s law clerk is a son to the retired Judge Remington. Bugni said he had solicited the input of a linguistic specialist to identify similarities between Remington’s writing style and that of the Hyland order.

Remington told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel he has never spoken to Hyland or his son about the case, nor did he write or help write any decisions issued in the case.

“I’ve never talked to Judge Hyland about this case either before I retired or after,” Remington told the newspaper. “I did not write any of his decisions or opinions — not one word, not one paragraph.”

Bugni did not immediately respond to WPR’s request for comment.  

Barring any federal intervention, Troupis, Chesebro and Roman are due to appear in Dane County Court on Monday for a preliminary hearing in their criminal case.

All three men are on a recent Trump pardon list that includes 77 other people involved in the false electors scheme. Federal pardons have no impact on state investigations.

Troupis and Chesebro previously settled a civil lawsuit brought against them in Wisconsin in 2023. They have argued they were testing out a novel legal theory to preserve Trump’s legal options as he tried, unsuccessfully, to challenge his narrow loss to former President Joe Biden in 2020. Trump won Wisconsin in 2016 and 2024 during his successful campaigns for the White House.