Trump allies Troupis, Roman will stand trial in criminal false electors case

The trial against two people charged with felony forgery in Wisconsin in connection to the 2020 false electors scheme will proceed after a Dane County judge found probable cause on Monday.

At a lengthy preliminary hearing in Dane County Circuit Court, Judge John Hyland found the state presented enough evidence against Jim Troupis, who served as Trump’s Wisconsin attorney in the 2020 election, and Mike Roman, a 2020 campaign aide, for the criminal trial to go forward.

A third co-defendant, former Trump campaign attorney Ken Chesebro, was separated out based on questions his lawyers raised about what evidence is admissible. He will face a separate probable cause hearing later.

All three men face 11 counts of felony forgery in Wisconsin for their roles in the 2020 false electors plot, in which 10 Republican electors gathered at the state Capitol and signed documents attesting that President Donald Trump had won Wisconsin, even though he had narrowly lost to former President Joe Biden.

Attorney General Josh Kaul brought the charges last year, arguing Troupis, Chesebro and Roman each knowingly developed false documents and duped the 10 electors into signing them.

Attorneys for Troupis and Roman — the Madison-based defense lawyers Joe Bugni and Nathan Otis, respectively — each sought to depict their client as merely preserving all legal options available to the Trump team as that campaign filed challenges to the election’s outcome in numerous state and federal courts.

The document the Trump electors signed, Bugni argued, was not a forgery because it was the kind of ballot that true electors would use.

“That’s not a counterfeit,” he said, pointing to a blown-up depiction of the electoral ballot. “That’s what it purports to be.”

Wisconsin Assistant Attorney General Adrienne Blais argued the evidence in a criminal complaint, authored by Wisconsin Department of Justice special agent Mary Van Schoyck, demonstrates enough evidence of wrongdoing for the case to proceed to trial — an argument that ultimately persuaded Hyland.

The communications between the defendants laid out in that complaint, including emails and text messages, indicate the Republican signatures were gathered as a contingency, Hyland argued as he granted the probable cause motion.

The hearing took place nearly five years to the day since the Republican electors falsely certified Trump’s victory, and a group of Troupis supporters were present in the courtroom for much of the day.

It is the latest step in a series of legal actions against Trump allies who sought to challenge his 2020 election loss in a handful of key swing states. Similar criminal cases in Michigan and Georgia have faltered, while one is ongoing in Nevada. Prosecutors have sought to paint the actions of a handful of lawyers and other Trump allies as contributing to the violence of Jan. 6.

And documents made public as part of a related lawsuit suggested Troupis and Chesebro developed the strategy using Wisconsin as a testing ground.

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.