Lawsuit unveils fresh details about Trump's fake elector scheme — and links to GOP senator
Republican attorneys settled a lawsuit in Wisconsin this week involving the creation of the fake electors plot between Kenneth Chesebro and a little-known lawyer called Jim Troupis, Wisconsin Public Radio reported.
The civil lawsuit was brought by the liberal firm Law Forward in conjunction with the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection (I-CAP).
ICAP director Mary McCord, an MSNBC analyst and former Justice Department official, explained in her podcast with co-host and former Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Weissmann that Troupis began talking with Chesebro as early as Nov. 8, 2020 to hatch a scheme to create and submit fraudulent assertions that Trump had won the electoral college in Wisconsin.
The idea was that they'd be passed to then-Vice President Mike Pence, who would count them instead of the authentic ones.
The fake electors then met on Dec. 14, submitting their names and information as if they were actual representatives to the Electoral College.
ICAP's case was against the electors and the lawyers.
"Really, this was driven by Trump campaign lawyer, Jim Troupis, in Wisconsin," explained McCord.
The goal of the lawsuit was to have a court say unequivocally that what was done was "unlawful and a civil conspiracy," McCord continued.
Chesebro asked Troupis to write up the plot in a memo that could then be sent to the Trump campaign, the lawsuit stated. Troupis was then connected to Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Boris Epshteyn.
Thanks to the lawsuit, all of the documents, emails and text messages were made public.
Also read: Trump lawyers 'could face discipline' if they shrugged off Weisselberg lies
One of the key parts of the Trump allies' argument was the idea that the 12th Amendment doesn't clearly state how ballots should be counted, so the allies could gum up the works with the slates of fake electors being sent to then-Vice President Mike Pence.
The Wisconsin electors made their way to Washington, D.C., thanks to GOP staffer Alesha Guenther who flew them to the Capitol. They made their way to Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, who has claimed he had no idea how the whole scheme unfolded.
The emails and text messages released say something else, however. According to a text to Chesebro from Troupis, the latter said that he spoke to Johnson "last night" on the phone about Pence, "just to take his temperature." He then explained the scheme to Johnson a full month prior to Jan. 6, 2021, the messages reveal.
"I was aware that we got this package and that somebody wanted us to deliver it, so we reached out," Johnson told CNN's Manu Raju on June 21, 2022.
When Raju asked who had given him the fake electors, he claimed, "I have no idea."
“I had no involvement in an alternate slate of electors. I had no idea this’d even be delivered to us, got delivered staff to staff. My chief of staff did the right thing. Contacted the vice president's staff. They said they didn't want it, so we didn't deliver it," he said at the time.
Johnson's aide, Sean Riley, told Pence's legislative director Chris Hodgson they had the list for Michigan and Wisconsin.
“Do not give that to him,” Hodgson replied.
Weissmann said on the podcast that the emails and text messages prove that Chesebro and Troupis they knew exactly what they were doing.
"It was a public nuisance because it had impacted the community in Wisconsin and their ability to actually have their votes count and that it violated another law ... where these electors took the position of real electors even though they weren't the real electors," McCord explained. "So, we used these civil causes of action, we were trying to get the court to say this is unlawful and to prevent them from ever doing it again."
"It's so important that these cases get to trial because everything that you have seen — and now a bit out there — that's the whole point of a trial for everyone to see," Weissmann said.