U.S. President Donald Trump during an arrival ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., November 18, 2025 (REUTERS)
Three alleged planners of Donald Trump’s 2020 fake elector scheme pleaded not guilty Tuesday to eleven forgery-related criminal charges in a Wisconsin’s County court — but they might be walking into a toothy maw of legal pain.
The Milwaukee Journal Constitution reports “Jim Troupis, a former Wisconsin campaign attorney for President Donald Trump, Michael Roman, a former Trump aide, and Kenneth Chesebro, a Wisconsin-born former Trump attorney, appeared in Dane County Circuit Court for arraignment on 11 counts of felony charges related to the so-called fake elector scheme.”
Most federal criminal cases against Trump henchmen for their efforts to overturn the 2020 election have collapsed or been dismissed after voters returned Trump to the White House in 2024. Votebeat Wisconsin reports Georgia’s election interference case got dismissed just as the prosecution nabbed guilty pleas from Trump’s allies. Michigan’s false elector case also got dismissed, and Arizona’s own investigation is stalling after a major setback for the prosecution. Nevada prosecutors resumed their own investigation after the state Supreme Court revived charges that a lower court threw out, reports Votebeat.
But the Wisconsin case is laced with pratfalls for Trump’s people. Firstly, 10 false electors from 2020 settled a civil lawsuit in Wisconsin by acknowledging that Biden won the 2020 election. But Chesebro and Troupis not only reached a settlement in that case but also turned over a trove of damning documents outlining their role in trying to overturn a legitimate U.S. election.
The office of Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul claims Troupis, Chesebro and Roman “lied to the Wisconsin Republicans who signed paperwork falsely claiming to be electors for Trump in the lead-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, joint session of Congress to certify the 2020 election for Biden,” the Sentinel reports.
“The 10 Republicans who signed paperwork claiming to be electors have not been charged criminally related to the fake documents,” reports the Sentinel, but other state Republicans, like former Republican Party of Wisconsin chairman Andrew Hitt, who was one of the 10 Republicans who participated in Wisconsin, said in 2024 he felt "tricked" by the Trump campaign to sign the paperwork.
And while other state prosecutions have been sidelines by Trump’s return to the White House or Republican judges and legislatures, the state of Wisconsin has a court system which has been streaking toward the left since Trump’s election, with the GOP not even bothering to run candidates in some court races.
Additionally, public opinion polls in this state that supported Trump’s reelection have collapsed as voters turn on Trump and his beholden Republican Party.
Worse for Trump’s henchmen, however, is the fact that if a state jury does find the three guilty, Trump will be unable to rescue them with a pardon because the charges are coming down in state, rather than federal courts. In fact, Trump already pardoned Troupis on the federal level last November, not that it helped.
The Sentinel reports Dane County Circuit Court Judge Mario White is overseeing the case.