guenther alesha RJ staff
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proof he lied about electors?
raw story 3 24
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 Radioreported.
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.
Listen to the full podcast here.
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wisc exmr
The 10 Wisconsin Republicans who posed as electors for President Donald Trump in 2020 even though he had lost the election settled a lawsuit against them Wednesday, acknowledging their actions were part of an effort to overturn the election results.
The lawsuit was filed last year by two of the state’s rightful electors, alleging the 10 false electors had engaged in a plot to defraud Wisconsin voters. The lawsuit had sought up to $200,000 from each elector, but no money is being exchanged as part of the settlement.
Wisconsin was one of several swing states in which groups of Republicans cast false electoral votes for Trump and sent them to Congress. The electors in two other states are facing criminal charges for their actions. The settlement marks the first time false electors in any state have revoked their filings and said they will not repeat their actions.
The 10 Republicans have also agreed not to serve as electors in any presidential election in which Trump is on the ballot. Trump is currently the leading candidate in the Republican primary race.
On the day that the duly elected presidential electors met in December 2020, the group of Republicans met in secret to cast Electoral College votes for Trump, claiming they were casting them in case Trump’s efforts to change the election results in court were successful. The false votes were cast hours after the state Supreme Court had voted 4-3 against the Trump campaign’s efforts to toss out hundreds of thousands of votes in Dane and Milwaukee counties in an attempt to change the results — effectively ending the campaign’s legal battles in Wisconsin.
The false electoral votes were sent to the National Archives, Congress, then-Secretary of State Douglas La Follette and a federal judge. The votes played a major role in sparking the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“On December 14, 2020, in compliance with requests received from the Trump campaign and the Republican Party of Wisconsin, we met at the Wisconsin State Capitol and executed a document titled ‘Certificate of the Votes of the 2020 Electors from Wisconsin,’” the 10 Republican electors said in a statement as part of the settlement. “That document stated, in part, that we were ‘the duly elected and qualified Electors for President and Vice President of the United States of America from the State of Wisconsin.’ The Elector Defendants took the foregoing action because they were told that it was necessary to preserve their electoral votes in the event a court challenge may later change the outcome of the election in Wisconsin. That document was then used as part of an attempt to improperly overturn the 2020 presidential election results.”
“We hereby reaffirm that Joseph R. Biden, Jr. won the 2020 presidential election and that we were not the duly elected presidential electors for the State of Wisconsin for the 2020 presidential election,” the statement continues. “We oppose any attempt to undermine the public’s faith in the ultimate results of the 2020 presidential election.”
While the 10 Republican electors agreed to settle the claims against them, the case continues against two attorneys who played a crucial role in the scheme. Jim Troupis, a former Dane County judge who served as legal counsel for the Trump campaign, and Kenneth Cheseboro, who urged the Wisconsin Republicans to undertake the plan in a November 2020 memo and is facing criminal charges in Georgia for the false electoral votes cast in that state, are set to face a civil trial next year.
The group of false electors included Andrew Hitt, who was then the chairman of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, and Robert Spindell, who continues to serve as a member of the Wisconsin Elections Commission — the agency responsible for administering elections in the state.
Documents released as part of the settlement include text messages in which one of the Republicans refers to the false elector plan as a “possible steal.” Another text showed an elector saying that not going along with the plan would “piss off the Trump base.”
The emails and text messages released show the electors had varying degrees of belief in the likelihood of the plan succeeding, some of which had previously been released by the congressional committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack.
The released texts show that on Jan. 5, 2021, Wisconsin GOP staffer Alesha Guenther flew to Washington D.C. to deliver the false votes.
“5 minutes until I make the drop,” she wrote to Hitt. “I feel like a drug dealer.”
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[### Alesha Guenther
Michael Best & Friedrich LLP
https://www.michaelbest.com › People › Alesha-Guenther](https://www.michaelbest.com/People/Alesha-Guenther)
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4 hours ago — Republican attorneys settled a lawsuit in Wisconsin this week involving the creation of the fake electors plot between Kenneth Chesebro and ...
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