Former Trump Attorney: WI AG Is Prosecuting For ‘Political Scalp’

Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul has dreams of higher office dancing in his head. So, it’s not surprising that the leftist just can’t quit his politically-driven prosecution against the attorneys who dared to represent the left’s greatest nemesis, President Donald Trump. 

Even with holes in his case so big that a progressive could drive his Prius through, Kaul knows the show must go on. And the show is for the Trump-hating liberals who will decide the Democratic Party of Wisconsin’s next nominee for the state’s 2026 governor’s race. Kaul reportedly would like to be the Badger State’s next governor, although he has yet to throw his hat into the ring.  

Kaul and his minions in the state attorney general’s office have spent more than a year slow-walking a seriously flawed case against former Dane County judge and Trump campaign lawyer Jim Troupis, fellow Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro, and Trump campaign aide Michael Roman. Kaul and crew are pushing a twisted legal theory that the defendants engaged in forgery to defraud each of the 10 Republican electors who stood in as legitimate alternate electors in the weeks following the 2020 presidential election. The Republicans, falsely described as “fake electors” by the attorney general and his good friends in the incurious corporate media, met at the state Capitol on Monday Dec. 14, 2020, to cast their ballots for Trump after Democrat challenger Joe Biden claimed victory in Wisconsin and in the presidential election at large.

While Kaul would love a conviction and may indeed get one in a Dane County courtroom rigged with a predominantly Trump-hating jury pool, he, like his leftist lawfare allies working similar prosecutions in other battleground states, knows that the process is the punishment. 

‘Speaking the Unspeakable’

On Monday, Troupis told Madison conservative talk show host Vicki McKenna that Kaul’s political prosecution is about “speaking the unspeakable.” 

“When I spoke the unspeakable, which is that Trump won Wisconsin [in 2020] if you count the legal votes, the left can never let that level of truth come out. And that’s all this case is about,” Troupis said on NewsTalk 1130 WISN in Milwaukee. 

Troupis and Chesebro argued in challenging Biden’s win in Wisconsin that there were more than 50,135 illegal ballots cast in the election. They detailed in the Trump campaign’s litigation the ineligible voters, including thousands of individuals who claimed to be indefinitely confined and were not required to show a photo ID to vote, thousands more whose ballots were harvested in defiance of election law, and voters who turned in defective absentee ballots. 

Of course, Biden claimed victory in swing state Wisconsin by 20,600 votes. Had Wisconsin courts ruled that the 50,135 contested votes not counted, Trump would have easily won the Badger State. They didn’t, but no court called the challenge frivolous, either, Troupis said. There were legitimate questions about the validity of the ballots under state election law. But Democrats and the propaganda press quickly moved to condemn anyone who doubted the results and the administration of the rigged election an “election denier.” 

The Trump campaign attorneys were soon targeted for representing their client through a widely accepted electoral vote-protection strategy dating back 150 years. 

Troubled and Troubling Case

In June 2024, as Trump closed in on securing the GOP presidential nomination and Biden’s reelection campaign was falling apart, Kaul held a nationally-watched press conference to announce forgery-related charges against Troupis and his co-defendants. 

As The Federalist reported at the time, the men were swept up in the left’s phony “fake electors” narrative for their effort to enlist a slate of 10 Republican volunteers to serve as alternate — or contingent — electors to protect Trump’s electoral votes should he succeed in his post-election legal challenges. Kaul massaged a state forgery-uttering law to accuse the defendants of knowingly promoting a false slate of electors as authentic, or at least uttering as much.

His case crumbled from the outset. Kaul’s attorneys at the state Department of Justice had twice given their blessing to the alternate electors plan. They noted that the strategy, which bound the alternate electors to secure Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes for Trump while challenges played out in court, was legally employed in previous closely contested presidential elections. Most notably, stand-in slates were part of the controversial election of 1876 and again in 1960. As court filings show, Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore was advised to do the same — he did not follow that advice — in the disputed 2000 election. Chesebro, a native of Wisconsin, was a Gore campaign attorney at the time. 

Troupis’ attorney argued what the state DOJ noted: There was nothing unlawful about the alternate electors. 

So in December, Kaul changed course, filing 10 additional charges against the two attorneys and Trump’s campaign aide. Kaul essentially abandoned his troubled forgery theory in favor of fraud, insisting that Troupis and the others duped the electors into filling out the ballot. 

Troupis argues that didn’t happen, either. Nobody was defrauded because they all knew what they were doing to preserve Trump’s rights. 

“Before and after the December 14[, 2020,] meeting, the Respondents publicly stated, including in court pleadings, that they were meeting to preserve legal options while litigation was pending,” Kaul’s DOJ wrote in its memo to the Wisconsin Elections Commission, which subsequently dismissed complaints filed by a leftist lawfare firm. 

‘You Can’t Get a Fair Trial’

But Kaul’s show trial must go on. Liberal Dane County Judge John D. Hyland ensured as much, ruling last week against motions to dismiss the felony charges — the First Amendment and due process be damned. 

“You can’t get a fair trial in Dane County,” McKenna told Troupis, who formerly served as a rare Republican-appointed Dane County judge. McKenna has a point. Dane County, a liberal enclave, overwhelmingly backed Biden, who received more than 75 percent of the county’s vote in 2020. Trump-hating liberals are sure to dominate the jury pool. 

If convicted, the defendants face six years in prison and a $10,000 fine for each of the 11 felony charges against them.

The Attorney General’s Office has not returned multiple requests for comment. 

‘Case is a Mess’

Leftist prosecutors have also filed criminal charges in similar alternate elector cases in Michigan, Nevada, Georgia and Arizona. The Nevada Supreme Court earlier this month heard arguments on whether Democrat Attorney General Aaron Ford’s political prosecution against Republicans can be resurrected. A lower court last year dismissed the forgery case over jurisdictional issues, finding that Nevada’s Clark County was not the appropriate venue. 

“The case is one of two final attempts by Attorney General Aaron Ford to prosecute the fake electors, with his office also filing forgery charges last year in Carson City, where the next hearing is scheduled for September,” the Nevada Independent reported. Ford, a Democrat, is running for governor next year. 

Kris Mayes, Arizona’s far-left attorney general, has watched her electors case against 18 Trump allies fall apart over the past year. Even liberal Politico acknowledges Mayes’ “case is a mess.” The original judge was forced to recuse himself after he was exposed as a Kamala Harris supefan and biased against Trump. His replacement has ruled the case is flawed “because grand jurors were never shown the full text of the Electoral Count Act, the 1887 law at the heart of some of the charges,” Politico reported. Mayes has appealed, a move that is expected to slow down the languishing case. 

‘I Will Never Back Down’

While he faces an uphill climb in liberal Dane County’s judicial system, Troupis said he’s confident that Kaul will ultimately lose. In the meantime, Troupis said the “ ambitious, unethical” attorney general and his leftist lawfare friends are doing everything they can to destroy the retired attorney and the people he loves. As the prosecution grinds on, Kaul, with unlimited state resources, is bleeding the defendants’ finances, Troupis said. 

“I was head of litigation at one of largest law firms in the country. I was a judge. I have assets. I had — past tense — assets,” he said. 

The process is the punishment. 

“[Kaul] doesn’t care that he’s destroyed me and my family … He cares about the political scalp on his wall that he can give to progressives. All of the things I just described can happen to anybody. They happened to have happened to me. And they happened to have picked someone who will never back down. I will never back down.”

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.