Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul’s office twice asserted that a slate of alternate electors contesting the 2020 election was legal before bringing criminal charges on the matter in the heat of a presidential election in 2024, based on memos referenced in court filings.

Earlier this month, President Donald Trump pardoned the alternate electors among more than 70 people involved in challenging the 2020 election. However, Kaul—and other Democrat prosecutors—vowed to continue the state prosecutions. 

The two assertions from Kaul’s office undermine the forgery and fraud case brought by the Wisconsin Department of Justice, according to defense filings by Jim Troupis, a former state judge and veteran Republican election lawyer who was charged last year with forgery for advising the alternate electors. Troupis settled the case in 2024 with no admission of wrongdoing.

The change, of course, from the state came after U.S. Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith secured a grand jury indictment against Trump in the federal election case in August 2023 and additional charges a year later. The indictment alleged in part that Trump was engaged in a conspiracy to assemble “fraudulent slates of electors.”

First, on Dec. 1, 2020, Kaul said alternate Republican electors could meet and vote. The point of his argument was that the Wisconsin Supreme Court did not have to rush a decision on the election challenge before Dec. 14 when the state electors met to count votes. 

So, the attorney general argued in a filing that also included the names of three assistant attorneys general, a ruling after Dec. 14 meant there was “zero risk” a separate slate of pro-Trump electors wouldn’t be counted if a recount or court rulings reversed the election outcome.

“There is no reason to invalidate the existing certificate of ascertainment or to enjoin the commissioner or the governor from certifying electors, because the........

© The Daily Signal