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 issuance of a certificate of ascertainment does not impair the petitioners’ ability to obtain a meaningful recount appeal,” the memo from Kaul and assistants said. Dec1-2020Download The attorney general added, “There is also no necessity for their recount appeal to bypass the procedural requirements … because, contrary to their suggestion, neither federal nor state law requires their recount appeal to be completed before December 14, 2020.” “As long as the Court does not interfere in the way requested by the petitioners, there is zero risk that Wisconsin will have no electoral votes on December 14,” the attorney general memo added. “The procedure prescribed by Congress accommodates petitioners’ right to a meaningful recount appeal.” More than a year later, Feb. 9, 2022, the attorney general’s office advised the Wisconsin Election Commission that the alternate slate of electors meeting and voting didn’t violate the law. Law Forward, a liberal legal group, alleged to the Wisconsin Election Commission, that the alternate electors violated the law. The commission solicited an opinion from the Wisconsin Department of Justice on the matter. In response, the attorney general’s office issued a memo rejecting those complaints. “Nothing in either statute prohibits or otherwise limits a party from meeting or otherwise casting electoral votes during a challenge to an election tabulation,” the February 2022 memo to the commission said.  The complaint alleged the Wisconsin pro-Trump alternate electors “met in a concerted effort to ensure that they would be mistaken, as a result of their deliberate forgery and fraud, for Wisconsin’s legitimate presidential electors.” On that point, the attorney general’s office asserted: “The record does not support this allegation. Before and after the December 14 meeting, the respondents publicly stated, including in court pleadings, that they were meeting to preserve legal options while litigation was pending.”  Feb9-2022-WECDownload Kaul’s office did not respond to requests for comment.  Although legal experts have argued the Trump pardon on state charges were symbolic, Troupis argued the Justice Department should intervene in the case.  “The United States Department of Justice must take action—civil rights investigation and intervention—to stop these ongoing prosecutions of those who worked with President Trump,” Troupis wrote in an op-ed published on ConservativeHQ.  Because of his pending legal case, he referred questions to the opinion piece.  “On December 1, 2020 the Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, in writing, explicitly advised us and the Wisconsin Supreme Court that Trump should use them,” Troupis wrote.  Troupis added: “It gets worse. Kaul’s own office wrote an official letter in 2022 noting that use of Alternate Electors has a long history and it was certainly not “fraud or forgery” (the charges he now makes).” In May 2022, Law Forward led a lawsuit against Troupis claiming that the meeting of Republican electors in 2020 was a public nuisance and a conspiracy. In March 2024, to avoid more legal costs, Troupis and legal adviser Kenneth Chesebro settled the civil case with no admission of wrongdoing, but an agreement from both not to participate in alternate elections in future presidential elections.  Separately, in December 2023, the Wisconsin alternate Trump electors settled a case, admitting their vote was “part of an attempt to improperly overturn the 2020 presidential election results” and agreed they would not be presidential electors in future elections with Trump. In June 2024, in the lead up to the presidential election, Kaul held a press conference to announce he filed a criminal complaint for forgery against Troupis and other Trump supporters in Dane County Circuit Court.  “The criminal complaint in this case alleges that the defendants were part of a conspiracy to present a certificate of purported electoral votes from individuals who were not Wisconsin’s duly appointed electors,” Kaul said when announcing the criminal complaint. “The Wisconsin Department of Justice is committed to protecting the integrity of our electoral process.” Law Forward defended the charges. The defendants’ assertion that the Wisconsin attorney general blessed the use of alternate electors “distorts the facts,” argued Jeff Mandell, president and general counsel at Law Forward. “The [Wisconin] DOJ opinion letter referenced here expressed a line-attorney’s opinion that the scheme did not clearly violate either of two specific statutes administered by the Wisconsin Elections Commission,” Mendell told The Daily Signal in a statement. “But the letter also expressly allows that the scheme might violate other Wisconsin laws, including other Wisconsin election laws.” Law Forward specifically referenced a paragraph from the February 2022 attorney general letter that says the attorney general was not addressing every aspect of Wisconsin law. “This memorandum does not address other potential violations of law, such as election fraud under Wis. Stat. § 12.13 or matters that the Complainants have raised to other authorities or discussed in the media, such as forgery under Wis. Stat. § 943.38, false swearing under Wis. Stat. § 946.32, falsely assuming to act as a public officer under Wis. Stat. § 946.69, simulating legal process under Wis. Stat. § 946.68, misconduct in public office under Wis. Stat. § 946.12, conspiracy, aiding, or attempt to commit such acts, or any other matter outside the scope of the complaint,” the portion of the attorney general’s 2022 memo highlighted by Law Forward says. The the first paragraph of the attorney general’s letter says, “this memorandum concludes that thecomplaint does not raise a reasonable suspicion that respondents violated Wisconsin election law.” Also in December 2020, alternate slates of Republicans electors voted in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, and Pennsylvania. Democrat prosecutors in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Nevada also brought charges. Presidential pardons typically can only come for federal offenses. Nevertheless, in the pardon statement, U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin argues presidential election functions are federal even if the charges came under state law. “Notwithstanding that fact, these prosecutions are attempts by partisan state actors to shoehorn fanciful and concocted state law violations onto what are clearly federal constitutional obligations of the 2020 Trump campaign: the establishment of the contingent electors, the actions attendant to their roles as presidential electors, and their duties under established historical and legal precedent to exercise their responsibilities as electors—all of which are functions of federal—not state—law,” Martin argued.  The post Did Wisconsin Democrat AG Undermine His Own Case Against Alternate Trump Electors? appeared first on The Daily Signal.