attorneys

MADISON, Wis. — President Trump’s attorney for the 2020 campaign in Wisconsin and two former aides all pleaded not guilty Tuesday to felony forgery charges for their roles in a fake elector scheme designed to overturn Trump’s loss in the swing state.

Jim Troupis, a former judge who was Trump’s Wisconsin campaign attorney; Mike Roman, Trump’s director of election day operations in 2020; and Ken Chesebro, a former Trump legal advisor, all entered the pleas in Dane County Circuit Court.

Troupis, who lives in the Madison area, appeared in person. Roman and Chesebro appeared via Zoom.

The Wisconsin fake electors case is moving forward even as others in the battleground states of Michigan and Georgia have faltered. A special prosecutor last year dropped a federal case alleging Trump conspired to overturn the 2020 election. Another case in Nevada is still alive.

The fake elector scheme, under which Republican electors in battleground states submitted documentation to Congress attesting that Trump had won their states even though he lost to President Biden, originated in Wisconsin.

Troupis, Chesebro and Roman argue that they committed no crime and were just trying to keep their options alive in case a court ruled that Trump had actually won the state.

But prosecutors allege that the three defendants defrauded the 10 Wisconsin Republican electors who cast their ballots for Trump in 2020.

Prosecutors contend that Troupis, Chesebro and Roman lied to the electors about how the certificate they signed would be used as part of a plan to submit paperwork to then-Vice President Mike Pence, falsely claiming that Trump had won the battleground state that year.

A majority of the electors told investigators that they did not believe their signatures on the elector certificate would be submitted to Congress without a court ruling, the complaint said. Also, a majority said they did not consent to having their signatures presented as if Trump had won without such a court ruling, the complaint said.

The arraignment on Tuesday came two years and two weeks after the first charges were brought against the three by Wisconsin Democratic Atty. Gen. Josh Kaul. Troupis, Chesebro and Roman face 11 felony forgery charges that are each punishable by up to six years in prison and a $10,000 fine.

Troupis and Roman both filed motions seeking to relocate the trial from Dane County, which includes Madison, to neighboring Jefferson County, saying negative publicity had tainted the potential jury pool.

Trump carried Jefferson County by 15 percentage points in 2020. He lost Dane County by nearly 53 points.

“This case is headed to trial,” wrote Troupis’ attorney, Joe Bugni, in Troupis’ motion. “No question. Neither side is going to blink. And when we get to trial, Troupis has the right to a fair and impartial jury.”

Troupis and Roman also argued that one of the 11 felony counts against them should be dropped because Trump issued a pardon for any federal crimes related to their work on the fake elector scheme. They argued that the state can’t prosecute them over the casting of electoral votes, which is a federal process, and therefore Trump’s pardon applies.

Trump also pardoned Chesebro.

The judge said Tuesday he would set a schedule to hear arguments on those motions.

The state charges against the Trump attorneys and aide are the only ones in Wisconsin. None of the electors have been charged. The 10 Wisconsin electors, Chesebro and Troupis all settled a lawsuit that was brought against them by Democrats seeking damages.

Bauer writes for the Associated Press.

In a few days, Los Angeles voters will be casting ballots for city attorney — and in a few months, they could be voting to sharply diminish the city attorney’s authority.

The city’s Charter Reform Commission has proposed splitting the city attorney’s office into two parts — an elected city prosecutor, charged with handling criminal misdemeanors, and a mayor-appointed and City Council-confirmed city attorney who would represent the city in civil cases and advise the mayor, city council and city departments.

The City Council is reviewing the recommendation as part of sweeping changes to city government, including expanding the council from 15 to 25 seats, which could go before voters in the Nov. 3 general election.

The proposed changes to the city attorney’ office, however, come in the midst of a heated primary campaign, where incumbent Hydee Feldstein Soto is up against three challengers, including a state deputy attorney general and a deputy district attorney.

Both of those challengers say plans to bifurcate the city attorney’s office are rooted in longstanding conflicts between Feldstein Soto and the City Council.

Council members have expressed frustration over her handling of rising costs from an outside law firm, where the payout amount has grown to nearly $7.5 million — with some attorneys billing the city roughly $1,300 an hour.

And last year, City Council took a 12-0 vote to direct Feldstein Soto to withdraw an effort to halt a federal judge’s order prohibiting LAPD officers from targeting journalists with crowd control weapons.

“When I first heard about this idea, I thought it was probably the greatest indictment of the current city attorney that I’ve heard yet,” said John McKinney, a Los Angeles County deputy district attorney who is running for city attorney in Tuesday’s primary.

McKinney opposes the bifurcation, saying it will cause overlap and confusion. “If she was doing a good job … we wouldn’t even be having this discussion,” he said.

Marissa Roy, another candidate in the race, hasn’t taken a position on bifurcation but said Feldstein Soto’s actions triggered the proposed change.

“The only reason that bifurcation, or splitting the city attorney’s office, is even going to be going before voters is because we’ve had an incumbent city attorney who has gone so rogue to politicize the role,” said Roy, a deputy state attorney general.

Roy said accused Feldstein Soto of inappropriately blocking an affordable housing project in Venice. And in her office’s role of drafting ordinance language, Roy said, Feldstein Soto has returned to city council ordinance language that isn’t “faithful to the intent of the drafter.”

Feldstein Soto said the proposal to bifurcate the office has nothing to do with her performance.

“This issue comes up every single time charter reform comes up,” Feldstein Soto said. “To me this is all political opportunism.”

Feldstein Soto has opposed the split, and former city attorneys have also come out against it, saying an appointed position threatens the independence of the city attorney’s office, takes away from voters the right to elect a city attorney and could cost taxpayers money in order to split the office.

In a March letter to the Charter Reform Commission, Feldstein Soto said an attorney “serving at the pleasure” of the mayor and city council would face an “innate, human pressure to harmonize legal advice with the political goals of the appointing officials.”

“I have been able to provide honest, accurate legal advice to the Mayor, City Council, Controller and departments — even when that advice is unwelcome — precisely because I am an independently elected officeholder with an ultimate duty to the public,” she wrote. “An appointed City Attorney, serving at the pleasure of the Mayor and City Council, faces enormous political pressure on all of these issues, behind closed doors, cloaked in privilege without an independent voice.”

Burt Pines, a former city attorney who served from 1973 to 1981, deeply opposes the bifurcation proposal, citing the threat to independence as the largest issue at stake. As city attorney, he said, he was empowered to tell city officials when a proposed action was unlawful and refuse to support it.

“You want to be able to call the shots as you see them, true to the law,” Pines said in an interview.

Advocates say other cities have bifurcated offices, and splitting it could reduce conflict and provide a clear delineation of roles.

After consulting with experts and good governance groups, the commission agreed the benefits of bifurcation outweighed the negatives, and it passed unanimously by the commission.

“It was easy to get consensus on this,” said Raymond Meza, chair of the commission. The commission’s proposal calls for the city attorney to be nominated by the mayor, and confirmed by the City Council.

In its report, the commission said that “the current structure creates conflicts when the same office advises the city and prosecutes cases. Separation provides clearer roles, reduces conflicts, and allows each function to be performed effectively.”

Other cities have different models for the city attorney’s office: Long Beach has a similar model with bifurcated duties, while New York City has legal representation split up several ways. The San Francisco City Attorney provides legal representation for the city and county of San Francisco, and the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office handles criminal cases in the city and county.

Mike Bonin, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute, said he has seen the question of splitting the office come up with at least three different city attorneys to varying degrees.

“Given that the city attorney is an elected position, there’s always going to be somebody who doesn’t like them,” Bonin, a former city council member, said. “You need to divorce the question from the occupant and focus on the role — the charter is not about a particular person, the charter is about the function of the office.”

May 26 (UPI) — Vice President JD Vance hosted a meeting Tuesday afternoon with state attorneys general as part of his task force on fraud.

The event was largely attended by only Republican officials, however, because the task force invited attorneys general from the Democratic party with less notice than their Republican peers, Politico reported.

The Democratic attorneys general were invited to the meeting Friday, with a deadline to respond by Saturday. Republicans were invited about a week earlier. The 24 Democrats affected by this wrote Vance a letter declining the invite, CNBC reported.

“While we would appreciate the opportunity to engage in serious discussions, the invitation was provided with less than one business day’s notice with no agenda,” the letter said. “This short notice does not match the spirit of collaboration that has long defined our joint efforts with federal partners. Accordingly, we respectfully decline to attend at this time.”

When President Donald Trump announced Vance’s role as “fraud czar” in April, he said the investigations would center on Democrat-run states.

Vance on Tuesday said that in two months, the task force has “exposed billions of dollars in benefits that had been stolen from the American people.”

“We referred over $22 billion in fraudulent small business loans back to the Treasury for collection,” he said. “We deferred more than $1.3 billion in fraudulent Medicaid reimbursements that were coming from various states, particularly California. We put a six-month hold on enrollments for new hospice and home health care providers, because so many of the newer hospice providers were not actually providing hospice services but were just focused on fraud.”

About 15 Republican attorneys general attended, as did Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson and White House adviser Stephen Miller.

In a press release, the White House said Trump and Vance are “unleashing an unrelenting, full-scale assault on the fraudsters, scammers and corrupt operators who have looted billions from American taxpayers.” The release included a list of alleged fraud cases and actions, including many instances focused on Minnesota and California. No Republican-led states were cited.