Prosecutors in Wisconsin have unveiled a fifth state-level criminal case tied to efforts after the 2020 presidential election at assembling sham slates of electoral votes backing Trump despite Joe Biden winning the involved states, a list that includes Wisconsin. The states with criminal cases now include Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, and — the latest — Wisconsin.
In the Wisconsin case, reports say that there are three defendants, including former Trump campaign official Michael Roman and Trump-associated lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, both of whom were already charged in a related criminal case from local authorities in Georgia. The Wisconsin case reportedly came from state Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat. The defendants are accused of forgery.
The Wisconsin case follows an Arizona case that included a larger list of defendants, including Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor. Giuliani is also facing professional consequences in Washington, D.C., where the Board on Professional Responsibility at the DC Bar, which oversees lawyers, recently recommended his disbarment. It’s up to the local courts in the capital to (potentially) actually institute such a consequence. Giuliani was already suspended from practicing law there and in New York after joining a pro-Trump courtroom challenge to the election results in Pennsylvania.
Presumably, permanently disbarring Giuliani in D.C. would be confined to that jurisdiction but could spur additional consequences elsewhere. Giuliani himself remains embroiled in bankruptcy proceedings.
Trump, meanwhile, was identified as an un-indicted co-conspirator in the Arizona case. The nationwide assembling of sham electoral votes backing him in states that Biden won also figures into the criminal case that the ex-president is facing from federal prosecutor Jack Smith over allegedly conspiring against the 2020 presidential election’s outcome. That case remains on hold while observers await a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court on Trump’s claims of wide-ranging legal protections associated with serving as president that supposedly should shut down the case entirely.
