On Dec. 14, 2020, Wisconsin delegates pledged to then-President-elect Joe Biden sit socially distanced during a vote of the Electoral College in the state Capitol in Madison. Shortly afterward, Republicans gathered elsewhere in the Capitol to sign paperwork falsely claiming then-President Donald Trump had won Wisconsin's electoral votes. (Screen image from WisconsinEye)
Congressman asks US Attorney General Merrick Garland and state Attorney General Josh Kaul to expose Trump campaign’s efforts.
Both the state and federal attorneys general should investigate how the campaign of former President Donald Trump organized fraudulent electors in several states, including Wisconsin, according to a Democratic congressman from Dane County.
US Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Black Earth) noted that while more public attention has been paid to the violent attack on Congress in January 2021, something equally nefarious happened the month before—when 10 Republicans met at the state Capitol in Madison and signed paperwork purporting that Trump had won Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes when he had not. The Republicans met shortly after the state’s actual electors gathered in Gov. Tony Evers’ office to certify the victory of President Joe Biden.
“There was maybe not a violent attempt at a coup, but there was a shady legal work document attempt in seven states, and now we know that it is coordinated by the Trump campaign, by Rudy Giuliani himself,” Pocan said on a Wisconsin podcast. “And we’ve heard that from electors, these fake electors in [other] states.”
Pocan last week asked US Attorney General Merrick Garland to order a US Department of Justice investigation into the fraudulent electors who submitted paperwork to Congress.
“This is a federal issue,” Pocan said. “We need to go after these electors, because if you don’t, they will do this and other things next time. They’ll continue to have an insurrection with a legal maneuver rather than the violence that we saw. We have to make sure people know their vote counts. We can’t let 10 people change the votes of 3.3 million people in Wisconsin.”
But Pocan said state prosecutors should be investigating the matter as well.
“I still think Josh Kaul should look at this as well—as our state attorney general, but clearly the federal Department of Justice [also] has to get involved,” he said.
Biden carried Wisconsin by nearly 21,000 votes.
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