(The Center Square) – The 10 Republicans who forwarded themselves as an alternative slate of electors in 2020 are no longer facing a $2.4 million lawsuit. But they had to admit they were looking to overturn the 2020 election to settle the case.
The 10, commonly called Wisconsin’s fake electors, on Wednesday agreed to end the lawsuit by admitting their roles and agreeing to never serve as an elector in Wisconsin again.
“The Elector Defendants took the foregoing action because they were told that it was necessary to preserve their electoral votes in the event a court challenge may later change the outcome of the election in Wisconsin. That document was then used as part of an attempt to improperly overturn the 2020 presidential election results,” the 10 said in a statement. “We oppose any attempt to undermine the public’s faith in the ultimate results of the 2020 presidential election. We hereby withdraw the documents we executed on December 14, 2020, and request that they be disregarded by the public and all entities to which they were submitted.”
Democratic electors for Joe Biden filed the lawsuit and pursued the settlement.
The 10 fake electors include Bob Spindell, a Republican commissioner on the Wisconsin Elections Commission, and former Wisconsin Republican Party Chairman Andrew Hitt.
“The Wisconsin electors were tricked and misled into participating in what became the alternate elector scheme and would have never taken any actions had we known that there were ulterior reasons beyond preserving an ongoing legal strategy,” Hitt said Wednesday.
The fake electors forwarded themselves as a Trump slate following the election in 2020, but that’s as far as it went. Wisconsin’s secretary of state, and eventually former Vice President Mike Pence rejected the Republican slate from Wisconsin.
The Democratic law firm, Law Forward, that sued the Republican electors said the settlement is a step toward restoring faith into Wisconsin’s electoral system.
“Americans believe in democracy and the idea that the people choose their leaders through elections. The defendants’ actions violated those bedrock principles,” attorney Jeff Mandell said in a statement. “This settlement agreement provides one piece of that accountability and helps ensure that a similar effort to subvert our democracy will never happen again.”
Wisconsin’s attorney general never filed criminal charges against the Republican electors. Prosecutors in Michigan filed charges against their Trump electors in the summer. It’s not clear if any charges will ever come in Wisconsin.
