Newly unsealed documents accuse the judge presiding over the Wisconsin fake electors case against President Donald Trump’s former associates of not drafting a key ruling himself, and instead outsourcing it to the writing skills of a retired colleague.
The court filings, unsealed Tuesday, allege that Frank D. Remington, a recently retiredDane County Circuit Court judge, ghostwrote Judge John Hyland’s Aug. 22 order that rejected the defense’s motion to dismiss the case.
In another decision handed down this week, Hyland refused to remove himself from the case after attorneys for Jim Troupis, who was Trump’s 2020 recount counselor in Wisconsin, filed several motions asking Hyland to both step aside and vacate his allegedly ghostwritten August order.
Hyland, chairman of the equity-centered Dane County Community Justice Council, had solicited outside help on the ruling from a former judge with a “grudge,” the defense claimed in a brief, filed in support of the omnibus motion requesting Hyland’s disqualification or recusal for judicial misconduct.
According to the accompanying appendix, which outlined the accusations and was under seal until Tuesday, Remington penned the bulk of Hyland’s opinion denying the defense’s dismissal motion, constituting a clear breach of Wisconsin’s judicial code of conduct.
The lawyers representing Troupis said that Remington has hostility toward Troupis, a fellow former Dane County judge, and that the pair’s personal conflict dates back to their brief time together on the bench.
