Donald Trump accused Wisconsin’s Democratic governor of impugning his character in a motion for legal fees stemming from the former president’s failed lawsuit to reverse the result of the 2020 election.
Gov. Tony Evers used “inflammatory adjectives” like “outrageous,” “baseless” and “cynical” to describe Trump’s lawsuit and falsely described the case as an “attempt to hijack the democratic process,” Trump said in a filing late Monday challenging the state’s request.
“Governor Evers’s filings were expressly intended to be ‘punitive,’ and his attention-grabbing invective was foreseeably quoted directly in numerous press stories,” Trump said in the filing in Milwaukee federal court, adding that the state’s motion fees, filed in March, was too late.
The clash is part of the legal fallout from dozens of failed lawsuits by Trump and his supporters seeking to reverse his loss to President Joe Biden by nullifying millions of votes in swing states. Many of the suits were based on debunked conspiracy theories.
Evers is seeking $145,000 from Trump to cover the legal expenses the state spent fighting the suit, which aimed to toss out Wisconsin’s 3.3 million votes. Wisconsin is also asking for $106,000 from former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell, who filed a separate long-shot lawsuit to overturn the election result in the state.
In his filing Monday, Trump argued that his lawsuit wasn’t “frivolous,” as Wisconsin said, because the claims were “recognized to be grounded in viable legal principles” by a federal appeals court as well as three Justices of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the attorneys generals of at least 18 states, and three Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court.
“Governor Evers therefore cannot prevail in his contention that President Trump’s claims were beyond the pale of legitimate constitutional argument,” the ex-president said.
