An Unexpected Journey to Arkansas

As President Trump’s lawyer I could expect a call at any hour—the man never sleeps. So, as I sat with my wife of nearly 50 years (high school sweetheart and all that other sappy stuff), surrounded by very loud grandchildren at our Wisconsin home, he called to ensure I understood him clearly, “You’ll win, right.” And so began a journey that has landed me now on Beaver Lake in Northwest Arkansas. Ah, the twists and turns of life.

While there are many stories to be told (and I hope to give you the pleasure of hearing about some along the way) today I reflect on a chance meeting.

A bit over four years ago, the then, and future, President Trump asked me to lead a team in a Wisconsin recount. (Little did I know that would lead to 4+ years of LawFare nightmare, including 11 separate, and still ongoing, legal actions against me—again, a story for another day.) At the outset, on November 9, 2020, we had no team at all. Literally, not one person! But the call went out, “Listen my children and you shall hear….” And within ten days nearly 4,000 people had volunteered to help recount Wisconsin’s Presidential votes. We were operating in abandoned, rundown, ugly, utterly outdated space along the busiest (and loudest) highway in Madison Wisconsin. We rented an old RV station outside the recount center and began eight weeks of 20+ hour days. The battle was on!

I had come out of retirement to lead this effort, so I had no lawyers working with me, no staff, no equipment, nothing. And, of course, every “good” lawyer was running scared from the Trump monster and the threats: the left and the establishment would destroy any lawyer both personally and professionally (and they certainly did just that after January 6) if that lawyer dared to join the fray. Still, among those 4,000 volunteers from around the country, I thought, there must be some lawyers. So, as the recounts began, our floor lieutenants were on the look-out for a few special people who could assist on the legal Armageddon that we promised the President, albeit with grandchildren shouting in the background. A snipe hunt perhaps, but a hunt it was.

Wonder of wonders I receive a memo in the middle of the night from some Arkansas folks. Arkansas in Wisconsin? Now, please understand, one does not generally associate Arkansas with great legal minds (after-all, from a conservative Northerner’s perspective, Arkansas was the home of the detested Clinton’s), but here I was looking at a great legal memorandum, authored by two Arkansas lawyers, on an important issue we faced. Maybe, I recall thinking, there is something to this Clint and Jennifer Lancaster team? While desperation often breeds chaos, it can, with equal alacrity, also breed genius. And this was a genius moment. Within just a few days, we had found a remarkable pair of Arkansas attorneys, the Lancasters, who would become the backbone of marvelous volunteer lawyers. They would file some of the most groundbreaking and historically important legal challenges of the 21^stcentury during the Wisconsin Trump recount that would ultimately end-up in the Wisconsin Supreme and United States Supreme Courts. Absent that legal challenge, the follow-on controversy and the national voter integrity investigation it spawned, one can certainly argue President Trump would not have run and would not have won four years later. So it goes, and so I learned about the joys of Arkansas living from the Lancasters.

In the Winter of 2021, my wife and I decided to visit Arkansas which, in yet another fateful twist, had recently become the home of our daughter and two grandchildren. It was a cold (“cold” by Arkansas standards, NOT Wisconsin standards) Sunday afternoon when Wisconsin’s Green Bay Packers were losing yet another playoff game.  I took a break and found myself driving through a neighborhood on Beaver Lake. OK, I’ll admit it, I was actually out looking for beer but, little did I know, you cannot buy a six pack on a Sunday in this “dry” county. There is nothing like that in Wisconsin, the beer and cheese capitol of America.

As I wandered around in search of something to drown my Wisconsin football sorrows, I learned about an important ‘southern’ tradition: if you slow down to look at something, someone is going to walk over and start talking to you. This is the second abiding oddity I, a lifelong Northerner, learned that day (the first being ‘no beer on Sunday’)—people actually talk to strangers here. Frankly, and I’m trying to be charitable here by not pointing to some other reasons, it’s just too cold to do much outdoor talking in a Wisconsin Winter.

“What are you looking at?” asks Rick, and I dutifully tell him I’m just looking to see if there is a house for sale (I do not mention the beer run or the Packers, as I assume that would give me away as just another lunatic from the North). “Ah, well you’re in luck, these folks I’m talking to (yes, he was already talking to someone else—quite the talkers, these Arkansans) are about to put their house on the market, and I’m sure they’d like to talk to you.”

By the end of the day we made an offer and by the end of the next day the house was sold and the Troupis clan had a new Arkansas base of operations. Or, as my wife is fond of saying, I got a boat dock and she got a house.

Which brings me to the point of this story. Fate. How could a call from the President of the United States of America to a retired Judge and lawyer, me, end up yielding a fabulous home, with fabulous neighbors and great friends? Seems the train we may be on, while often thought to be the wrong train, or at least the unexpected train, can lead us to the right place. The station we were meant to stop at turns out to be, of all places, Arkansas. It has, indeed, been an unexpected and wonderful journey.

Judge Jim Troupis

Retired Wisconsin Circuit Court Judge. President Trump’s attorney in 2020. Speaker, columnist, talk radio guest, father, grandfather and fisherman.