Robin Vos' testimony to the Jan. 6 committee reveals he had 10 phone calls with Trump after the 2020 election

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and former President Donald Trump spoke by phone 10 times in the two years following the 2020 presidential election as Trump and his allies launched a baseless effort to persuade legislative leaders in battleground states where he lost to sow doubt in or overturn the election result.

In testimony to a U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, Vos said Trump did not explicitly tell him to take action to overturn the results of Wisconsin's 2020 presidential election but suggested it was implied in the conversations he and Trump had between August 2021 and July 2022.

The committee, which wrapped up its investigation in recent weeks, released a transcript of Vos' Nov. 30 interview late Friday.

"I think he believed that potentially we could go back and do something about the 2020 election. He didn't say it again specifically. I only know from the media reports. But that was the implication, that if enough fraud was found, perhaps something different could happen," Vos said. "My general impression, if I recall correctly ... was the idea was we need to discover and find the fraud. I think he believed quite adamantly that fraud had occurred."

Vos was subpoenaed in November to testify before the U.S. House committee about his discussions with Trump regarding the 2020 election. His testimony spanned 42 pages, according to documents released Friday, and did not reveal much that had no been previously known about the speaker's discussions with the former president.

Vos told committee investigators much of the conversation with Trump most likely focused on "politics, golf, and things like that." On occasion, Trump would bring up the 2020 election, Vos testified.

"You now have all the evidence that you need to fix what’s happened," Vos said Trump told him at one point. He said Trump "did not elaborate on what the something was that he wanted me to do, and I did not know specifically what action he was discussing that the president wanted the legislature to take."

"I informed President Trump that under the Constitution there was nothing we could do," Vos said.

Vos said former Trump White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, a college-era friend of Vos, asked him to meet with Trump in August 2021 by attending a rally Trump was holding in Alabama. Vos said he didn't know exactly why he was asked to join but guessed it was because of the Assembly's taxpayer-funded review of the 2020 election led by former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman.

Vos launched the review in the summer of 2021 just hours after Trump launched his first verbal assault against the legislative leaders for not litigating the result of the 2020 election like the battleground state of Arizona, despite a lack of evidence supporting a problematic election result.

Just before Wisconsin’s annual Republican convention in June, Trump issued a statement accusing Vos and other GOP leaders of "working hard to cover up election corruption."

"Don't fall for their lies! These REPUBLICAN 'leaders' need to step up and support the people who elected them by providing them a full forensic investigation. If they don’t, I have little doubt that they will be primaried and quickly run out of office," Trump said in his statement.

He testified the first time he discussed the 2020 election with Trump or his allies was on the plane ride to the Alabama rally.

Vos also said he never discussed with anyone a scheme crafted by Trump allies to have slates of fake Trump electors in battleground states like Wisconsin where Trump lost submit falsified paperwork claiming to be electors.

In the months following the Capitol attack, Trump has issued a series of public demands and private requests to Vos to take steps to overturn his loss, even campaigning for a longshot primary challenger that the longest-serving Assembly speaker only narrowly defeated.

At the heart of Trump's pressure is the idea of decertifying the 2020 presidential election, a move that is legally impossible but one a significant portion of Wisconsin's Republican base of voters has pushed Vos to take. Vos has repeatedly rejected the idea, further enraging his party's most motivated voters.

Vos sought to block the committee's subpoena, arguing a discussion with Trump post-election is not within the scope of the committee. The committee argued Vos' discussions are key to understanding Trump's effort to "undermine the peaceful transfer of power following the 2020 presidential election."

"The Committee is to investigate the events of January 6th, the events that led up to and caused January 6th, and the impact of those events on the peaceful transfer of power in January 2021," Vos' attorneys wrote. "The requested testimony, in contrast, is solely about a request Speaker Vos allegedly received in July 2022 pertaining to proposed legislative action in the wake of a July 2022 Wisconsin Supreme Court decision."

The attorneys' comment is a reference to a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling that determined unstaffed drop boxes for absentee ballots are not allowed under Wisconsin law and Trump's response to the ruling that it would open an avenue to challenge the results of the 2020 election in which the drop boxes were used. The ruling only pertained to future elections.

Vos has talked about his conversations with Trump to news reporters, prompting the committee's interest, according to the filings. His hiring and firing of Gableman to review the 2020 election also were used as a basis for the subpoena, according to the court filings.

"These conversations are not the only examples of Speaker Vos’s entanglement in President Trump’s campaign to decertify the 2020 Presidential election results," the committee's attorneys wrote.

Vos testified that Trump's call to him after the state Supreme Court ruling on ballot drop boxes was his last conversation with the former president.

While Vos did not appear to overtly criticize Trump in the committee deposition, he has recently ratcheted up his opposition to another Trump run for president, telling the Journal Sentinel the he would work to ensure the former president was not the 2024 Republican nominee.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Robin Vos testifies to Jan. 6 committee about 10 calls with Trump