Judge dismisses charges in Nevada fake electors case over venue question, attorney general to appeal

LAS VEGAS (AP/KLAS) — A Nevada state court judge dismissed a criminal indictment Friday against six Republicans accused of submitting certificates to Congress falsely declaring Donald Trump the winner of the state’s 2020 presidential election, potentially killing the case with her ruling that state prosecutors chose the wrong venue to file the case.

Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford stood in a Las Vegas courtroom a moment after Clark County District Court Judge Mary Kay Holthus delivered her ruling, declaring that he will take the case directly to the state Supreme Court.

“The judge got it wrong and we’ll be appealing immediately,” Ford told reporters afterward. He declined any additional comment.

In 2020, the six so-called fake electors submitted phony electoral certificates to re-elect then-President Trump. The 8 News Now I-Team reported the Nevada Republican Party’s electors signed paperwork signaling their support for Trump in a symbolic ceremony devoid of any legal merit.

A social media photo showed them gathered in Carson City in front of the Nevada Legislature. “Our brave electors standing up for what is right and casting their electoral votes for @realDonaldTrump. We believe in fair elections and will continue the fight against voter fraud in the Silver State!” the post said.

When the I-Team asked the National Archives in December 2020 about receiving the documents, a spokesperson pointed back to the official state-signed certificate, which says Democratic electors in Nevada won and cast their six electoral votes for now-President Joe Biden. A spokesperson for the National Archives said they could not comment on any “communication with private individuals.”

In presidential elections, voters actually vote for party electors and not a presidential candidate.

Ford announced the indictment of Nevada Republican Party Chairman Michael McDonald, Jesse Law, Jim DeGraffenreid, Durward James Hindle III, Shawn Meehan and Eileen Rice on Dec. 6. Each was charged with offering a false instrument for filing and uttering a forged instrument, felonies that carry penalties of up to four or five years in prison. They

In January, lawyers for the group asked a judge to throw out the case and move it out of Las Vegas.

Defense attorneys on Friday bluntly declared the case dead, saying that to bring the case now to another grand jury in another venue such as the state capital city of Carson City would violate a three-year statute of limitations on filing charges that expired in December.

“They’re done,” said Margaret McLetchie, attorney for Clark County Republican party chairman Jesse Law, one of the defendants in the case.

The judge vacated the trial date.

Defense attorneys contended that Ford improperly brought the case in Las Vegas instead of Carson City or Reno, northern Nevada cities closer to where the alleged crime occurred. They also accused prosecutors of failing to present to the grand jury evidence that would have exonerated their clients, and said their clients had no intent to commit a crime.

All but Meehan have been named by the state party as Nevada delegates to the 2024 Republican National Convention next month in Milwaukee.

Meehan’s defense attorney, Sigal Chattah, said her client “chose not to” seek the position. Chattah ran as a Republican in 2022 for state attorney general and lost to Ford, a Democrat, by just under 8% of the vote.

After the court hearing, Hindle’s attorney, Brian Hardy, declined to comment on calls that his client has faced from advocacy groups that say he should resign from his elected position as overseer of elections in northern Nevada’s Story County, a jurisdiction with a few more than 4,100 residents. Those calls included ones at a news conference Friday outside the courthouse by leaders of three organizations.

Nevada is one of seven presidential battleground states where slates of fake electors falsely certified that Trump had won in 2020, not Democrat Joe Biden.

Others are Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Criminal charges have been brought in Michigan, Georgia and Arizona.

Trump lost Nevada in 2020 by more than 30,000 votes to Biden and the state’s Democratic electors certified the results in the presence of Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, a Republican. Her defense of the results as reliable and accurate led the state GOP to censure her, but Cegavske later conducted an investigation that found no credible evidence of widespread voter fraud in the state.

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