Thursday, Dec. 12, 2024 | 4:58 p.m.
Attorney General Aaron Ford filed charges Thursday in Carson City against Republicans who were accused of submitting “fake elector” ballots in a scheme to swing the 2020 presidential election for Donald Trump after a previous unsuccessful pursuit in Clark County.
The new charges come six months after Judge Mary Kay Holthus ruled that Clark County was not the appropriate court venue to decide the case, since the submission of the false records occurred in Douglas County and the ceremony occurred in Carson City.
Ford said his office maintains that Clark County was the correct location for the case, and that he is seeking a state Supreme Court ruling to return to the same court it was turned away from in June. The Carson City charges are a means of avoiding a lapse in the statute of limitations on the charge.
“While we disagree with the finding of improper venue and will continue to seek to overturn it, we are preserving our legal rights in order to ensure that these fake electors do not escape justice,” Ford said in a statement.
Nevada State GOP Chairman Michael McDonald speaks during an campaign event featuring Republican vice presidential nominee Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, at Treasure Island Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024.
Nevada GOP chairman Michael McDonald, Republican Party National Committeeman Jim DeGraffenreid, vice chairman Jim Hindle, Clark County Republican chairman Jesse Law, Eileen Rice and Shawn Meehan are the defendants in the case.
On Dec. 14, 2020, the Republicans conducted a ceremony in Carson City in which they signed a document “certifying” Nevada’s six electoral votes for Trump, even though Democratic nominee Joe Biden won the state by about 30,000 votes.
The Nevada Republican Party sent the document — titled “Certificate of the Votes of the 2020 Electors from Nevada” — to the National Archives in Washington with McDonald’s name listed with the return address.
Republicans in a handful of states went through a similar process — all with the same misleading and potentially criminal logic.
The meeting of fake electors here and in the other five contested states had no legal standing.
Nevada’s real electors had already certified the state’s election results that same day in a remote ceremony, rightfully awarding all six of Nevada’s electoral votes to Biden.
Fake electors have been convicted in Michigan and face charges in Arizona and Georgia.
Ford said that “justice requires that these actions not go unpunished.”
Defense attorneys contended in June that Ford improperly brought the case before a grand jury in Las Vegas — Nevada’s largest and most Democratic-leaning city — instead of Carson City or Reno, Northern Nevada cities in a more Republican region where the alleged crimes occurred. They also accused prosecutors of failing to present to the grand jury evidence that would have exonerated their clients, who they said had no intent to commit a crime.
“The actions the fake electors undertook in 2020 violated Nevada criminal law and were direct attempts to both sow doubt in our democracy and undermine the results of a free and fair election,” Ford said in the statement.
“This is not going away,” he added.
The six GOP members remained steadfast in their support for Trump during the 2024 presidential cycle, with McDonald speaking on the Republican National Convention stage in Milwaukee in July. And McDonald and Law will serve in official capacities in the Electoral College meeting this year, which is scheduled for Tuesday.
When asked about the electors lawsuit in November, Law said it was “wild to have my arraignment,” and he holds complicated feelings when looking back at how it bled into other aspects of his life because he didn’t know how to deal with it.
“I thought I was just bulletproof on it. I was like, ‘oh, I’m OK with this. But the truth was, it didn’t make me manic, but I could tell it was an extreme feeling,” Law said. “And in other areas of my life, I wasn’t as successful, and that part is a disappointment. But on the other hand, I could hold my head high, like I know who I am, I know what I did. I know that I don’t have anything to be ashamed of on any of it.”
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