Nevada Attorney General re-files charges in 2020 fake elector case

The new forgery charges come after a Clark County judge ruled in June that the county was the improper venue to try the case, and were filed to keep statutes of limitation from expiring. 

Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford’s office on Thursday announced it refiled criminal charges against a group of six Nevada Republicans who after the 2020 presidential election allegedly forged a document falsely asserting that Donald Trump carried the state over President Joe Biden. 

In a press release, Ford’s office said the six defendants, a group which includes Nevada Republican Party chairman Michael McDonald and other allies of the president-elect, have each been charged with Uttering a Forged Instrument — a category D felony that carries a maximum penalty of up to four years in prison, if convicted, according to state law. 

A similar case against the six defendants was dismissed in June after Eighth Judicial District Court Judge Mary Kay Holthus ruled that Clark County was the improper venue to try the case. 

The grand jury in that case had indicted the Republican defendants on charges of forgery, as well as the Class C felony of offering a false instrument for filing. While the statute of limitations on those charges have lapsed, Ford, a Democrat, said in a statement he wanted to reintroduce charges before the statute of limitations on the forgery charges expired. 

“We have filed these charges in Carson City as a preemptive measure to ensure that the statute of limitations on this charge does not lapse,” Ford said. “My office still believes that Clark County is an appropriate venue for this case and will continue to seek a ruling from the Nevada Supreme Court to return to the Eighth Judicial District Court.”

RELATED: Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford to run for governor 

He continued: “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. 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. Justice requires that these actions not go unpunished. This is not going away.” 

The case dismissed in June was appealed to the Nevada Supreme Court by Ford and is still under review. Ford said if the state high court overrules Holthus, he would drop the new charges in Carson City to pursue the case in Clark County. 

The six alleged fake electors submitted a document titled “Certificate of the Votes of the 2020 Electors from Nevada” to the National Archives in Washington — joining with state Republican parties in six other swing states to send similar documents falsely asserting a Trump victory in a state actually carried by Biden. 

Along with McDonald, the other defendants include Clark County Republican Party Chairman Jesse Law; Storey County Clerk James Hindle III; Nevada Republican national committeeman James DeGraffenreid; activist Shawn Meehan; and former Nevada Republican Party delegate Eileen Rice. 

Richard Wright, a defense attorney for McDonald and other defendants, told The Nevadan in an emailed message he believes Ford, who also on Thursday announced he was running for governor, re-filed charges to score political points.

“Other than noting that the refiling of the dismissed charges looks like a political move by the Attorney General who announced his plans to run for governor, and suggesting he should heed the advice of Will Rogers (“if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging”), we will withhold further comment and address the issues in court,” Wright said.

Fake elector cases remain ongoing in Arizona, Michigan, and Georgia. Nevada’s case, filed last December, focused on the actions of six defendants. Criminal cases in three other states focus on many more — 16 in Michigan, 19 in Georgia, and 18 in Arizona.

Kenneth Chesebro, a lawyer who last year pleaded guilty in Georgia to helping orchestrate the Trump campaign’s fake elector scheme in 2020, cooperated with prosecutors in the Nevada criminal investigation and was not charged.

In testimony before the grand jury that met in Las Vegas in November, Chesebro said he provided the state GOP with an “organized step-by-step explanation of what they would have to do” to sign and submit certificates falsely stating that Trump, not Biden, won in Nevada.

He also called Nevada “extremely problematic” to the fake elector plot, compared with other states, because the meeting of the real electors was overseen by the secretary of state. Also, unlike other states, Nevada did not have a legal challenge pending in courts at the time.

The state’s Democratic electors certified Biden’s victory in Nevada 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.