LAS VEGAS: A Nevada judge on Friday dismissed indictments against six Republicans who were accused of improperly submitting a certificate to Congress declaring Donald Trump the winner of the state’s election. 2020 presidential electionThis would likely reduce the number of states with pending criminal charges against alleged offenders from four to three. Fake voter,
Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford said Clark County District Courthouse Judge Mary Kay Holthus ruled that Las Vegas was the wrong venue for the case and said she would take the matter to the state Supreme Court.
“The judge made the wrong decision and we will immediately appeal,” Democrat Ford told reporters afterward. He declined to comment further.
Defense lawyers apparently declared the case closed, saying bringing it now before a grand jury in any other location, such as Carson City, the capital of Nevada, would violate a three-year statute of limitations that expired last December.
“His work is done,” said Margaret McClatchy, an attorney for Clark County Republican Party Chairman Jesse Law, one of the defendants in the case.
The judge canceled a January hearing for the arraignment of state GOP Chairman Michael McDonald, national party committeeman Jim DeGraffenreid, national and Douglas County committeemen Shawn Meehan, Story County Clerk Jim Hindle and Lake Tahoe-area party member Eileen Rice. Each was charged with presenting a false document for filing and uttering a forged document — offenses punishable by up to four or five years in prison.
Defense lawyers, led by McDonald’s attorney Richard Wright, argued that Ford wrongly brought the case before a grand jury in Las Vegas — Nevada’s largest and most Democratic-leaning city — rather than Carson City or Reno, cities in northern Nevada that are in more Republican territory, where the alleged crimes occurred. They also accused prosecutors of failing to present evidence to the grand jury that could have exonerated their clients, who they said had no intent to commit the crimes.
“Crimes are tried and the venue is where the crime was committed,” Wright told the judge Friday. “The document was signed in Carson City.”
When challenged to answer by Judge Holthus, Deputy State Attorney General Matthew Rashbrook argued that “no single county contains the entirety of these crimes.”
“Society is the victim of these crimes,” the prosecutor said. “Voters who would have been disenfranchised as a result of these acts … are the victims of these crimes.”
But the judge ruled that even though MacDonald and Law live in Las Vegas, “everything happened up north.”
After the court hearing, Hindle’s attorney, Brian Hardy, declined to comment on appeals from advocacy groups for his client to resign from his elected position as elections supervisor in Story County, which has more than 4,100 residents. Those appeals included a news conference held by leaders of three organizations outside the courthouse Friday.
Meehan is the only defendant who has not been named by the state party as a Nevada delegate to the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee next month. His defense attorney, Sigal Chatta, said his client decided not to try for the position. Chatta ran as a Republican for state attorney general in 2022 and lost to Ford by about 8% of the vote.
Nevada is one of seven presidential election states where a slate of fraudulent electors falsely certified that Trump, not Democrat Joe Biden, won in 2020. The other states are Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The Nevada case, filed last December, focused on the actions of six defendants. Criminal cases in three other states focus on many more people — 16 in Michigan, 19 in Georgia and 18 in Arizona.
Kenneth Chesebro, an attorney who pleaded guilty in Georgia last October to helping carry out the Trump campaign’s fraudulent voter scheme in 2020, cooperated with prosecutors in the Nevada criminal investigation and was not charged.
In testimony before a grand jury 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 a certificate that falsely states that Trump, not Biden, won Nevada.”
He also called Nevada “extremely problematic” for fraudulent elector conspiracy compared to other states, because the meeting of electors was overseen by the secretary of state. Also, unlike other states, Nevada had no legal challenges pending in the courts at the time.
Trump lost Nevada to Biden by more than 30,000 votes in 2020, 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 credible and accurate led to her condemnation by the state’s GOP, but Cegavske later conducted an investigation that found no credible evidence of widespread voter fraud in the state.
Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford said Clark County District Courthouse Judge Mary Kay Holthus ruled that Las Vegas was the wrong venue for the case and said she would take the matter to the state Supreme Court.
“The judge made the wrong decision and we will immediately appeal,” Democrat Ford told reporters afterward. He declined to comment further.
Defense lawyers apparently declared the case closed, saying bringing it now before a grand jury in any other location, such as Carson City, the capital of Nevada, would violate a three-year statute of limitations that expired last December.
“His work is done,” said Margaret McClatchy, an attorney for Clark County Republican Party Chairman Jesse Law, one of the defendants in the case.
The judge canceled a January hearing for the arraignment of state GOP Chairman Michael McDonald, national party committeeman Jim DeGraffenreid, national and Douglas County committeemen Shawn Meehan, Story County Clerk Jim Hindle and Lake Tahoe-area party member Eileen Rice. Each was charged with presenting a false document for filing and uttering a forged document — offenses punishable by up to four or five years in prison.
Defense lawyers, led by McDonald’s attorney Richard Wright, argued that Ford wrongly brought the case before a grand jury in Las Vegas — Nevada’s largest and most Democratic-leaning city — rather than Carson City or Reno, cities in northern Nevada that are in more Republican territory, where the alleged crimes occurred. They also accused prosecutors of failing to present evidence to the grand jury that could have exonerated their clients, who they said had no intent to commit the crimes.
“Crimes are tried and the venue is where the crime was committed,” Wright told the judge Friday. “The document was signed in Carson City.”
When challenged to answer by Judge Holthus, Deputy State Attorney General Matthew Rashbrook argued that “no single county contains the entirety of these crimes.”
“Society is the victim of these crimes,” the prosecutor said. “Voters who would have been disenfranchised as a result of these acts … are the victims of these crimes.”
But the judge ruled that even though MacDonald and Law live in Las Vegas, “everything happened up north.”
After the court hearing, Hindle’s attorney, Brian Hardy, declined to comment on appeals from advocacy groups for his client to resign from his elected position as elections supervisor in Story County, which has more than 4,100 residents. Those appeals included a news conference held by leaders of three organizations outside the courthouse Friday.
Meehan is the only defendant who has not been named by the state party as a Nevada delegate to the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee next month. His defense attorney, Sigal Chatta, said his client decided not to try for the position. Chatta ran as a Republican for state attorney general in 2022 and lost to Ford by about 8% of the vote.
Nevada is one of seven presidential election states where a slate of fraudulent electors falsely certified that Trump, not Democrat Joe Biden, won in 2020. The other states are Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The Nevada case, filed last December, focused on the actions of six defendants. Criminal cases in three other states focus on many more people — 16 in Michigan, 19 in Georgia and 18 in Arizona.
Kenneth Chesebro, an attorney who pleaded guilty in Georgia last October to helping carry out the Trump campaign’s fraudulent voter scheme in 2020, cooperated with prosecutors in the Nevada criminal investigation and was not charged.
In testimony before a grand jury 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 a certificate that falsely states that Trump, not Biden, won Nevada.”
He also called Nevada “extremely problematic” for fraudulent elector conspiracy compared to other states, because the meeting of electors was overseen by the secretary of state. Also, unlike other states, Nevada had no legal challenges pending in the courts at the time.
Trump lost Nevada to Biden by more than 30,000 votes in 2020, 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 credible and accurate led to her condemnation by the state’s GOP, but Cegavske later conducted an investigation that found no credible evidence of widespread voter fraud in the state.
