Saying ‘this is not going away,’ NV AG files new charges against fake electors
Description
The Nevada State Republican Party posted this picture on social media after party chairman Michael McDonald, center, and five other Republicans signed a fake certificate in December 2020 falsely claiming that Donald Trump had won the 2020 presidential election in Nevada. Although not one of the fake electors, standing at the left is Jim Marchant, a 2020 election denier and conspiracy theorist who would be the Republican Party's nominee for secretary of state in 2022.
When two of Nevada’s presidential electors sign the certificate declaring to Congress that Donald Trump is the winner of Nevada’s six electoral college votes next week, they will still be facing charges for sending a fake electoral college certificate to Congress in 2020.
A year ago – three years after the fake electors had signed and sent the phony certificate – Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford filed charges against them in a Clark County court for offering a false instrument and uttering a forged instrument.
The judge in Clark County dismissed that case in June, saying she lacked jurisdiction over events that took place in Northern Nevada.
But Ford Thursday announced that his office had filed charges against Nevada’s six 2020 fake electors in Carson City.
Ford filed the forgery charges in Carson City Thursday “as a preemptive measure to ensure that the statute of limitations on this charge does not lapse.”
“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 that effect, Ford said in a statement.
But in the meantime “we are preserving our legal rights in order to ensure these fake electors do not escape justice,” he said.
The fake electors’ actions constituted “direct attempts to both sow doubt in our democracy and undermine the results of a free and fair election,” Ford said. “Justice requires that these actions not go unpunished,” he said, adding “this is not going away.”
Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in Nevada by 33,596 votes in 2020.
Two of the Republican presidential fake electors from 2020 – Nevada Republican Party Chair Michael McDonald and Clark County Republican Party Chair Jesse Law – are also listed as presidential electors this year, according to the Nevada Secretary of State’s office.
The other four 2020 fake electors are Jim DeGraffenried, Duward James Hindle III, Shawn Meehan, and Eileen Rice.
In addition to McDonald and Law, the other four presidential electors in 2024 are Bruce Parks, Kathyrun Njus, Robert Tyree, and Brian Hardy.
Their meeting to cast Nevada’s electoral college votes – unlike those falsely filed by fake electors in 2020 – will be legitimate. Trump defeated Kamala Harris in Nevada by 46,008 votes in 2024.
Electors in Nevada and all the other states meet as the Electoral College on Dec. 17.
Las Vegas, NV