A judge in Nevada has dismissed a criminal case against six so-called “fake electors” who tried to overturn Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 presidential election.
Friday’s ruling marks the first time that a case related to the Trump campaign’s efforts to reverse his election results has been dismissed.
Clark County District Court Judge Mary Kay Holthus found that the case from state prosecutors was filed in the wrong county.
Attorneys for the six defendants had argued that the case should have been brought in Carson City, where they approved false certificates certifying Trump’s electors, or in Douglas County, where those documents were mailed.
“We disagree with the judge’s decision and will be appealing immediately,” according to a statement from the office of Nevada Attorney General to The Independent.
The charges joined several state-level criminal cases against Trump allies who were part of a nationwide scheme to overturn 2020 results by certifying “alternate” electors in states that Trump lost.
Those “results” would then be certified in Congress, part of an allegedly criminal scheme that is central to the federal and state election interference charges against the former president.
Nevada’s sitting GOP chair Michael McDonald, Clark County chair Jesse Law, state party vice chair Jim Hindle III, Jim DeGraffenreid, Shawn Meehan and Eileen Rice each face charges of offering a false instrument for filing and uttering a forged instrument by submitting fraudulent documents to state and federal officials.
Convictions on those charges could include a maximum of four and five years in prison and a minimum of one year in prison.
Similar prosecutions targeting “fake electors” and Trump allies connected to the scheme are underway in four other states, including Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin.
The defendants in the Nevada case each signed off on false Electoral College votes for Trump in December 2020 despite his loss, according to Nevada’s attorney general as well as special counsel Jack Smith and the House select committee investigating the events surrounding January 6.
Former Trump-allied attorney Kenneth Chesebro, among the architects of the discredited plan to introduce “alternate” slates of electors, pleaded guilty as part of a deal with Fulton County prosecutors in Georgia’s sprawling election interference case.
Chesebro had agreed to meet with investigators in Nevada in an apparent effort to avoid prosecution in the state.
Last year, the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority wholly rejected the “alternate elector” plan.
