Nevada judge dismisses 2020 fake electors forgery case

A Nevada judge has ended a criminal case against six Republican Party officials accused of submitting an alternate electoral certificate after the 2020 presidential election, ruling that prosecutors failed to show evidence of intent to defraud. The decision removes one of the remaining state-level prosecutions tied to efforts by Trump supporters to create competing slates of electors in states Biden won. Clark County District Judge Mary Kay Holthus found insufficient proof that the defendants sought to deceive state or federal officials into treating their document as the official Nevada certificate.

The six defendants, including Nevada Republican Party chair Michael McDonald and former Clark County Republican Party chair Jesse Law, gathered outside the state legislature in December 2020 and signed a certificate declaring Trump the winner of Nevada's six electoral votes. Biden had carried the state by more than 30,000 votes. Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, a Democrat, charged the group in 2023 with forgery and offering a false instrument for filing. The defendants maintained they were engaging in political expression to preserve challenges to the certified results and never expected their certificate to be accepted as valid. Holthus noted in her order that the defendants conducted the signing publicly and that the state had not presented exculpatory evidence to the grand jury.

Ford's office said it will appeal the ruling to the Nevada Supreme Court. The case had already been dismissed once on venue grounds before the high court returned it to Clark County. Similar prosecutions in Arizona, Michigan, and Georgia have also ended without convictions of the principal defendants. A separate case remains active in Wisconsin. The Nevada defendants had pleaded not guilty and argued the certificate could not have been recorded under state or federal law.