LAS VEGAS (AP) — A state court judge in Nevada on Friday dismissed a criminal complaint against six Republicans accused of submitting certificates to Congress falsely declaring Donald Trump the winner of the 2020 presidential election, thereby the case may have ended with a ruling that prosecutors found the wrong venue to file the case.
Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford stood in a Las Vegas courtroom moments after Clark County District Court Judge Mary Kay Holthus delivered her ruling, declaring he would take the case straight to the state Supreme Court.
“The judge got it wrong and we will appeal immediately,” Ford told reporters afterward. He declined further comment.
Defense attorneys flatly declared the case dead, saying that presenting the case now to another grand jury in a different location, such as Carson City, Nevada’s capital, would violate a three-year statute of limitations on filing of charges that expired in December.
“They’re done,” said Margaret McLetchie, an attorney for Jesse Law, chairman of the Clark County Republican Party, one of the defendants in the case.
The judge called off the trial, scheduled for January next year, for defendants including state Republican Party Chairman Michael McDonald; National Party Committee Member Jim DeGraffenreid; national and Douglas County committee member Shawn Meehan; and Eileen Rice, a party member from the Lake Tahoe area. Each was charged with offering to file and pronounce a forged instrument, crimes punishable by prison sentences of up to four or five years.
Defense attorneys argued that Ford improperly brought the case to Las Vegas instead of Carson City or Reno, cities in northern Nevada that were closer to where the alleged crime occurred. They also accused prosecutors of failing to present the grand jury with evidence that would have exonerated their clients, saying their clients did not intend to commit a crime.
With the exception of Meehan, all have been named Nevada delegates by the state party to the 2024 Republican National Convention next month in Milwaukee.
Meehan’s lawyer, Sigal Chattah, said her client had “chosen not” to apply for the position. Chattah ran for attorney general as a Republican in 2022 and lost to Ford, a Democrat, with just under 8% of the vote.
After the court hearing, Hindle’s attorney, Brian Hardy, declined to comment on calls his client received from advocacy groups saying he should resign from his elected position as supervisor of elections in northern Nevada’s Story County, a jurisdiction with a few more than 4,100 inhabitants. These calls include those made at a news conference Friday outside the courthouse by leaders of three organizations.
Nevada is one of seven presidential battleground states where fake electors incorrectly declared that Trump, not Democrat Joe Biden, won in 2020.
Others include Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Criminal charges have been filed in Michigan, Georgia and Arizona.
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 reliable and accurate led the Republican Party to censure her, but Cegavske later conducted an investigation that found no credible evidence of widespread voter fraud in the state.
