LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — For the second time in the last two years, a Clark County District Court judge has dismissed charges against six Republican electors who signed certificates falsely asserting that President Donald Trump had won the 2020 election in Nevada.
WATCH | Senior political reporter Steve Sebelius breaks down what this means and what comes next:
Attorney General Aaron Ford, a Democrat, immediately vowed to appeal the ruling to the Nevada Supreme Court.
In her ruling, District Court Judge Mary Kay Holthus said she dismissed the state's case against the electors in part because "the evidence identified in Defendant's supplemental briefing as having been omitted from those [grand jury] proceedings, which this Court finds to be exculpatory," she wrote. "The significance of that omission is heightened because the State's evidence of fraudulent intent was, at best, minimal."
According to court papers reviewed by Channel 13, before handing up the December 2023 indictment, grand jurors were not told that:
- There was still a possibility that President Trump or the Republican Party in Nevada could appeal the election results to the U.S. Supreme Court. That's important because it could suggest the electors were — as they claimed — simply acting to preserve the state's Electoral College votes in the event the official results were overturned.
- Republican Jim Marchant's remark that, "We're going to be prepared, just in case, once this works its way through the courts of whatever remedies President Trump comes up with or his team." Marchant, an election denier now running for Nevada secretary of state, attended the ceremony where the fake certificates were signed, but was not one of the electors.
- But Jesse Law, who was one of the signers, said: "we want to pull this right back into the courts."
- Instead, the grand jurors were told that all legal options had expired with the Nevada Supreme Court's final ruling seeking to challenge Nevada's election results, entered on Dec. 8. But attorneys for the electors noted that a Supreme Court appeal was still viable 90 days from that date.
- Grand jurors never saw the unedited version of the video of the electoral certificate ceremony, which took place Dec. 14 outside the legislative building in Carson City. Instead, they viewed at 38-minute edited version.
- Although similar electors in Pennsylvania and New Mexico — two of the seven states where the Trump campaign encouraged the signing of fake certificates — included language that provided additional legal protection, Nevada did not. In those other states, certificates said the signatures would only be counted in the event the election was overturned. When a campaign official asked a higher up in the Trump campaign if similar wording should be used in Nevada, the superior replied, "F—- those guys."
Infirm case
In addition to the evidence that wasn't shared with the grand jury, Holthus said the evidence that was presented wasn't enough to get a conviction.
For example, she wrote, the evidence doesn't show an intent to commit fraud. "Indeed, the omitted evidence further reinforces the conclusion that Defendants acted openly and consistently with their stated purpose of preserving ongoing election challenges, rather than with an intent to deceive," Holthus wrote.
The electors staged an elaborate ceremony in front of the legislative building, complete with a sound system, a table decorated with patriotic bunting, and singing. The event was captured on videotape at the behest of the electors.
And, Holthus said, the state's own evidence undercuts its case, which was based on not just signing the fake certificates, but mailing them to the Nevada secretary of state, the National Archives, the secretary of the U.S. Senate and the Nevada federal court.
"Testimony presented to the grand jury established that the submitted certificates were not treated as Nevada's official electoral certificates and were not accepted for filing or acted upon by the receiving agencies," she wrote. "Rather, the evidence demonstrated that the documents were recognized for what they were and returned because they could not be accepted."
State to appeal
Ford, who is running for governor this year against incumbent Republican Joe Lombardo, promised immediately to appeal.
"The District Court’s decision is, once again, wrong, and we will appeal to the Nevada Supreme Court, just as we did when the court first dismissed our case against these defendants," Ford said in a statement. "That dismissal ignored established authority making Las Vegas a proper venue and was unanimously reversed by the Nevada Supreme Court.
"My office will continue to work to hold these fake electors accountable for their actions which attempted to undermine our democracy and erode trust in our elections."
Ford was referring to Holthus's dismissal in June 2024 of the entire case based on venue. Since the ceremony took place in Carson City and the certificates were mailed from Douglas County, Holthus concluded the case should have been filed in one of those venues.
Ford appealed, and the Supreme Court reversed the case, sending it back to Holthus's courtroom for more arguments.
The case has repercussions outside Nevada, as well. Fake certificates were filed in a total of seven states, all part of what was later revealed to be a national scheme to overturn the results of the election by providing Vice President Mike Pence with slates of "alternative electors," the counting of which would have thrown the election to Trump.
But on Jan. 6, 2021, Pence famously refused to consider the false certificates, and the ensuing riot at the U.S. Capitol delayed for hours the counting of the votes, which certified that Joe Biden, and not Donald Trump, had decisively won the 2020 election.
Trump has refused to accept the results of that election, however, and has tried to issue executive orders demanding proof of citizenship, voter lists approved by the federal government and restrictions on mail ballots. Those orders have been hamstrung by courts.
But attorneys for the electors say the taint of politics consumes the entire case, from start to finish.
"We have been informed by the media that the AG’s office intends to appeal the order of dismissal (which hasn’t even been finalized or entered)," said Rick Wright, the attorney for Nevada Republican Party Chairman Michael McDonald, one of the 2020 electors, in a statement. "The minute order of Judge Holthus is well reasoned and will ultimately result in her final written decision, which the State may then appeal.
"This hasty, premature announcement of an intention to appeal reeks of continuing a politically motivated and legally doomed prosecution. If the AG’s office really wanted to try this case to a jury they already could have. We had a lengthy preliminary hearing in Carson City and were set for a trial in Carson City last month. Rather than taking the case to trial, the AG voluntarily dismissed the case on the eve of trial. Now the AG’s office wants to continue the harassment and waste of expensive prosecutorial resources."
Ford's office confirmed on Monday that it had dismissed the Carson City case, which was filed as a stopgap after Holthus dismissed the case initially. Once the Supreme Court overturned her ruling, Ford's office said, prosecutors decided to concentrate on the case in Clark County instead.
According to voter registration statistics, however, Democrats outnumber Republicans in Clark County by more than 86,000 active registered voters. In Carson City, there are more than 5,000 more Republicans than Democrats, which means a jury in the north would likely be more Republican than one in the south.
