Sun file
Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford acknowledged that his office, like in other states where Republicans named fake electors, will stand up to anyone attempting to interfere with the legal election process. “We take seriously any efforts to rob Nevadans of their votes,” he said.
Sunday, Jan. 23, 2022 | 2 a.m.
Shawn Meehan bills himself as a defender of the U.S. Constitution.
Meehan, a Northern Nevada resident and member of the Douglas County Republican Central Committee, is behind the Guard The Constitution Project. The project's website allows people to contribute articles that “put the ‘We’ back in ‘We The People.’"
Meehan, in an appearance Thursday on the Tamara Scott Show, an online broadcast hosted by the Republican National Committeewoman for Iowa, stressed that “we have to tell the truth.”
“In the history of our great nation, nearly 1.4 million troops have given their lives after pledging an oath to our Constitution,” he said. “It deeply disturbs me that day in and day out people don’t get that. We have to try to fight the fight for the right reasons.”
But on Dec. 14, 2020, Meehan and seven other Nevada allies of then-President Donald Trump seemingly wanted nothing to do with protecting the nation’s laws.
They staged what they led voters to believe were “brave electors” standing up for what is right by casting fictitious electoral votes for Trump over the rightful winner of the presidential election, Democrat Joe Biden. They even went as far as to send a document — titled “Certificate of the Votes of the 2020 Electors from Nevada” — to the National Archives in Washington, D.C.
Republicans in a handful of other states — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — where Biden beat Trump in November 2020 did the same thing.
Nevada’s real electors had already certified the state’s election that same day in a remote ceremony, awarding all six of Nevada’s electoral votes to Biden.
Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford acknowledged that his office, like in other states where Republicans named fake electors, will stand up to anyone attempting to interfere with the legal election process.
“While we cannot confirm or deny the existence of an investigation, rest assured that this matter is on our radar, and we take seriously any efforts to rob Nevadans of their votes,” Ford said in a statement.
The faux electors are showing no remorse. In fact, their act of loyalty to Trump appears to be a badge of honor.
In New Mexico, for instance, businessman Jewll Powdrell told the Las Cruces Sun he was simply supporting the Republican Party.
“Now that the election is over, why are we talking about it?” he asked, laughing. “How can you undermine an election that had already been done?”
The plot
In audio obtained by CNN late last week, Michigan Republican Party co-Chair Meshawn Maddock details how the Trump campaign, led by attorney Rudy Giuliani, directed Republicans in Michigan to seat fake delegates.
They would give the state’s 16 electors’ votes — won fairly by Biden — to Trump.
“We fought to seat the electors. The Trump campaign asked us to do that. I’m under a lot of scrutiny for that today,” she said in the audio clip.
Earlier last week, a House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol — Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection of loyalists attempting to halt the process of counting the electoral votes — issued subpoenas for Giuliani and other Trump backers.
The committee is continuing to widen its scope into Trump’s orbit, this time demanding information and testimony from Giuliani, as well as attorneys Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell and Boris Epshteyn.
All four publicly defended the president and his baseless voter fraud claims in the months after the election.
“The four individuals we’ve subpoenaed today advanced unsupported theories about election fraud, pushed efforts to overturn the election results, or were in direct contact with the former president about attempts to stop the counting of electoral votes,” Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, Democratic chairman of the panel, said in a statement.
The fake-elector scheme was intended to conclude with then-Vice President Mike Pence throwing out Biden’s electors Jan. 6 when Congress met to count the electoral votes, replacing them with the crooked GOP elector slate, according to CNN.
It was a last ditch effort after Trump’s camp unsuccessfully tried to urge state legislators in five Republican-controlled statehouses to block the electoral vote process. Nevada’s statehouse is controlled by Democrats.
Nevada follows the Uniform Faithful Presidential Electors Act, which requires electors to vote for the presidential candidate who receives the most votes.
“It was Rudy and these misfit characters who started calling the shots,” an unnamed former Trump campaign staffer told CNN. “The campaign was throwing enough (expletive) at the wall to see what would stick.”
The Sun attempted to ask Nevada’s faux electors if Giuliani and the Trump campaign put them up to the scheme, but numerous attempts went mostly unanswered.
The faux Nevada group included: Nevada Republican Party Chairman Michael McDonald; James DeGraffenreid, a national committeeman and district-level delegate to the 2016 Republican National Convention; Durward James Hindle III, vice chair of the Nevada Republican Committee; Jesse Law, chairman of the Clark County Republican Party; Eileen Rice of the Douglas County Republicans; and Meehan.
Alternate electors at the event, according to video footage, were Nye County Republican Central Committee Chairman Joe Burdzinski and James Marchant, who now is seeking the GOP nomination for Nevada secretary of state.
While Meehan didn’t speak to the Sun, he has talked to some conservative media outlets.
“We need some manly men in this country to stand up and lead in this country,” he told the Tamara Scott Show.
If you ask Nevada Republicans, that’s what they were doing in attempting to override the election — one of many failed attempts to keep Trump in office.
“A court of law has failed to meaningfully evaluate the evidence, and our law enforcement agencies and government officials have failed to investigate,” the party said in a statement after the fake-elector ceremony. “This left our electors no choice but to send their votes for President Trump to Congress to make a determination as to who is the rightful victor of Nevada between the dueling votes.”
The Nevada Supreme Court saw it differently, unanimously ruling there was no credible evidence of election fraud in Nevada and throwing out the Trump campaign’s court challenge.
Sun reporter Jessica Hill and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
