Michael McDonald, right, Nevada State GOP chairman, introduces President Donald Trump during the Nevada State GOP Convention at the Suncoast in Summerlin on Saturday, June 23, 2018.
Thursday, June 23, 2022 | 5:20 p.m.
Nevada’s top Republican officials — GOP Chairman Michael McDonald and party secretary Jim DeGraffenreid — reportedly are among the targets of an intensifying effort by the U.S. Department of Justice and its investigation into fake slates of electors across the country who tried to declare Donald Trump the winner in their states in the 2020 presidential election.
McDonald turned over his phone to federal agents Wednesday when they approached him outside his car in Las Vegas and presented a warrant, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press. A second search warrant targeted DeGraffenreid, who could not be located Wednesday, according to a story on KLAS-TV’s website, which first reported the story.
In December 2020, McDonald, Degraffenreid and five other Republicans in Nevada signed a document in Carson City, a “Certificate of the Votes of the 2020 Electors from Nevada,” that pledged the state’s electoral votes to Trump. Nevada’s official electors earlier that day had already certified the state’s election results via a remote ceremony, awarding all of Nevada’s six electoral votes to Joe Biden.
Biden defeated Trump by about 30,000 votes in Nevada in the November 2020 election.
The fake electors in Nevada joined other Trump allies across the country in states where Trump falsely claimed the election was stolen from him. Fake electors in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan and New Mexico — states also won by Biden — also submitted alternate certificates that declared Trump the winner.
The FBI being given McDonald’s cellphone and issuance of a search warrant for DeGraffenreid appear to be connected to the Justice Department’s grand jury investigation into Trump’s attempts to overthrow the election and remain in power.
The Las Vegas Sun reached out — both via email and by telephone — to McDonald, DeGraffenreid for comment. It also left unreturned messages with the Nevada Republican Party; GOP communications director Keith Schipper; Republican Secretary of State candidate Jim Marchant, who was one of Nevada’s alternate electors; Durward James Hindle III, vice chair of the Nevada Republican Committee; former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt, who helped file lawsuits in Nevada for Trump and who is now seeking election to the U.S. Senate; and McDonald’s attorney Richard Wright.
The FBI’s Las Vegas field office directed the Sun’s request for confirmation of the reports to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington. The U.S. Attorney’s Office told the Sun that it does not confirm the existence of investigations and had no comment.
Federal agents on Wednesday also served grand jury subpoenas on at least four people who were part of the “fake elector” plan in four other states where similar efforts took place, according to The New York Times. One of those who received a subpoena, according to two people familiar with the matter, was Brad Carver, a lawyer and official of the Georgia Republican Party who claimed to be one of Trump’s electors in the state, which was won by Biden.
Another subpoena recipient was Thomas Lane, an official who worked on behalf of Trump’s campaign in Arizona and New Mexico, the people said.
A third person, Shawn Flynn, a Trump campaign aide in Michigan, also got a subpoena, according to the people familiar with the matter.
A fourth subpoena was issued to David Shafer, chair of the Georgia Republican Party, who was a fake elector for Trump.
The fake elector plan is the focus of one of two known prongs of the Justice Department’s grand jury investigation of Trump’s multiple attempts to subvert the election. The other has focused on political organizers, White House aides and members of Congress connected in various ways to Trump’s incendiary speech near the White House that directly preceded the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The Nevada Republican Party posted a video of the faux Carson City ceremony on its social media platforms and website and issued a statement saying that “a court of law has failed to meaningfully evaluate the evidence and our law enforcement agencies and government officials have failed to investigate.”
“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 statement says.
Nevada’s Republican Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske and her office spent more than 125 hours studying the documents the party had submitted, but did not find evidence to support widespread fraud.
“While the NVGOP raises policy concerns about the integrity of mail-in voting, automatic voter registration, and same-day voter registration, these concerns do not amount to evidentiary support for the contention that the 2020 general election was plagued by widespread voter fraud,” Cegavske wrote in a 2021 letter to the Nevada Republican Party after her office’s investigation.
The latest warrants and subpoenas come on the heels of the House Jan. 6 Committee’s hearing Tuesday, which focused on the fake electors as part of the committee’s goals to show the depth of Trump’s efforts to stay in power and how he knew he had lost the election.
— The New York Times contributed to this report.
