Nevada Republican Party Chairman Michael McDonald speaks during a Republican Watch Party at the South Point on Election Day Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2020.
Friday, June 23, 2023 | 11:57 a.m.
Nevada Republican Party Chairman Michael McDonald and state GOP official Jim DeGraffenreid each testified before a federal grand jury last week about a coordinated attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election in favor of Donald Trump, according to CNN.
CNN reports special counsel Jack Smith gave limited immunity to the officials for their testimony about a fake elector scheme, where loyalists to Trump in six battleground states on Dec. 14, 2020, hosted phony ceremonies to certify the state’s electoral votes in favor of Trump.
President Joe Biden defeated Trump in Nevada by about 30,000 votes.
The meeting of fake electors in Nevada and the other five contested states had no legal standing. Nevada’s real electors had already certified the state’s election that same day in a remote ceremony, awarding all six of the state’s electoral votes to Biden.
The testimony, according to CNN, signals investigators are moving toward determining charges for those who attempted to reverse the election results.
The testimony to the grand jury included details of how former Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt and Jesse Binnall, a lawyer who worked for the Trump campaign in Nevada, were part of the scheme, according to CNN.
Laxalt, who in the 2022 midterm elections was defeated in a race for one of Nevada’s U.S. Senate seats, was one of the faces of Trump’s efforts to build distrust in the election outcome.
He and Binnall filed lawsuits on behalf of Trump challenging the results and hosted news conferences outside of the Clark County Elections Department promoting false claims.
Binnall declined to comment to CNN; a Laxalt spokesperson said he hadn't been contacted to testify.
The grand jury, seated in Washington, is reportedly hearing testimony about efforts to stop the transfer of power from Trump to Biden after the 2020 election. Smith’s investigation into those efforts and the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol are separate from his probe that resulted in to Trump’s indictment in Florida in connection with his handling of classified documents.
McDonald and DeGraffenreid previously invoked Fifth Amendment rights when questioned by a U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump extremists.
The committee in December released a batch of 34 transcripts, all of which showed witnesses repeatedly preventing parts of the panel’s inquiry from advancing by invoking their Fifth Amendment rights. In an 80-page transcript of his testimony to committee members, McDonald used the response nearly 300 times.
Those transcripts also included cellphone records seized by the FBI showing the Nevada Republican’s role in the coordination. The fake elector scheme also occurred in Pennsylvania, Georgia, New Mexico, Arizona and Wisconsin.
For example, a text message sent from McDonald on Nov. 4, 2020, shows the beginning of the effort here.
“I have been on the phone this morning with the President, Eric Trump, Mark Meadows and Mayor (Rudy) Giuliani,” McDonald wrote in the message released in the transcript.
The message continued, “There is a major plan. We are meeting at the hotel with attorneys and national staff in about 20 minutes.”
The message was sent one day after the 2020 presidential election and with ballots still being processed in Nevada.
Attorneys for McDonald and DeGraffenreid declined to comment to CNN. The Sun also attempted to contact them.
