Nevada State GOP chairman Michael McDonald introduces former president and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during a Commit to Caucus rally at the Big League Dreams sports park Saturday, Jan. 27, 2024. McDonald and others accused of conspiring to falsely declare Trump the winner of the Nevada presidential election in 2020 will face trial next year, a judge ruled Monday, March 4, 2024.
Thursday, Feb. 15, 2024 | 2 a.m.
Attorneys representing six Nevada Republicans accused of participating in a so-called fake elector scheme after the 2020 presidential election say prosecutors misrepresented evidence to a Clark County grand jury and the case should be moved to a different jurisdiction or dismissed.
In a 38-page Tuesday court filing responding to the state’s opposition to dismiss the case, attorney Richard Wright — who is representing Nevada GOP Chairman Michael McDonald and the other five defendants in the case — argued prosecutors failed to produce evidence that the criminal conduct in question occurred in Clark County, where the case is being tried.
“In its peculiar quest to create (a) tenable venue in Clark County, the State claims it has ‘... unfettered discretion in choosing to do so,’ ” the filing reads. “Yet the state fails to point to evidence establishing that the grand jury in Clark County had jurisdiction.”
A spokesman for Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford’s office declined comment, citing the pending litigation.
The filing also cites a pair of Nevada Supreme Court rulings they say rejects the argument that the state has “unfettered discretion” in deciding the venue for a case and that a grand jury’s territorial jurisdiction depends on whether necessary connections to the location of the court exist.
The case is being heard in Clark County District Court, and the arguments to either move or dismiss the case will be heard at a pretrial hearing March 4. Should Judge Mary Kay Holthus deny the requests, a jury trial for the six Republicans is scheduled to begin March 11.
The charges stem from a December 2020 meeting in Carson City where the fake electors attempted to reverse President Joe Biden’s presidential win in Nevada by awarding the state’s electoral votes to former President Donald Trump.
Led by McDonald, they conducted a ceremony to certify Nevada’s six electoral votes for Trump. The Nevada Republican Party sent the document — titled “Certificate of the Votes of the 2020 Electors from Nevada” — to the National Archives in Washington with McDonald’s name listed with the return address.
Republicans in a handful of states went through a similar process — all with the same misleading logic.
Each of the defendants has been charged with offering a false instrument for filing and forgery — category C and D felonies, respectively.
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.
Along with McDonald, the others indicted are James DeGraffenreid, a Republican national committeeman and district-level delegate to the 2016 Republican National Convention; Durward James Hindle III, who is vice chair of the Nevada Republican Committee; Clark County GOP Chairman Jesse Law; Shawn Meehan, founder of the Guard the Constitution Project: and Eileen Rice, a delegate at the Nevada GOP convention.
Defense attorneys say prosecutors have exaggerated the defendants’ arguments “to create bogeyman scenarios which the defendants never argued” that they are not subject to prosecution in Nevada. Rather, the defense is arguing the ability to indict does not lie in Clark County.
The complaint filed Tuesday alleges prosecutors mischaracterized correspondence in the days leading up to the fake election ceremony to make it appear to the grand jury that criminal conduct had occurred in Clark County, home to Law and McDonald. The defense also claims that prosecutors incorrectly assumed Law and McDonald were in Clark County between Dec. 9, 2020, and Dec. 13, 2020, based on emails and text messages, when in actuality Law was traveling outside the county Dec. 11-14.
The defense further accused the state of relying on emails from former Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro that allegedly showed Law and McDonald were participating in the drafting and revision of the fake elector documents, but the emails shown to the grand jury were only sent from Chesebro and that the only editing occurred outside of Clark County by DeGraffenreid.
“The state essentially relies on the fact that emails were sent and Mr. Law and Mr. McDonald engaged in phone communications from Clark County around that time, claiming they were ‘interspersed’ to somehow concoct intent,” the filing states. “This effort to connect the dots between flimsy pieces of evidence fails.”
Chesebro testified in front of a Nevada grant jury in December to avoid charges. A transcript of the testimony, which took place about a week before the six defendants were indicted, shows prosecutors had requested his name be removed from the indictment in exchange for his full cooperation.
Chesebro also pleaded guilty in the Georgia racketeering case that names Trump as a codefendant related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The state also presented to the grand jury evidence of phone calls between Law, McDonald and DeGraffenreid, but the defense filing contends “zero evidence” has been presented showing the substance of the calls “other than the State’s speculation.”
“There was nothing unusual about these individuals, all part of Nevada Republican Party leadership, speaking to each other between those dates,” according to the filing.
The filing also cites Nevada Supreme Court rulings rejecting arguments that the state has unfettered discretion in deciding the venue for a case and that a grand jury’s “territorial jurisdiction” depends on whether necessary connections to the location of the court exist.
Ford publicly admitted state law does not apply to the conduct central to the case, Wright argued.
Ford told the Nevada Legislature in May 2023 that his office spent months investigating the fake electors scheme but that he was unable to bring charges then because no state law existed to make such an act illegal.
His testimony was part of a presentation on Senate Bill 133, which sought to establish criminal penalties for anyone taking part in “creating a false slate of electors, serving in a false slate of presidential electors or conspiring to create or serve in a false slate of presidential electors.”
