LAS VEGAS (AP) — A Nevada judge on Friday dismissed an indictment against six Republican lawmakers. Accused of submitting a certificate The number of states where criminal charges are pending over so-called bogus electors could be reduced from four to three after Congress falsely declared Donald Trump the winner of the state’s 2020 presidential election.
Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford said he would take the issue to the state Supreme Court after Clark County District Judge Mary Kay Holthus ruled that Las Vegas was an unsuitable venue for the lawsuit.
“The judge was wrong and we will be appealing this immediately,” Ford, a Democrat, told reporters after the ruling. He declined to comment further.
The defense has categorically declared the case closed, arguing that bringing the case again before a grand jury elsewhere, such as in Nevada’s state capital, Carson City, would violate a three-year statute of limitations that expired last December.
“It’s over,” said Margaret McLetchie, an attorney for Clark County Republican Chairman Jesse Lo, one of the defendants in the case.
The judge halted the scheduled trial. Scheduled for JanuaryThe defendants also included state Republican Party Chairman Michael McDonald, National Committeeman Jim DeGraffenried, National Committeeman and Douglas County Commissioner Sean Meehan, Story County Clerk Jim Hindle and Lake Tahoe-area party member Eileen Rice. Each was charged with providing a forged document to file and exercise a forged document, a felony punishable by up to four or five years in prison.
McDonald’s defense team, led by attorney Richard Wright, argued that Ford improperly took the case to a grand jury in Las Vegas, Nevada’s largest and most Democratic city, instead of the Republican-leaning northern Nevada cities where the alleged crimes occurred, such as Carson City and Reno. They also criticized prosecutors for withholding evidence from the grand jury that would have exonerated the defendants, who allegedly had no intent to commit crimes.
“Crime is tried where the crime was committed and venue is where the crime was committed,” Wright told the judge on Friday. “The papers were signed in Carson City.”
Asked to respond by Judge Holthus, Deputy State’s Attorney General Matthew Rushbrook argued that “one county cannot contain all of these crimes.”
“Society is the victim of these crimes,” the prosecutor said. “Voters disenfranchised by these acts … would have been victims of these crimes.”
But the judge found that even though McDonald and Law live in Las Vegas, “it all happened upstate.”
After the court hearing, Hindle’s lawyer, Brian Hardy, declined to comment on requests from the advocacy groups, including a press conference held by leaders of the three groups outside the courthouse on Friday, that Hindle should resign from his elected position as elections supervisor for Story County, which has just over 4,100 residents.
The state Republican Party issued a statement welcoming the court’s decision, noting Ford’s vow to appeal, and solicited donations to continue the legal fight.
Meehan is the only defendant not nominated by the Nevada Party as a Nevada delegate. 2024 Republican National Convention Ford is due to win next month’s election in Milwaukee. His lawyer, Sigal Chata, said his client chose not to run for office. Chata ran as a Republican for state attorney general in 2022 and lost to Ford by just 8% of the vote.
Nevada is one of seven battleground states in the presidential election where a fake electoral roll falsely certified Trump’s victory. 2020Those states, not for Democrat Joe Biden, are Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
The Nevada lawsuit, filed in December, focuses on the conduct of six defendants. Criminal cases in three other states focus on many more defendants. Michigan19 inches Georgia 18 inch Arizona.
Attorney Kenneth Chesbro Pleaded guilty in Georgia Last October, he cooperated with prosecutors on charges that he helped the Trump 2020 campaign plot a fake electoral college. Nevada Criminal Investigation And he wasn’t prosecuted.
During his testimony before a grand jury in Las Vegas in November, Chesebro said he “systematically laid out, step by step, what Nevada Republican lawmakers had to do to sign and submit a certificate that falsely stated that Trump, not Biden, had won the state.
He also Nevada: “Very problematic” Nevada was less likely than other states to be involved in a false electoral conspiracy case because its electoral college was overseen by the Secretary of State, and unlike other states, Nevada had no lawsuits pending in court at the time.
Trump We lost Nevada in 2020 Biden won by more than 30,000 votes, and Nevada’s Democratic electors certified the results in front of Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegowski, a Republican. She maintained that the results were credible and accurate, and the state Republican Party Blame herBut Cegavske subsequently conducted an investigation and found no credible evidence of widespread voter fraud in the state.
