LAS VEGAS — Nevada’s top prosecutor is asking the state Supreme Court to uphold charges against six Republicans accused of submitting a false certificate to Congress declaring Donald Trump the winner of the 2020 presidential election.
Officials have said it was part of a larger scheme in seven hard-pressed states to keep the former president in the White House after his loss to Democrat Joe Biden. Criminal cases have also been filed. Michigan, Georgia And Arizona.
Meanwhile, the fate of the so-called fake voter case in Nevada is still ongoing hangs in the balance.
Clark County District Court Judge Mary Kay Holthus issued a written order Friday night affirming her ruling last month, stating that Las Vegas was not the proper venue for the case and that the charges should therefore be dismissed.
A spokesman for Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, a Democrat, confirmed in a statement Saturday that the office formally filed an appeal shortly after the judge issued her written order.
“We remain confident in our case and look forward to bringing these individuals to justice and holding them accountable for their actions,” the statement said.
The defendants are State GOP Chairman Michael McDonald; Clark County GOP Chairman Jesse Law; national party committee member Jim DeGraffenreid; national and Douglas County committee member Shawn Meehan; Storey County Clerk Jim Hindle; and Eileen Rice, a party member from the Lake Tahoe area.
They were indicted by a Las Vegas grand jury last December, just before the three-year statute of limitations expired. They were each charged with offering a forged instrument to file and uttering a forged instrument — crimes that carry sentences of up to four or five years in prison.
Monti Levy, one of the defense attorneys, said Saturday that they “are confident that Judge Holthus made the right decision and that her order granting the motion to dismiss will be upheld.”
Defense attorneys argued that Ford improperly brought the case against their clients before a grand jury in Democratic-leaning Las Vegas instead of in a northern Nevada city where the alleged crimes took place.
Ford’s office, meanwhile, argued that “no single county encompasses all of these crimes.”
It was unclear from court records Saturday whether oral arguments were scheduled before the Nevada Supreme Court, and the court’s clerk did not respond to an email requesting more information.
Trump lost to Biden by more than 30,000 votes in Nevada. An investigation by then-Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, a Republican, found no credible evidence of widespread voter fraud in the state.