Six Nevada Republicans who participated in a false electoral ceremony to pledge the state’s six electoral votes to former President Donald Trump after the 2020 election each entered not guilty pleas today on forgery-related charges.
The six are Nevada Republican Party Chairman Michael McDonald; James DeGraffenreid, a Republican national committeeman and a district-level delegate to the 2016 Republican National Convention; Durward James Hindle III, vice chair of the Nevada Republican Committee; Jesse Law, chairman of the Clark County Republican Party; Shawn Meehan, founder of Guard the Constitution Project; and Eileen Rice, a delegate at the Nevada Republican Party.
All six appeared virtually today before Clark County District Court Judge Mary Kay Holthus and entered their pleas through defense attorney Richard Wright, who attended the hearing in person.
Each were indicted by a Clark County grand jury earlier this month and face charges of offering a false instrument for filing and uttering a forged instrument, category C and D felonies, respectively. The charges carry a maximum penalty of five years in prison.
Wright did not answer questions from reporters as he left the downtown Las Vegas courthouse following the arraignment.
Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, who was among the attorneys representing the state, did not make himself available to reporters, either.
At a news conference on Thursday, Ford said the charges were “the culmination of a long and careful investigation into these actions taken in the aftermath of the 2020 election.”
“We've been conducting this investigation for years to gather as many facts and as much evidence necessary to pursue justice,” he said.
Wright said during the hearing he was representing the six for the purpose of the arraignment and that each defendant would have their own lawyer.
A jury trial was set to begin March 11.
In December 2020, Nevada Republicans led by McDonald hosted a fake ceremony to certify the 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, D.C., with McDonald’s name listed with the return address. Republicans in a handful of states went through a similar forged and coordinated process — all with the same misleading and potentially criminal logic.
The meeting of fake electors, here and in 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 Nevada’s electoral votes to Biden.
McDonald has dodged commenting on his involvement — even when the U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump extremists asked about the scheme. Transcripts show he repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment rights to not comment.
But Trump in a campaign stop Sunday in Reno had plenty to say, bellowing to supporters they’re being treated unfairly and labeling McDonald as “a tremendous man, tremendous guy, gets treated so unfairly and he loves this country and he loves this state.”
Trump also said Law is a “fantastic man” who is “treated very unfairly.” He then thanked another fake elector, Jim Hindle, the Storey County clerk and vice chairman of the Nevada GOP.
McDonald and Law took the rally stage before Trump but both kept their remarks short and did not mention the charges against them. McDonald spoke for two minutes about the party-run caucus, promising strong turnout would equal a Trump Republican nomination. Law sang the national anthem.
Ford told the Nevada Legislature in May that his office spent months investigating the scheme but that he was unable to bring charges 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.”
The bill cleared the Democrat-controlled Legislature but was vetoed by Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo.
“I stated that no statute ‘directly addressed the issue,’ (and) that’s precisely what I meant,” Ford said. “That was true then, and it remains true now. But having seen the conduct of these individuals, I thought, and I still think, it would serve the public interest to have a statute that specifically and directly criminalizes these actions.”
Fake electors in other states are also facing charges.
In Michigan, Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat, in July announced 16 fake electors would face eight criminal charges, including forgery and conspiracy to commit election forgery. The charges come with a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison.
Electors in Georgia are also facing charges. An investigation is ongoing in Arizona.
“We’re comparing our case to state statutes and evidence that we have, and we’re confident in an indictment, and we’re going to be confident in our prosecution,” Ford said last week.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.