LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — What a difference four years makes. In December 2020, after Joe Biden won the election, a group of six defiant Republicans gathered in Carson City to sign certificates falsely attesting to the claim that then-President Donald Trump had actually won the state.
Among them were Nevada Republican Party Chairman Michael McDonald and Clark County Republican Party Chairman Jesse Law.
The ceremony — conducted in front of the legislative building on Carson Street at a table complete with red, white and blue bunting, a sound system and singing — was part of a since-discredited scheme concocted by Trump attorneys to send alternate slates of electors to Washington, D.C., slates that Trump's team believed could be used to hand him the presidency.
In the end, the fake certificates changed nothing. Despite a violent riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the real certificates were opened and counted, and Biden was officially declared the winner.
But back here in Nevada, Republican electors were facing trouble. Attorney General Aaron Ford testified to the 2023 Legislature that a law was needed to criminalize signing fake Electoral College certificates. A bill was passed on near party-line votes but vetoed by Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo.
Ford, however, asked a Clark County grand jury to indict the Republican electors under existing laws that prohibit filing a false instrument or uttering a forged document, and the grand jury obliged.
But in June, a Clark County District Court judge threw out the case, saying that because the crimes allegedly occurred in Northern Nevada — in Carson City, where the ceremony took place, and Minden, Nevada, where the certificates were placed in the U.S. mail — the indictments should have been brought there.
Ford immediately appealed to the Nevada Supreme Court, where attorneys have been trading briefs since September. Further arguments and a final decision are pending.
But a funny thing happened while lawyers argued over the specific wording of state law.
Trump, who still insists he won the 2020 election, did win the 2024 election.
That means the duly nominated electors for the Republican Party will meet on December 17 to sign this year's Electoral College certificates.
And guess who's on that list? That's right: McDonald and Law. (None of the other 2024 electors were part of the 2020 ceremony.)
Two of the men who signed false Electoral College certificates four years ago will be among the group that will sign the real ones this year. The attorney general is arguing to revive their dismissed criminal indictment, which could put them back in court facing felony charges. (Then again, it's just as possible the justices on the Supreme Court will agree the case was filed in the wrong jurisdiction and uphold the dismissal, which would end the case for good.)
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Nevada's attorney general is investigating fake electors in 2020
It's the cherry on top of the strange 2024 political sundae that included a sitting president dropping out of the race after a bad debate, a sitting vice president with just 107 days to campaign, and a defeated former president winning a non-consecutive term for only the second time in U.S. history.
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