A Nevada judge has dismissed a case against six Republicans accused of submitting a false certificate of ascertainment that declared Donald Trump the winner of the state’s 2020 presidential election, marking the latest legal setback for efforts to prosecute fake electors in swing states.
Nevada District Judge Mary Kay Holthus ruled Thursday that prosecutors failed to present sufficient evidence to show the defendants intended to deceive government officials when they signed the document. She also determined that the state failed to disclose exculpatory evidence to the grand jury.
“The fact that Defendants openly announced both their actions and their asserted purpose, rather than concealing their conduct or attempting to secretly induce governmental reliance, weighs against a reasonable inference that they acted with fraudulent intent,” Holthus wrote in her ruling.
The dismissed case against the six Nevada Republicans, including Michael McDonald, the chair of the Nevada Republican Party, and Jesse Law, former chair of the Clark County Republican Party, had charged them with forgery and offering a false instrument for filing or record. They had all pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors had argued that the defendants intended for their certificate to be mistakenly accepted by then-Vice President Mike Pence as legitimate electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021. The defense contended that the signing of the certificate was an act of "political theater" intended to publicize their concerns about the election and preserve their rights to challenge the results, without any intent to deceive government agencies.
Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford’s office plans to appeal the ruling. His office brought the charges against the defendants.
After the 2020 election, in which Joe Biden won Nevada by more than 30,000 votes, the six Republican electors gathered outside the Nevada Legislature to sign the certificate awarding the state’s six electoral votes to Trump. The ceremony was recorded and broadcast online, with the footage being used as evidence in the case.
The dismissal follows similar outcomes in other states. Criminal cases against fake electors have been dismissed in Arizona, Michigan, and Georgia. In Arizona, Attorney General Kris Mayes recently dismissed her office’s criminal case, a move she described as a legal maneuver to bypass a deadline for new grand jury proceedings after losing an appeal. A fake electors case is ongoing in Wisconsin.
A federal case charging Trump with conspiring to overturn the 2020 election was dropped by a special prosecutor in late 2024. The series of dismissals and dropped cases has occurred after Trump defeated Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.