The criminal case against Nevada’s six so-called “fake electors” resumed in Clark County on Monday after the Nevada Supreme Court ruled the trial court had the proper jurisdiction to consider the prosecution. The hearing before Clark County Judge Mary Kay Holthus focused on what prosecutors must prove for two charges tied to a 2020 pro-President Donald Trump “ceremony” held in Carson City.
Holthus listened as defense attorneys challenged the legality of the case’s two counts, arguing that the state has not met requirements—particularly for the second charge, which hinges on an “intent to defraud.” The judge said the kind of intent prosecutors argued was present was not realistically provable, and asked pointed questions about how the state planned to prove that intent in court.
“They’re not really thinking that they’re going to pull one over, that … ‘we’re going to sign this document and make everybody think that Trump was elected when he wasn’t elected,’” Holthus said during Monday’s hearing. “That’s my real battle. It’s almost nonsensical to me that they would have done that, prepared it and filed it with the intent to fraud. I don’t know how it would ever get there.”
At the hearing, Holthus requested a brief by early March from prosecutors laying out evidence supporting the “intent to defraud” element. The judge scheduled the next hearing for April 10, according to Monday’s court proceedings.
Prosecutors argued they could show intent to defraud by pointing to how the documents were handled after the signing ceremony, including that the materials were sent to the state’s top federal judge, the secretary of state’s office, the vice president and the National Archives. Defense attorneys countered that the document at issue was not false in the way prosecutors contended, and they also framed the defendants’ actions as part of legal and political efforts to contest the election results.
Defense lawyers testified that the defendants’ conduct reflected a First Amendment effort rather than deception aimed at misleading officials. “There’s no evidence that defendants were doing anything other than exercising their First Amendment rights to preserve their future First Amendment rights to petition the government and challenge the results of that election,” Maggie McLetchie, an attorney for defendant Jesse Law, testified during the hearing.
Prosecutors disputed that characterization, arguing that the documents themselves were forged. “They wanted those documents to be considered, because those documents themselves were forged documents,” Alissa Engler, a prosecutor for the state, said during the hearing, according to the account of the proceedings.
Monday’s dispute also returned to how prosecutors presented evidence to a Clark County grand jury in 2023, which brought forward the charges. Defense attorneys argued prosecutors did not show the grand jury what they said was required to prove the state’s theory of intent, including that the signers were preparing for the possibility that legal challenges could overturn Nevada’s election results.
In that defense account, lawyers argued that although Nevada electoral challenges had been rejected before the signing ceremony occurred, an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was still possible at the time. The defense also said prosecutors later failed to disclose certain correspondence from Kenneth Chesebro, described as the architect of the fake elector plot and a key witness, which the defense said could have exonerated certain defendants.
The case concerns the six Republican electors who convened an illegitimate ceremony in Carson City in 2021, where they purported to be Nevada’s true electors and signed documents awarding the state’s electoral votes to Trump and then-Vice President Mike Pence. Joe Biden had won Nevada’s popular vote, and Biden’s electors held a separate ceremony and cast ballots aligned with Nevada’s certified results.
Among the defendants named in the proceedings are Nevada GOP Chairman Michael McDonald, Nevada GOP Vice Chair Jim Hindle and Republican National Committeeman Jim DeGraffenreid, alongside Clark County GOP Chairman Jesse Law, Shawn Meehan and Eileen Rice. Holthus had dismissed the case in 2024 on the grounds that Clark County was the wrong venue, but the Nevada Supreme Court overturned that ruling in November, setting the stage for the Clark County case to resume.
As fake elector efforts have advanced unevenly in other states, prosecutors have faced multiple hurdles, including dismissals. Nevada is among the states that has continued to consider convictions related to fake elector efforts, while other states including Arizona and Wisconsin have seen prosecutors pursue the related cases against other participants rather than the same group of electors, according to the updated account of the wider legal landscape.