6 Nevada fake electors plead not guilty; Chesebro granted immunity for grand jury testimony

LAS VEGAS (KLAS) — Six Nevada Republicans who submitted fake electoral certificates claiming President Donald Trump won the 2020 election pleaded not guilty Monday.

Nevada GOP Chairman Michael McDonald, Jesse Law, Jim DeGraffenreid, Durward “James” Hindle III, Shawn Meehan and Eileen Rice all appeared remotely for their initial arraignments.

Earlier this month, a Clark County grand jury indicted the group on charges of offering a false instrument for filing and uttering a forged instrument, stemming from the submission of the documents in 2020. Both charges are felonies.

Judge Mary Kay Holthus scheduled a trial for March.

The Nevada Republican Party’s six electors signed paperwork signaling their support for Trump in a symbolic ceremony devoid of any legal merit and coinciding with the official state-sanctioned tally on Dec. 14, 2020.

That same day as the Republican elector ceremony, then-Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, a Republican, oversaw the state-sanctioned electoral ceremony where Nevada Democrats’ electors signed certificates, sending them to Washington. In presidential elections, voters actually vote for party electors and not a presidential candidate.

As the 8 News Now Investigators reported in December 2021, the certificate sent by Nevada Republicans and received by the National Archives looks much different than the official state-sealed one and reads, “We, the undersigned, being the duly elected and qualified electors for president and vice president of the United States of America from the State of Nevada, do hereby certify six electoral votes for Trump.”

Upon receiving the fake electoral votes from the Nevada GOP, the U.S. Senate Parliamentarian noted the document contained “no seal of the state” and “no evidence votes were delivered by the executive of the state for signature by electors,” the committee’s final report said.

The purpose of the documents was to force Congress to decide the presidential election, according to people whom the Jan. 6 committee interviewed. A legal advisor to the Trump campaign, Kenneth Chesebro, emailed DeGraffenreid about the plan, the committee found.

In a statement after the document signing, McDonald said the party’s electors convened in Carson City due to ongoing legal battles seeking to overturn the election results. At that point in mid-December 2020, no legal case remained open in Nevada.

Grand jury transcripts reveal Chesebro, who was charged with partaking in similar schemes in other states, agreed to testify to the Clark County grand jury to avoid prosecution in Nevada.

Even though Nevada Republicans had exhausted all legal remedies in Nevada by the Dec. 14, 2020, signing date, Chesebro said the intent was to send documents to Washington in case other remedies appeared before Jan. 6, transcripts said.

“Because the whole point of having alternate electors is that under federal law we have to send in the votes three weeks before the opening counted,” Chesebro said about the litigation. “And because election day was early November, you know, this is complicated litigation. I mean, you’re lucky if you can finish it in two months.”

Gov. Joe Lombardo vetoed a bill (Senate Bill 133) approved during the 2023 Nevada Legislature that would have established penalties for the fake electors’ actions. Lombardo defended the sanctity of elections, but said the penalties in the bill were out of scale.

While testifying in favor of the bill before the Assembly Committee on Legislative Operations and Elections, Democratic Attorney General Aaron Ford said no Nevada law allowed him to take possible action.

No widespread voter fraud was ever discovered in Nevada. The state supreme court denied the Trump campaign’s request to overturn the state’s election results and proclaim the then-president the winner. Biden won Nevada by more than 33,000 votes, a result the court certified that November. Several Republicans, including Cegavske and then-Attorney General William Barr, said there was no evidence of any widespread fraud.

The Jan. 6 committee interviewed both McDonald and Republican elector Jim DeGraffenreid. Both men invoked their Fifth Amendment rights repeatedly — McDonald more than 200 times. Neither has returned repeated requests for comment.

The Nevada GOP repeatedly denied requests from 8 News Now to review their evidence throughout the fall of 2020. At a news conference on Nov. 5, 2020, where surrogates from the Trump campaign announced a federal lawsuit, speakers told reporters to find the evidence for themselves. That lawsuit was later dropped. During the sole hearing in that case, a lawyer provided no evidence of fraud and did not verbally bring up any evidence to the federal judge.

A party spokesperson did not immediately respond to comment on Monday’s hearing.

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