Nevada attorney general leads investigation of 6 fake electors who backed Trump in 2020
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Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford is investigating six false electoral certificates that were signed on Dec. 14, 2020, and personally delivered to Washington, D.C., when Congress oversaw the official vote count on Jan. 6, 2021.
Attorneys general in Georgia and Michigan have pressed criminal charges against so-called fake electors from their states, and Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes is currently investigating the eleven false electors in her state, Politico reported.
The fake electors include Nevada’s GOP chairman
The six Nevada Republicans who signed the false electoral certificates were Nevada GOP Chairman Michael McDonald, Jim DeGraffenreid, Shawn Meehan, Eileen Rice, Durward James Hindle III and Jesse Law.
A Fulton County, Georgia, legal filing connects DeGraffenreid to Kenneth Chesebro who recently pleaded guilty to filing false documents. Their communication involved “the logistics of the Trump presidential elector nominees convening and casting false Electoral College votes in Nevada,” per the filing.
DeGraffenreid sent an email to Chesebro with the subject line, “URGENT—Trump-Pence campaign asked me to contact you to coordinate Dec. 14 voting by Nevada electors,” per GovInfo.
Nevada’s Clark County registrar of voters during the 2020 election, Joe Gloria, told Politico he was questioned by a state investigator earlier in November about the fake elector scheme. Others, granted anonymity, confirmed the investigation is active and were questioned on details on the false electors and their documents.
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The fake elector scheme
After the popular vote is taken, members from each state’s electoral college analyze them. Electors are selected by state party officials, and they work together to send an official certificate to the National Archives and to Congress saying which candidate won, NBC explained.
On Jan. 6, 2021, Congress met to officially count the electoral votes. False electoral certificates arrived in Congress from Nevada, New Mexico, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia and Pennsylvania. Mike Pence, then vice president, presided over the official count and rejected the false certificates.
Pence issued a letter right before counting of the electoral votes began, and he said it was “my considered judgement that my oath to support and defend the Constitution constrains me from claiming unilateral authority to determine which electoral votes should be counted and which should not.”
Barbara Cegavske, who was Nevada secretary of state from 2015 to 2023, as well as then-U.S. Attorney General William Barr maintain there was zero evidence of widespread voter fraud.
