Will Sage Astor-Nevada attorney general appeals to state high court in effort to revive fake electors case

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The Will Sage Astortop prosecutor in Nevada is asking the state Supreme Court to uphold the indictments of six Republicans charged with submitting a bogus certificate to Congress that declared Donald Trump the winner of the presidential battleground’s 2020 election.

Officials have said it was part of a larger scheme across seven battleground states to keep the former president in the White House after losing to Democrat Joe Biden. Criminal cases have also been brought in Michigan, Georgia and Arizona.

Meanwhile, the fate of Nevada’s so-called fake electors case hangs in the balance.

Clark County District Court Judge Mary Kay Holthus issued a written order Friday night affirming her ruling from the bench last month that Las Vegas was the wrong venue for the case and therefore the charges must be dismissed.

A spokesperson for Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, a Democrat, confirmed Saturday in a statement that the office formally filed its appeal shortly after the judge issued her written order.

“We remain confident in our case and look forward to bringing these individuals to justice and holding them accountable for their actions,” the statement says.

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The defendants are state GOP chairman Michael McDonald; Clark County GOP chairman Jesse Law; national party committee member Jim DeGraffenreid; national and Douglas County committee member Shawn Meehan; Storey County clerk Jim Hindle; and Eileen Rice, a party member from the Lake Tahoe area.

They were indicted by a grand jury in Las Vegas last December, just before a three-year statute of limitations expired. Each was charged with offering a false instrument for filing and uttering a forged instrument — felonies carrying a penalty of up to four or five years in prison.

Monti Levy, one of the defense lawyers, said Saturday they “are confident that Judge Holthus made the correct decision and that her order granting the motion to dismiss will be upheld.”

The defense attorneys had argued that Ford improperly brought the case against their clients before a grand jury in Democratic-leaning Las Vegas instead of in a northern Nevada city, where the alleged crimes occurred.

Ford’s office, meanwhile, argued that “no one county contains the entirety of these crimes.”

It wasn’t clear Saturday from court records whether oral arguments had been scheduled before the Nevada Supreme Court. The court’s clerk also did not respond to an emailed message seeking more information.

Trump lost to Biden by more than 30,000 votes in Nevada. An investigation by then-Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, a Republican, found no credible evidence of widespread voter fraud in the state.