This Tuesday, the Attorney General of Nevada announced details of the case against six Republican officials who tried to change the results of the 2020 elections. It is the third state to take the scandal surrounding fake voters who tried to derail Joe Biden's victory in the Electoral College to trial. “The indictment is the culmination of a long and careful investigation into the actions taken following the 2020 election,” District Attorney Aaron Ford said at a press conference this afternoon. If found guilty, false voters could face up to five years in prison.
The six defendants are associated with the Republican Party. They are the local president, Michael McDonald; the president of the organization in Clark County (where Las Vegas is located), Jesse Law; a National Committee member, Jim DeGraffenreid and state vice presidents Jim Hindle, Shawn Meehan and Eileen Rice. All were indicted by a grand jury on charges of document falsification and filing a fraudulent form. There is no date for the trial yet.
Three years ago, shortly after the presidential election, the group certified to Congress and the National Archives that Trump had won Nevada. In reality, Biden won the state by three percentage points and more than 33,000 votes. The Democrat received all six Electoral College votes. When the Republican votes arrived in Washington, they were ignored. Nevada wasn't the only place where this scam took place. It was repeated in six other key states: Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Wisconsin.
Michigan and Georgia have taken legal action against fraudulent voters. In July, Michigan's attorney general indicted 16 people also associated with Republicans on eight felony charges, including document forgery and conspiracy to commit election fraud. It is the most serious case currently being heard as the defendants face 14 years in prison. Sixteen other defendants face similar charges in Georgia, where they pleaded not guilty. Among them is Trump himself, on one of the most sensitive issues he faces. In Wisconsin, however, 10 members of the Republican Party avoided trial by admitting that they had sent a false election certificate with the aim of preventing Biden from entering the White House.
Eleven months before the next presidential election, Nevada is now joining this fight. “We cannot allow attacks on democracy to go unanswered,” prosecutor Ford said last week as the indictment was quashed. The news was overshadowed locally by a shooting at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas on Wednesday, December 6, which left three people dead. Ford says he trusts the justice system will find justice for him.
The prosecutor, a Democratic Party official in a Republican-controlled state, has prepared a long list of witnesses. Employees of the National Archives, the Postal Service, state agencies responsible for organizing the election, and prosecutors marched in front of the grand jury. The prosecution's witnesses included Kenneth Chesebro, the pro-Trump lawyer who admitted responsibility for the conspiracy to change the fate of the election. In the end, the grand jury concluded that the evidence presented was compelling enough to indict.
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Chesebro is one of the defendants in Georgia's fake voter case. On October 20, the attorney pleaded guilty to filing false forms. In this way he avoided going to trial and receiving a harsher sentence. Chesebro will be on probation for five years and must assist by testifying in a local trial. This could spell bad news for Nevada defendants, as the lawyer is considered one of the masterminds of the scheme.
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