Clark County District Judge Mary Kay Holthus dismissed felony charges against six Republican electors tied to Nevada’s disputed 2020 presidential vote, ruling that their openly stated effort to challenge the certified results did not support an inference that they intended to deceive government officials.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
A Nevada judge on Thursday dismissed the criminal case against six Republicans who submitted electoral votes for Donald Trump following the disputed 2020 presidential election, concluding that prosecutors had not established the fraudulent intent required to sustain the charges.
Clark County District Judge Mary Kay Holthus ruled in favor of the defendants after determining that their actions were undertaken openly as part of an effort to challenge Nevada’s certified election results rather than as a concealed attempt to mislead government officials.
“The fact that Defendants openly announced both their actions and their asserted purpose, rather than concealing their conduct or attempting to secretly induce governmental reliance, weighs against a reasonable inference that they acted with fraudulent intent,” Holthus wrote in Thursday’s ruling.
The decision marks the second time Holthus has dismissed the prosecution, although Thursday’s ruling rested on substantially different grounds from her first dismissal in 2024.
The case originated with a December 2020 meeting at which Republican electors in Nevada cast electoral ballots for Trump and Vice President Mike Pence while litigation challenging the presidential election remained underway.
The Trump campaign asked Republican electors in several contested states to cast conditional or alternate electoral votes so those ballots would remain available if pending legal challenges ultimately changed the certified outcome.
Supporters of that strategy have compared it to the disputed 1960 presidential election between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy, when competing electoral certificates were submitted from Hawaii while a recount continued.
Nevada ultimately certified its six electoral votes for Democrat Joe Biden.
Nearly three years after the 2020 election, Democratic Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford announced criminal charges against six Republicans who participated in the alternate-elector effort.
A grand jury in Nevada’s Eighth Judicial District Court indicted Nevada Republican Party Chairman Michael McDonald, Republican National Committeeman Jim DeGraffenreid, Clark County Republican Party Chairman Jesse Law, Storey County Clerk Jim Hindle and Republican activists Shawn Meehan and Eileen Rice.
Ford defended the prosecution when the indictments were announced.
“When the efforts to undermine faith in our democracy began after the 2020 election, I made it clear that I would do everything in my power to defend the institutions of our nation and our state,” Ford said in a statement announcing the charges. “We cannot allow attacks on democracy to go unchallenged. Today’s indictments are the product of a long and thorough investigation, and as we enter into litigation, I am confident that our judicial system will see justice done.”
Each defendant faced felony allegations involving offering a false instrument for filing, offering a forged instrument and submitting a document titled “Certificate of the Votes of the 2020 Electors from Nevada.”
The certificate was sent to the president of the Senate, the archivist of the United States, the Nevada secretary of state and the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada, according to the charges.
The prosecution initially ended before reaching the merits of those allegations.
In 2024, Holthus dismissed the indictment after concluding that Clark County was the wrong venue for the case. She agreed with defense attorneys that the prosecution should instead have been brought in Carson City.
That victory proved temporary.
In November 2025, the Nevada Supreme Court revived the prosecution, ruling unanimously that the lower court had erred in dismissing the charges on venue grounds.
The state’s high court issued a 6-0 decision overturning Holthus’ earlier ruling and returned the case for further proceedings.
That decision came days after Trump issued sweeping federal pardons to a number of political allies and attorneys connected to efforts surrounding the 2020 election. The Nevada prosecution involved state criminal charges and therefore was not eliminated by presidential pardons.
With the case restored, defense attorneys again sought dismissal, this time challenging whether the alleged conduct met the elements of the crimes charged.
Holthus agreed Thursday that the circumstances did not establish the necessary intent to defraud.
Her ruling emphasized that the six Republicans did not secretly create or submit the electoral certificate. Their actions and the purpose they asserted for taking them were publicly known, a fact the judge found inconsistent with prosecutors’ theory that they intended to trick government officials into accepting the document as something it was not.
Holthus also accepted the defense argument that challenging an officially certified election result was itself within the defendants’ rights.
The ruling therefore differs significantly from the judge’s 2024 decision. Rather than dismissing the prosecution because it had been filed in the wrong county, Holthus this time addressed the underlying allegations and concluded that the evidence did not support the fraudulent intent necessary for the felony charges.
Ford is expected to appeal the latest dismissal, potentially returning the case to the Nevada Supreme Court for a second time.
The prosecution has been part of a wider series of legal battles over Republican alternate electors in states where Trump contested the results of the 2020 election.
Democrats and prosecutors have generally characterized the certificates as part of an effort to replace duly certified Biden electors, while Republicans involved in the effort have maintained that the alternate ballots were intended to preserve Trump’s legal options while election litigation continued.
Thursday’s ruling does not alter Nevada’s certified 2020 presidential election result. It instead addresses whether the conduct of the six Republican electors constituted the specific state crimes alleged by prosecutors.
For now, Holthus’ decision again brings the Nevada prosecution to an end unless Ford successfully challenges the dismissal on appeal.
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