What happened, and why it matters
On August 6, 2026, Judge Mary Kay Holthus at Clark County dismissed fraud charges against six Nevada Republicans, marking the second time she has rejected the case. The six were accused of signing a document falsely certifying that Trump won Nevada in 2020, despite Joe Biden winning the state by more than 30,000 votes. For ordinary citizens, the immediate result is that no one has been convicted to date, and Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford plans to appeal to the state Supreme Court. If the process repeats as it did last time, the appeal could drag on for more than another year - meaning nearly four years after the 2020 election, the case would still be unresolved.
Holthus concluded that prosecutors failed to present sufficient evidence of intent to defraud officials, while also criticizing how evidence was presented to the grand jury. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, she had previously expressed doubts about the case, saying she did not believe the defendants had a realistic opportunity to cast electoral votes for Trump.
History: from a ceremony in Carson City to the courtroom
On December 14, 2020, six people - including Nevada Republican Party Chair Michael McDonald and former Clark County Republican Party Chair Jesse Law - held a symbolic ceremony outside the state legislature, claiming to be Nevada's legitimate and qualified electors. This document was subsequently sent to numerous officials, including a federal judge. By late 2023, a Nevada grand jury returned an indictment with two criminal charges: filing false documents and forgery.
The case had been dismissed once before for an entirely different reason. In June 2024, Holthus dismissed the case because she concluded that Clark County was not the proper venue, since the alleged conduct occurred in Northern Nevada. The Nevada Supreme Court subsequently reversed that decision with unanimous agreement, ruling that because a set of documents was sent to and received in Las Vegas, the criminal conduct was only completed when the documents reached the recipient in Clark County. Trump issued a federal pardon to all six shortly before that ruling, but federal pardons have no effect on state-level charges.
A critical detail lies in the law itself: Nevada has never had a specific statute prohibiting the act of creating a fake elector slate. In two recent legislative sessions, lawmakers attempted to fix this, but both times the bill was vetoed by Governor Joe Lombardo. Due to the lack of a specific statute, prosecutors had to rely on two generic charges - filing false documents and forgery - charges that Holthus believes do not fit the alleged conduct.
Is this unusual?
Nevada is not alone. It is one of seven battleground states where fake elector groups submitted false certificates to Trump in 2020, along with Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, according to NPR. Among these, prosecutions in Michigan and Georgia have also been dismissed by courts. In Arizona, in the third dismissed case, Attorney General Kris Mayes voluntarily withdrew the case in June 2026 to avoid a statute of limitations deadline, intending to bring the case before a new grand jury. Looking at the broader picture, most fake elector cases nationwide have not reached a final criminal conviction; most are stuck in procedural issues, jurisdiction questions, or lack of specific laws.
What sets Nevada apart is that the case has been dismissed twice by the same judge for two entirely different reasons: the first time due to venue, and now due to lack of evidence of fraudulent intent. This makes Nevada a stark illustration of a legal loophole that Ford himself has publicly acknowledged when supporting new legislation to specifically prohibit this conduct.
The attorney for one defendant, Richard Wright, criticized the decision to appeal, calling it a political decision - that is the defense's own perspective. Ford, who is running for Nevada governor, called Holthus's ruling wrong.
Bảo Nguyễn
Bảo Nguyễn founded Saigon Sentinel to give the Vietnamese diaspora truly independent, in-depth community coverage at a time when misinformation moves faster than fact-checks and the language barrier makes verification harder than it should be. He sets the editorial standards and quality controls that govern the reporting, chooses the subjects, writes and edits each article, reads it against its sources before publication, audits published output, and handles corrections.