Jack Smith dropped his federal case against Donald Trump weeks after the 2024 election.
Democrat attorneys general across five states swore the courts would finish what Smith could not.
A Nevada judge just ended that case – and found what prosecutors buried in the grand jury file before the trial ever started.
Nevada Fake Electors Case Dismissed: What Prosecutors Hid From the Grand Jury
In December 2020, six Nevada Republicans – including Nevada GOP Chairman Michael McDonald and Clark County Republican Party Chairman Jesse Law – gathered in Carson City and cast their electoral votes for Donald Trump.
Biden had been declared the winner in Nevada, but the Trump campaign's legal challenges were still active. The six Republicans did what the campaign asked: preserve the challenge by casting a protective ballot – the same procedural move Kennedy's electors made in Hawaii during the 1960 Election while a recount was still running.
They made no secret of it – certificates mailed openly to the National Archives, the U.S. Senate, and the Nevada Secretary of State.
Nevada Democrat Attorney General Aaron Ford indicted all six on felony forgery charges in December 2023 – three years after the fact, while he was eyeing a bid for Governor.
In 2024, Clark County Judge Mary Kay Holthus dismissed the case on venue grounds – Clark County was the wrong place to try conduct that occurred in Carson City. The Nevada Supreme Court reversed her 6-0 and sent it back. Ford's office, rather than return to Carson City, refiled in Clark County.
Holthus dismissed the Nevada 2020 alternate electors case this week for the second time – and this time she didn’t hand Ford a clean path to appeal.
She ruled that prosecutors failed to prove Nevada Republican Chairman Michael McDonald and five other GOP electors intended to defraud state officials.
Her ruling was direct: the defendants held a public ceremony and mailed their certificates openly to officials in Washington and Carson City.
Fraud requires concealment. There was none.
"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 her ruling.
That alone would have ended the case.
But Holthus went further – and this is the part Ford's office is not emphasizing in its press releases.
She found Ford's prosecutors "independently undermined the integrity of the indictment" by withholding exculpatory evidence from the grand jury – evidence that could have cleared the defendants before charges were ever filed.
Hiding exculpatory evidence from a grand jury is prosecutorial misconduct, and Ford's team knew exactly what they were burying.
Nevada AG Aaron Ford Is Running for Governor on a Prosecution That Just Collapsed
Ford chose Clark County deliberately – the jury pool leans Democrat – and drew the same judge both times.
Aaron Ford is running for governor this year, and Michael McDonald chairs the Nevada Republican Party – the organization working to defeat him.
Nevada's Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo vetoed legislation in 2023 and again in 2025 that would have specifically criminalized the conduct Ford's office was trying to prosecute. Lombardo cited First Amendment and due process concerns both times.
Ford knew Nevada's generic forgery statutes were not written for this situation. He charged the six Republicans anyway.
The charges were never really about the law.
2020 Fake Electors Cases Dismissed: Arizona, Michigan, Georgia and Nevada All Collapse
Nevada is not an isolated failure. It is the latest prosecution to collapse in a five-state campaign that never had a legal foundation.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel charged more than a dozen alternate Trump electors and a judge dismissed those in 2025 – insufficient evidence of intent, the same finding Holthus just made in Nevada. Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes brought charges against more than a dozen Republicans including Rudy Giuliani and Mark Meadows, and her case fell apart this summer.
Georgia's sprawling RICO prosecution – 19 defendants, a scandal-plagued district attorney, and years of headlines – crumbled under the weight of Fani Willis's misconduct and procedural chaos.
Special Counsel Jack Smith dropped the federal case against Trump himself after the 2024 election.
Four of five state prosecutions have collapsed. Not because the courts were biased. Because every judge who looked closely found the same thing: political intent dressed up as criminal charges.
Kennedy's electors did what Nevada's six Republicans did – cast alternate ballots openly and on the record while legal challenges were still active. A recount flipped Hawaii's result. Nixon accepted the Kennedy electors on January 6, 1961 and filed no charges against anyone.
No grand jury convened. No charges were filed. Aaron Ford built a governor's campaign around doing both.
In 1960, the legal system recognized the difference between a political act and a criminal conspiracy.
Aaron Ford spent three years and untold Nevada tax dollars on a prosecution a Clark County judge just rejected twice.
The Nevada Supreme Court – the same court that handed him his one win by reversing the first dismissal – now gets the case back with a grand jury misconduct finding attached.
Ford is using the justice system to get campaign headlines and persecute his political opponents.
Sources:
- Cristina Laila, "Judge Dismisses Nevada Trump 2020 Alternate Electors Case After Years of Lawfare," Gateway Pundit, August 13, 2026.
- Rusty Weiss, "Another 'Fake Electors' Case From 2020 Presidential Election Collapses," RedState, August 14, 2026.
- Judge Mary Kay Holthus, Order Dismissing Case, Clark County District Court, Eighth Judicial District, August 14, 2026.
