More GOP Doom, Nevada Fake Electors Indicted Including State GOP Chairman

I’m feeling like the Oracle at Delphi right now. I’m going to make a prediction. History will record that Donald Trump’s Big Lie was the insidious octopus that sprouted many tentacles into all parts of the Republican party, nationwide, and was the cause of that party’s downfall, starting in 2020, and going for some number of years. If I really had prophetic powers, I could tell you when the GOP will go the way of the Whig party, officially, but alas I do not. But what happened in Nevada this morning is just one more tile in the mosaic of GOP doom.

Michael McDonald, who is the State Chair of the Republican party was indicted along with five other people for offering a false instrument for filing and uttering a forged instrument by submitting fraudulent documents to state and federal officials. The Nevada Independent:

The charges carry penalties of category C and D felonies, respectively, with punishments up to a maximum of four and five years in prison and a minimum of one year in prison. A grand jury in the Eighth Judicial District Court in Clark County indicted the six Republicans.

“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,” [Attorney General Aaron] Ford said in a statement. “We cannot allow attacks on democracy to go unchallenged. Today’s indictments are the product of a long and thorough investigation, and as we pursue this prosecution, I am confident that our judicial system will see justice done.”

Now here’s an interesting point. The article goes on to say, “The Nevada fake electors referred to themselves as the “duly elected and qualified electors” in paperwork submitted to the National Archives, while at least two groups of people who cast fraudulent electoral votes in other states (New Mexico and Pennsylvania) included caveats in their paperwork, saying the votes would only count if they won trials surrounding the 2020 election.” That’s getting pretty far out there. They actually represented themselves as “duly elected and qualified,” and didn’t even bother with the caveats that other states did.

Ric Grenell was out here a lot during the time that Trump was cobbling together the Big Lie. I wonder how much of this malfeasance is traceable back to him. We may end up finding that out.

Here’s another interesting point.

In the 2023 legislative session, Ford urged state lawmakers to support SB133, a bill that would have established felony criminal penalties for anyone who participated in “creating a false slate of presidential electors, serving in a false slate of presidential electors or conspiring to create or serve in a false slate of presidential electors.”

The bill passed out of the Legislature but was vetoed by Gov. Joe Lombardo, who wrote in his veto message that he agreed with the bill’s efforts to secure elections but objected to the severity of punishment.

I’m not going to say that Lombardo, a Republican, saw the handwriting on the wall and wanted to protect his friends, but Nevada is a small state in terms of population. It’s got a large land mass, but not all that many people, and the political circles here are small, compared to California, where I lived most of my life. So without openly disparaging Lombardo, I will merely question why there shouldn’t be a quite severe punishment on the books to chastise (and hopefully deter) those who would undermine our most fundamental freedom, the right to cast a vote in a free and fair election? I would like to hear his rationale.

At least two other states (Georgia and Michigan) where Republicans submitted fake elector slates for Trump have seen prosecutors bring charges against the proponents. Arizona’s Democratic attorney general is investigating those who participated in its fake elector plot.

The fake elector scheme, backing up the lie of a childish madman, who simply lacked the maturity to admit that he had lost the election, is probably the ugliest wide spread political conspiracy that we have ever seen in this country. It certainly is the ugliest if you consider the level of people who participated in it, high ranking GOP officials, Trump’s cronies like Ric Grenell, eager to stay in power, even Ginni Thomas, texting on January 6 to Mark Meadows. They’re all part of a grand scheme to disenfranchise 330 million Americans and keep the worst president in our history in office.

This is the path the GOP chose. Not all of them chose it. Certainly, there were officials in Georgia and Arizona and other places who stood up for what was right and refused to jump on board Trump’s fantasy train. They found themselves threatened and reviled for it. But better to be threatened and reviled by Trump and MAGA than to find yourself indicted for election fraud, right?