FILE-People line up to vote at a shopping center on the first day of in-person early voting on October 17, 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
A judge dismissed a case against six Nevada Republicans who faced allegations of submitting a fake certificate that falsely proclaimed Donald Trump the winner of the state’s 2020 presidential election.
According to The Associated Press, Nevada Judge Mary Kay Holthus determined that there was a lack of evidence that showed the electors intended to trick government officials, and Holthus also found that the state failed to reveal interpretive evidence to the grand jury.
RELATED: Nevada's attorney general investigating fake electors who aided Trump in 2020
The defendants in the case included Michael McDonald, the chair of the Nevada Republican Party, and Jesse Law, the former chair of the Clark County Republican Party.
State Attorney General Aaron Ford brought charges relating to forgery and "offering a false instrument for filing or record" against the six Nevada Republicans, who pleaded not guilty.
Ford’s office plans to appeal the ruling, the AP reported.
What was the Nevada 2020 fake electors’ case about?
Dig deeper:
Six Republican electors gathered outside the Nevada Legislature after the 2020 presidential election to sign a certificate giving the state’s six electoral votes to Donald Trump even though Joe Biden won the state by over 30,000 votes, The Associated Press reported.
This case centered on the defendants’ objective behind submitting the certificate. Prosecutors in the case claimed the defendants intended for their documents to be mistaken for electoral votes that then-Vice President Mike Pence would count on Jan. 6, 2021.
According to the AP, the defendants state that submitting the certificate was an act of "political theater" to express their concerns about the presidential election.
The defendants explained that they were preserving their rights to contest the election results and had no intent to mislead a government agency into accepting the Republican certificate as real, their attorneys argued.
Three other fake elector cases in Arizona, Michigan and Georgia have also been dismissed.
The Source: Information for this story was provided by The Associated Press, which references information from the Nevada election case. This story was reported from Washington, D.C.