Nothing shakes up the political dog days of summer quite like another criminal indictment of former President Donald Trump. At this rate, Department of Justice special counsel Jack Smith will need a game program to keep track of all the charges.

The latest addition to Trump’s mounting legal woes focuses on the attempt to overturn the 2020 election using fake electors in seven states — including Nevada. The indictment is particularly withering and has him crying for help from his friends on the U.S. Supreme Court. Trump is charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction, and conspiracy against the right to vote and to have one’s vote counted.

“The Defendant claimed that there had been tens of thousands of double votes and other fraud in Nevada,” the indictment states. “The Nevada Secretary of State had previously rebutted the Defendant’s fraud claims by publicly posting a ‘Facts vs. Myths’ document explaining that Nevada judges had reviewed and rejected them, and the Nevada Supreme Court had rendered a decision denying such claims.”

The indictment spends more time on other states, but still hits particularly close to home for the Nevada Republican Party. For reasons known only to its members, the state party still celebrates the willing stooges who participated in Trump’s desperate and despicable scheme by signing false elector certificates claiming he won the election.

The results of the Nevada election were officially certified Dec. 2. The document included the signature of Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, a proud Republican who was censured and maligned by her own party for following the law. The fake electors produced their specious certificate Dec. 14.

At the top of the list of the six infamous signatures are GOP State Party Chairman Michael McDonald and vice chair James DeGraffenreid, who were subpoenaed to testify before the Jan 6 House select committee and invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination hundreds of times. In doing so, they joined an infamous gaggle of uncooperative witnesses that included Michael Flynn, attorneys John Eastman and Jeffrey Clark, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, white nationalist Nick Fuentes, dirty trickster Roger Stone, and Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio. Now that’s some company to keep.

Their reluctance aside, transcripts of testimony to the Jan. 6 committee show Trump and his allies directed the Nevada GOP’s efforts to send fraudulent certificates to Congress. In a text message from McDonald’s FBI-seized cellphone, he wrote “They want full attack mode. We’re gonna have a war room meeting in about an hour.” The planning meeting included Trump, his son Eric Trump, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and attorney Rudy Giuliani.

At one point, McDonald texted, “There is a major plan. We are meeting at the hotel with attorneys and national staff in about 20 minutes.”

Adding to the intrigue is the fact the email chain was started by New York lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, who has been revealed as one of six unnamed co-conspirators of Trump’s scheme to overturn the election. Talk about a small world getting smaller by the day.

In a text exchange that will live in Nevada political infamy, fellow fake electors DeGraffenreid and Sean Meehan briefly discussed McDonald’s concerns about the direction the scheme was heading.

Meehan wrote that McDonald was “very concerned RNC will cut cord if it looks bad and steal credit if we do well.”

DeGraffenreid replied, “I know. He’s concerned that we look like foolish crybabies.”

Not to mention also looking like willing participants in a massive criminal con job perpetrated against the American people.

The fake electors issue gained brief traction during the 2023 state Legislature when lawmakers, on party line votes, passed Senate Bill 133, which would have made it a felony for a person to conspire to create or participate in a false slate of presidential electors. Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo vetoed the bill in June after calling election security “paramount to maintaining public trust in both our electoral processes and in elected officials,” but saying the bill’s penalties were too harsh.

Later that month, McDonald and DeGraffenreid were back in Washington after being called before the federal grand jury investigating events related to Jan. 6 and Trump’s attempt to overturn the election.

In a separate criminal case, Trump is accused of mishandling classified documents and obstructing official attempts to retrieve them. He’s also charged by the Manhattan District Attorney in connection with hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels. A Fulton County, Georgia, prosecutor is expected to go to the grand jury to seek Trump’s indictment in an election-related investigation.

After the latest indictment was unsealed, Smith said in a brief statement, “The attack on our nation’s capital on Jan. 6, 2021, was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy. It was fueled by lies — lies by the defendant — targeted at obstructing a bedrock function of the U.S. government: the nation’s process of collecting, counting and certifying the results of the presidential election.”

In Nevada, Republican officials who giddily bought into Trump’s sleight-of-hand routine and embraced his lies well after the facts were known continue to influence a once-proud party.

John L. Smith is an author and longtime columnist. He was born in Henderson and his family’s Nevada roots go back to 1881. His stories have appeared in Time, Readers Digest, The Daily Beast, Reuters, Ruralite and Desert Companion, among others. He also offers weekly commentary on Nevada Public Radio station KNPR.