At the beginning of August, reports came out that Colorado’s Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters was being investigated for a “serious breach” of security regarding election equipment and software. Soon thereafter Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold announced that Mesa County must “replace 41 pieces of election equipment and get them certified by Aug. 30, or hand count ballots in the next election, because the security of the voting systems cannot be verified.” Shortly after this announcement, Griswold named Peters, Mesa County Deputy Clerk Belinda Knisley, and an outside “consultant,” Gerald Wood, as the people involved in the breach of election security. Surprising nobody, Peters is a MAGA sympathizer who has openly promoted the Trumpian big lie surrounding the elections.
On Tuesday, Ernest Luning at Colorado Politics reports that “Federal, state and local authorities searched the homes of Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters and three of her associates.” Peters told MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell that she was “terrified” after the morning raid. An interesting new wrinkle is that according to Lindell—someone whose statements can only be taken with a grain of salt the size of Uranus—one of the homes raided was that of Sherronna Bishop. Bishop is the former campaign manager for Rep. Lauren Boebert. Oh my.
Wednesday, Nov 17, 2021 · 10:43:41 PM +00:00
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Walter Einenkel
Arstechnica reports that the Mesa County sent out a statement on Tuesday’s raid.
On the morning of Nov. 16, the FBI conducted federally-authorized law enforcement actions into potential criminal activity by employees of the Mesa County Clerk and Recorder's Office and others associated with those employees. The activity occurred in both Mesa and Garfield Counties at four separate locations. Investigators with the 21st Judicial District Attorney's Office (Mesa County, Colo.) and the Colorado Attorney General's Office assisted in the operations. No arrests were made, and the operations are related to ongoing investigations. Per order of a federal court, all documents related to these operations are sealed.
Peters has made quite the spectacle of herself, getting private flights to speak at the Lindell cyber symposium imaginorium. As with everything presented by Lindell and his fellow cyber Kraken acolytes during the emporium cyber amazeballs-orium, Peters presented no evidence while claiming election fraud, and announcing that Colorado’s secretary of state was persecuting her and MAGA folks for trying to undercover the truth.
In October, Colorado District Court Judge Valerie J. Robison ruled that neither Peters nor Mesa County Deputy Clerk Belinda Knisley be allowed to participate in the upcoming November elections while they are under investigation for elections fraud, writing:
Based on the circumstances of this case, including the findings of the Court pursuant to C.R.S. 1-1-113, the Court determines that the Petitioners have met the burden of showing that Peters and Knisley have committed a breach and neglect of duty and other wrongful acts. As such, Peters and Knisley are unable or unwilling to appropriately perform the duties of the Mesa County Designated Election Official. The Court further determines substantial compliance with the provisions of the Code require an injunction prohibiting Peters and Knisley from performing the duties of the Designated Election Official.
According to reports, Peters and Knisley allowed Wood, a person with zero security clearances, access to Dominion voting machines before a “trusted build.” The trusted build is when upgrades to the software of the machine are deployed; for very obvious reasons it’s a time when security is of the utmost importance. Wood then illegally copied information off the machines before and after the trusted build was completed.
Peters made sure that security cameras that monitored the equipment had been turned off a couple days before the software upgrade took place. This was not protocol and while technically not against any law, is a very strange thing to do if you’re not doing super shady stuff.
Peters also first designated Wood as an “administrative assistant,” who still had zero security clearance, and then after she was busted by Griswold and investigators, changed Wood’s designation to “consultant.” Strange, eh? But if you’re going to end up possibly going to jail for real crimes against our democracy, reverse-engineering a defense is likely your only option.
There is also circumstantial evidence of a much larger conspiracy that touches farther out into the MAGA-universe through Colorado-based election fraud conspiracist Joe Oltmann. During the discovery part of lawsuits against Trump’s Kraken squad of dunderheads (Sidney Powell and Rudolph Giuliani), an email sent by Oltmann to Powell boasted “what we are doing in Colorado in gaining access to the Dominion systems under the radar. We have several county clerks cooperating.”
Peters continues to promote herself as the victim of deep state bullies, telling Lindell that the FBI “accused me of committing a crime” during a raid of her home. “And they raided the homes of my friends, mostly older women,” she said, adding that federal agents “used a battering ram” to gain entry into one of her friend’s homes.
"Essentially, they were soldiers in combat gear. They were not men in suits with badges. They looked very much like they were in a combat zone—soldiers with automatic weapons and combat gear." Sounds like an overmilitarized law enforcement apparatus. You know who has policy solutions for that? Progressives. Oh well.
She ended her interview on Lindell’s show by hoisting herself up onto a fake cross and then spewing out more evidence-free statements about the things “I’ve seen.” The only evidence represented to the public has been receipt after receipt after receipt of shady activities by Peters.