Peters is also facing an obstruction of justice charge for an attempt to illegally record her former deputy clerk Knisley’s criminal trial on another charge tangentially related to this Colorado elections situation. That case included a very public arrest of Peters at a Grand Junction bagel shop in the middle of the day. You can watch that action here.
Peters and her deputy became news after Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold began investigating a security breach of elections equipment under Peters. Very quickly it became clear that Mesa County officials would have to have the equipment replaced (at taxpayers’ expense), after it was revealed the equipment was tampered with before a scheduled “secure build” by Peters and an unknown individual. A secure build is basically a software update of the machine done by Dominion Voting Machine staff under the watch of an elections official. The idea is that all of the individuals involved have been properly vetted as secure and trustworthy participants in the integrity of our elections.
Peters’ defense is that she brought in former pro-surfer Conan Hayes, who dressed up as a computer “nerd,” and was given “someone else’s identification tag” identifying him as Gerald Wood. At the build, “Ms. Peters had introduced a contractor at the event and identified him as Gerald Wood, a local I.T. consultant, according to court records. The real Mr. Wood, however, told investigators he was not there that day, or two days earlier, when his badge was used to enter a secure area.”
Peters and her deputy clerk have since been barred by a judge from the midterm elections in 2022. After broad backlash, Peters (as well as others) has decided to try and outrun the law by becoming the fascist law. On Tuesday, Coloradans will find out if she will become the Republican nominee to challenge Secretary of State Jena Griswold in November. The Secretary of State oversees all elections activities and security. But considering how far afield and unsupported her ideas about reality are, the fact of the matter is that she received 60 percent of the delegate votes during a Republican State Assembly meeting in April.
Peters is being floated by people like Mike Lindell, best known for selling pillows on Fox News and being about as crooked as Trump’s friends come. She has also gotten big-money help from former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, as well as disgraced (and then) pardoned by Trump criminal Michael Flynn, under the dark guise of “a new super PAC in Colorado called Citizens for Election Integrity.”
Peters has taken the singular page from the conservative handbook of calling any and all charges and allegations against her a witch hunt. She has positioned herself as a sort of Christ-like figure, willing to be persecuted for the sins of the MAGA conspiracy world—if you don’t actually persecute her and make her queen of Colorado elections.
As far as her connection to Ms. Boebert, the only concrete, undisputed fact so far is that Boebert’s former campaign manager established a Big Lie conspiracy theory group that Peters joined in the weeks leading up to the fraudulent activities she has now been indicted for. Did Lauren Boebert encourage her, as Peters claims? It’s hard to say. This is one of those one “liar says, another liar says” scenarios.
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