Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters
A Colorado grand jury has indicted a rogue county clerk under state and federal investigation (see article here) for leaking confidential voting machine login codes to QAnon (see article here). Read the latest developments here.
Those voting machines can no longer be used, and a judge barred her from supervising the November 2021 election in Mesa County.
Tina Peters (photo, left), a hyper-partisan “Stop the Steal” Trumper who was elected in 2018 and survived a recall in 2020 (after uncounted ballots were found blowing in the wind), spoke at an event organized by Mike Lindell, a Trump pal, to promote discredited election conspiracy theories. She’s accused of ethics and campaign finance violations for accepting plane flights and lodging to attend that event (see story here).
She’s also accusing of stealing a house from her ex-husband; and last month, she kicked a police officer while being arrested (watch video here) for secretly recording a court hearing in defiance of a judge’s prohibition on courtroom video recording.
What can we do with people like this? The best approach is to bring them under the rule of law.
The judge can hold her in contempt for violating his order. She can be prosecuted for resisting arrest and assaulting the police officer. She can be fined for violating ethics and campaign finance rules. She can be sued (and possibly prosecuted) for fraudulently taking the house; and the latest charges could land her in prison.
(Those charges include identity theft, i.e. impersonating an election systems consultant and using his ID to gain access to voting equipment and software).
Tina Peters has taken on larger forces than she can command from her elective office, and she’s probably going to lose.
Related story: The state GOP organization now wants Peters to suspend her campaign for Colorado secretary of state (story here).
Update: A jury convicted Peters on August 13, 2024, on 7 counts of the 10-count indictment, and she’s due to be sentenced in October 2024 (read story here).