OPINION COLUMNS
Littwin: Mesa County voting machine scandal seems right in line with the far more dangerous DOJ scandal
How did the passwords from Mesa County voting machines end up on a far-right-wing blog? And how does Clerk Tina Peters, a Trump truther, explain the leak? Just ask the MyPillow guy.
Mike Littwin 2:05 AM MDT on Aug 11, 2021
It should come to no one’s surprise that the big voting-machine scandal in Colorado comes from Mesa County, where Tina Peters, the county clerk, is a Trump truther who believes the 2020 election was rigged. The scandal is serious. Somehow passwords from Mesa County’s Dominion voting machines wound up on Gateway Pundit, a far-right-wing website. And even worse, Gateway apparently got the passwords from a certain Ron Watkins, who, according to a recent HBO documentary, may have been the original Q of the QAnon crazies. You know, the group that not only seriously dabbles in election-rigging misinformation but also in the notion that Democrats eat babies. One theory, you should know, is just as likely to be true as the other. Watkins claimed the information came from a Dominion whistleblower. And that the leak of the passwords shows how easy it would be for election results to be tampered with by outside forces.
But it’s pretty clear, according to Secretary State Jena Griswold, that this looks like an inside job, and that someone from Peters’ office was the likely source of the leak. In any case, the passwords only work if you are directly accessing the machines. And the leak almost certainly came long after the 2020 election. Peters presumably knows this. Whoever leaked the information presumably knows this. Ron Watkins, meanwhile, probably believes that Dominion voting machines also eat babies. “This is a very serious breach in chain-of-custody and security protocols,” Griswold told the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. “If the Mesa County clerk cannot show proof in the chain of custody … after inspection, if there is anything that comes to our attention, the voting equipment will be decertified.” That would mean that all the equipment would have to be replaced. There’s also the suggestion that an investigation could lead to criminal charges. Meanwhile, Peters is being asked to turn over to investigators any related documents or correspondence.
How far off the deep end is Peters? Let’s just say that on Tuesday — h/t Kyle Clark, who tweeted this — Peters appeared with the MyPillow guy, Mike Lindell, at his Cyber Symposium, which is doing the hard work of trying to prove the unprovable, that Donald Trump should somehow still be president. In the meantime, though, he would be taking on Griswold for her, uh, assault on Peters, who claimed that she is being persecuted, of course, while also accusing state investigators of, yes, doing some kind of “little doo-doo with my machines.” “They came and raided her office on the way here,” Lindell said. “This is the hill we stand on.” He was standing on that hill — or is it a very slippery slope? — with Peters, who was accompanied by Sherronna Bishop, who was Lauren Boebert’s former campaign manager. You can see where we’re going here. According to Kyle Clark’s account, Bishop accused Griswold of mishandling the leaked passwords, saying, too, “Under this communist regime, we are suffering.”
The symposium was all in on communists, Lindell baselessly accusing the Chinese of accounting for 25,000 fraudulent votes in Colorado. “You can’t go back once communism is here,” he said. To say the Chinese accusation is baseless isn’t strong enough. To say it’s completely without evidence isn’t strong enough. To say it’s completely and unabashedly nutso looney tunes is not strong enough either. But what else would you expect from Lindell, who has given us a whole new, very disturbing take on pillow talk? The thing is, as the MyPillow guy makes clear, this scandal in Mesa County is in line with the far greater scandal being uncovered in Washington of late, in whichTrump and an ally in the Justice Department tried desperately to overturn an election that was — by every account, including those from former AG Bill Barr and also those from every judge who had been presented with phony-baloney, non-evidence evidence — fair and just. In fact, two lawyers — Gary Fielder and Ernest Walker — involved in the series of phony vote-rigging lawsuits have been sanctioned in Colorado by Judge N. Reid Neureiter for what he called an assault on American democracy and the “stuff of which violent insurrections are made.”
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow.
It wasn't universe-shattering, Carl... except for Tina who got raided and probably is going to jail, her universe is pretty shattered.
Lindell PROMISED he'd be live for 72 straight hours. Expected the audience to stay in those plastic folding chairs the whole time too. We did that in Vegas at the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon for years. 
s titular Mama June in Fogbow's Favourite Show™ Mama June: From Not To Hot! Fogbow's Theme Song™ Edith Massey's "I Got The Evidence!" 
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