Mesa County Colorado - Belinda and Tina's big adventure

[LM K]

LOL.

Federal, state and local authorities searched the homes of Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters and three of her associates on Tuesday as part of an investigation into accusations the elected official was involved in election data security breaches, the local district attorney told Colorado Politics.

"We executed four federally court-authorized operations today to gather evidence in connection with the investigation into the Mesa County Clerk and Recorders office," DA Dan Rubenstein said.

"We did so with assistance from the DA's office from the 21st judicial district, the attorney general’s office and the FBI." He added that one of the searches occurred in neighboring Garfield County.

Peters discussed the searches Tuesday night on Lindell TV, the streaming channel run by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, a supporter of former President Donald Trump and leading purveyor of discredited claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.

"The FBI raided my home at 6 a.m. this morning, accusing me of committing a crime," Peters said on the show. "And they raided the homes of my friends, mostly older women. I was terrified."

She added that authorities "used a battering ram," destroying the front door of one of her friends' homes.

That is the entire article but the linky is here https://www.coloradopolitics.com/news/f ... 339a5.html

When ya open your door, it doesn't get battered down.

[raison de arizona]

LOL.

Federal, state and local authorities searched the homes of Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters and three of her associates on Tuesday as part of an investigation into accusations the elected official was involved in election data security breaches, the local district attorney told Colorado Politics.

Worth pointing out is that one of those three associates was Sherronna Bishop, former campaign manager for ... Rep. Lauren Boebert.
https://www.coloradopolitics.com/news/f ... 339a5.html

[raison de arizona]

Bannon and Lindell weigh in. Lots of talk of jack booted FBI thugs and whatnot.

[Chilidog]

I hope Lindell is next.

[Suranis]

This could probably go on the Lauren Boobert thread as well. This is a long thread that you really should read on the threadunroller link as its a doozy. and has lots of videos and links I'm not copying over. Our Tina has been a very bizzi girl, and she actually convinced herself that facebook world is real.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1427 ... 26880.html

Logan M. Davis

A Thread.

As more came out about the Tina Peters investigation, I went back through my archives to reassess some of the weird signals that the luminaries of Boebert-world were putting out there this summer, and let me tell you...

It's like Burn After Reading meets Deliverance.

I am not a lawyer, and I imagine a lot of what I've put together here will be confirmed or debunked by the (checks notes) federal investigation into these matters sooner or later, so take my pronouncements with a grain of salt (this tweet will stop me from being sued, right?)

2/To give you the top line:

I think a cabal of local QAnon wingnuts with deep ties to Lauren Boebert spent too much time on Facebook and convinced themselves to commit federal election crimes.

► Show Spoiler

3/
You need to know a couple of the clowns in this clowncar to get the picture here.

Most importantly: Mesa County Clerk & Recorder Tina Peters. Ol' Tina is currently under state and federal investigation for compromising the security of voting machines.

Peters herself accesses elections hard drive, state says

Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters and two others entered a secure area of the Election Division in the dark of night days before a scheduled upgrade of the system in
https://bit.ly/3APPnWh

The other main player is Sherronna Bishop, AKA America's Mom, a semi-influencer for the seditious.

Bishop is better known for (1) being Lauren Boebert's campaign manager, and (2) loving the Proud Boys.
GOP candidate's former campaign chief: Thank God for Proud Boys

The top aide to Lauren Boebert, Republican Congressional candidate from Colorado, hosted a member of the Proud Boys on a Facebook video.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/gop-can ... d=73636943

After unsuccessful attempts to become a lifestyle influencer over the past decade or so, Bishop, 40, rose to local prominence in Colorado's right-wing extremist circles during the hilariously ill-fated recall attempts of 2019.

Republicans Split on Republican Senator's Anti-Recall Efforts
Fellow Republicans are not happy with the new recall reform legislation that would hold recall efforts to a higher standard.
https://coloradotimesrecorder.com/2019/ ... rts/17979/

Despite the total collapse of several separate wingnut-led recall campaigns in 2019, the failed attempts served as an amazing networking opportunity for Colorado's least-hinged conservatives.

Enter Lauren Boebert.

I first noticed Lauren Boebert during the 2019 recalls, when she messaged multiple sockpuppet accounts I use to monitor the worst parts of Facebook. I realized fairly quickly that she was messaging everyone who was active in the recall groups...and that it was a good idea.

I don't know if Bishop and Boebert knew each other before 2019, but the pro-recall organizing brought them both a lot of followers. Soon, the two linked up with Sherronna as Lauren's campaign manager, able to leverage Sherronna's audience of malcontents for Lauren's campaign.

9/
The rest of that primary is history: very few people saw it coming, but Lauren Boebert, the tiny, gun-toting lady who had slid into everyone's DMs, ousted Scott Tipton.

Then she--in the most charitable terms possible--continued to be herself.

But this is all background.

10/
FAST FORWARD to 2021. Boebert's goons attack the Capitol on 1/6, Sherronna Bishop continues to gain followers by peddling The Big Lie, and the brain worms continue to feed and grow.

This spring Bishop helped to organize the CO chapter of USEIP, the US Election Integrity Project. (the USEIP is a silly project where The Wingnuts go door-to-door to somehow prove election fraud? It's likely an effort to build lists of Even More Wingnuts, and it's tangential to this story, but esteemed Man About Town @emaulbetsch wrote about it)

Colorado Election Conspiracy Group Going Door-to-Door in Search of 'Phantom Ballots'
Members of a QAnon-linked election fraud conspiracy group -- some of whom are armed -- are knocking on doors of voters across Colorado, attempting to find
https://coloradotimesrecorder.com/2021/ ... ots/38866/

Ostensibly as part of USEIP--but really as part of a documented, years-long addiction to live streaming her every delusional thought--Sherronna has been live-streaming about election integrity all summer.

That's the material I went back and looked at, and hoo boy.

Last week, I tweeted about a Zoom recording I was sent on June 2nd, of a conversation that occurred on June 1st. In that call, Bishop leaned heavily on implications that like-minded County Clerks could be useful in the fight to "prove" election fraud.

For context, we now know that Tina Peters' breach of the Mesa County voting systems happened on or around May 25, 2021.

After-hours access of Mesa County election equipment revealed in Griswold investigation - Colorado Newsline
The Mesa County clerk and others entered a secure room that contained county election equipment after normal work hours, investigators say.
https://coloradonewsline.com/briefs/aft ... stigation/
While a lot of Bishop's comments in the video from June 1st seem to imply in retrospect that she knew what Peters had done, those implications don't hold a candle to hints Bishop dropped in later videos.
The first eyebrow-raising line I stumbled across in my re-checking of these videos this week came in a line from Bishop's July 15 video about "election integrity."

At one point in the video, after talking about how Colorado's elections were rigged, Bishop knowingly says: Image
“We’ve been fortunate to find some elected officials who have not forgotten their oath of office and are partnering with us and are standing with us” Bishop says these officials are helping “hold the line for the Constitution.”

The video is still up:
https://bit.ly/3m8u9yU
As a general rule of thumb, no elected officials should be "partnering with" a group that is attempting to overthrow an awful election. Just a little pro tip.

Who could she possibly mean?

This is as good a time as any to mention that Sherronna Bishop and Tina Peters go way back. In fact, Sherronna endorsed Peters for Mesa County Clerk & Recorder, and had her on one of her live streams to promote Peters' candidacy in 2018. ImageImage

The July 15th video, and that line about elected officials working with Bishop's Whackobirds, got my ears perked up enough to keep going back through the archive to see if she ever let the mask slip a little bit further.

And of course she did.

On June 6, Bishop posted a doozy of a video.

This is a good time to remind you that I'm not a lawyer, the following view is mine alone, not that of my yada yada, and is only a strong working theory, but:

By June 6th, Bishop almost certainly knew what Peters had done.
Bear with me for excerpts: Sherronna Bishop does not love speaking in a linear fashion, so accurate transcription is going to eat up my character count very quickly.

For those who can't abide abbreviations, the original video is still live:
Log in or sign up to view
See posts, photos and more on Facebook.

In the video, Bishop lays out the substance of the specific conspiracy theory that she, and presumably Peters, were operating on:

Dominion and the CO SOS, according to Bishop, were attempting to illegally push a software update. toDominion voting machines, which would...
...destroy or conceal or obfuscate all of the "evidence" of how the 2020 election was "stolen."

Bishop dedicates a large portion of the video to exhorting her followers to call their local county clerks and ask them to postpone the software update until August.
Bishop claims that the software update violates federal law, somehow.

"We haven't been allowed to touch the machines," she repeatedly, bizarrely, complains. Image
So, in the minds of this right-wing fringe, the Dominion software update to Colorado voting machines was going to destroy their only chance to PROVE that the election was "stolen."

Well, these patriots couldn't let that happen.
Bishop, in the video, says "we elect our clerk & recorder to protect our vote, but they really can’t check and see if this voting tabulating machine is really doing just only the voting tabulating job it was given."

If only some brave, patriotic clerk was willing to risk it all.
Bishop continues, almost incoherently: "When you think about all of the stories we have heard...all the things that are being proven, Maricopa County, come on you guys, 250,000 votes, I mean come on, they’re cheating. And we can't do a forensic audit on these machines." Image
Bishop then pivots to deliver some weird version of hope to her weird version of an audience:

"We need to have access to these machines, see what’s on there, THEN [Dominion] can do their stuff and maybe we can see what it looks like after they’re done."
Last week, Tina Peters and Sherronna Bishop both appeared as guests at Mike Lindell's "Cyber Symposium," AKA Pillow Pal's Den of Delusions. On stage, Tina Peters framed her actions in a way *remarkably* similar to how Bishop did on June 6th, two months before the news broke. Image
The video of these kooks at the Pillow Fight or whatever is more than an hour long, but the rationale boils down to: Peters needed to make a "before and after" image of the voting machine hard drives so that she could PROVE that the Dominion update erased data.
To recap that last part:
- on May 25, Peters compromised the voting system
- on June 6, Bishop opined that some valiant clerk needed to "have access to these machines, see what’s on there, then they can do their stuff and maybe we can see what it looks like after they’re done"
- last week, we learned that Tina Peters is under investigation for doing exactly what Bishop suggested
- on Aug 10, both Bishop and Peters essentially admit guilt at Pillowpalooza '21 but frame it as a victory lap.

So my questions are: who else knew? who else helped?
Were leaders in the @cologop aware of the plot? After all, Party vice chair Priscilla Rahn was a participant in the June 1st call.

And most of all, why was Lauren Boebert's campaign manager seemingly conspiring to tamper with election equipment?
I wish I had more for you now, but I don't.

In the end, these people were so bought-in to such a self-evidently ludicrous, preposterous, and baseless set of conspiracy theories that they decided to take actions which could carry legitimate legal consequences.

Have fun, y'all.
(badly threaded)
Unroll available on Thread Reader

[Notaperson]

Tina Peters appears with militia supporters in video call that included endorsement of violence

Tina Peters, the Mesa County clerk who is under criminal investigation for her alleged involvement in a security breach of election systems in her own office, appeared on a video call last week with supporters of the Three Percenter militia.

The video was posted Thursday on the America’s Mom Facebook page, which is operated by Sherronna Bishop, a Peters ally whose home was searched Nov. 16 by the FBI as part of an investigation related to the case against Peters. Peters’ home was also searched that day.

Shawn Smith, a retired Air Force colonel from Colorado Springs who has worked with Colorado-based group U.S. Election Integrity Plan, which rejects the outcome of the election, made an appearance. He says during the video call that Dan Rubinstein, the Mesa County district attorney, should be investigated by the FBI. And he says “something’s about to happen in a legal setting” related to election integrity and involving jurisdictions throughout the state, adding that district attorneys will be obliged to investigate.

“If they don’t investigate I think we’re going to have to go to sheriffs and ask them to arrest the district attorneys,” Smith says.

Later Smith endorsed violence as a legitimate response to the government activity discussed in the call.

“I have no desire whatsoever for violence, but I promise you that people in the country are not going to go down,” he said. “There’s not going to be a tyrannical regime that stays in power. Only they’ll recognize their limits under the law and this will be walked back or it’s going to get very dangerous. And it’s going to be dangerous all around. I hope it doesn’t come to that, but if they think this is going to end somehow in surrender from the people, they’re all wrong about that.”

https://coloradonewsline.com/2021/11/22 ... -violence/

[Foggy]

Brave words.

[Notaperson]

So there's going to be a rally. Of course there's going to be a rally.

[Notaperson]

County officials concerned about militia threats

Mesa County officials are taking seriously recent threats of violence from voter-fraud conspiracy theorists in the past week.

As a result of threats uttered in a recent Zoom meeting between several of them, including Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters and Garfield County resident Sherronna Bishop, the county is in the process of beefing up its security just in case.

“The Mesa County Sheriff’s Office is monitoring the situation, and is in communications with the Board of County Commissioners to increase security where appropriate,” said sheriff’s office spokeswoman Megan Terlecky. “We encourage people to exercise their right to protest peacefully and respectfully.”

Part of county officials’ concerns are over a planned rally for Peters set for noon today in front of the Mesa County Old Courthouse on Rood Avenue, where the county’s main offices are located.

https://www.gjsentinel.com/news/western ... d67c2.html

[notorial dissent]

So it would seem that Babblin' Boebert isn't the only GOP crazy in Colorado, Hanks who has aspiration at the US Senate, along with Belinda and Elbert County Clerk Dallas Schroeder, claiming that the 2020 election was fraudulent. Hicks is a certified cray cray from Fremont County who really should be living in Mesa County. He has been in and out of trouble and allegedly was one of the participants in Jan 6, so this gives you and idea of where he stands. He is suing in Denver Dist court and the CO AG will most likely defend, and she will chew him up in to little pieces and spit him out. She is a tough litigator. I am wondering how his colleges in the Legislature are going to feel when they reconvene in Jan?

[Notaperson]

Prayer, conspiracies and fundraising: Supporters of Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters hold another rally following FBI search

GRAND JUNCTION — What was billed as an event to show support for election-fraud-promoting Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters and her political cohort Sherronna Bishop, morphed into a combination of religious revival and campaign rally – all organized by the Truth & Liberty Coalition, a Front Range group that promotes erasing the separation of church and state.

About 250 people gathered in front of the old Mesa County courthouse Wednesday afternoon for an event that remained peaceful, unlike the last rally in support of Peters that included shouted disagreements and a scuffle that left one woman injured. [How did we miss this?]

Besides tearful speeches by Peters and Bishop about federal agents “terrorizing” them as they executed search warrants at their homes several weeks ago, four conservative political candidates from outside Mesa County were given mic time, each stressing that they weren’t there to give campaign speeches before they gave what amounted to campaign speeches.

Richard Harris, executive director of the Truth & Liberty Coalition, sent the crowd home with four “action items.” He told them to call Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubinstein, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Denver, the Republican headquarters in Denver and Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser to complain about the treatment of Peters and Bishop.

https://www.durangoherald.com/articles/ ... her-rally/

More at the link. Worth reading.

[LM K]

Prayer, conspiracies and fundraising: Supporters of Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters hold another rally following FBI search

GRAND JUNCTION — What was billed as an event to show support for election-fraud-promoting Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters and her political cohort Sherronna Bishop, morphed into a combination of religious revival and campaign rally – all organized by the Truth & Liberty Coalition, a Front Range group that promotes erasing the separation of church and state.

About 250 people gathered in front of the old Mesa County courthouse Wednesday afternoon for an event that remained peaceful, unlike the last rally in support of Peters that included shouted disagreements and a scuffle that left one woman injured. [How did we miss this?]

Besides tearful speeches by Peters and Bishop about federal agents “terrorizing” them as they executed search warrants at their homes several weeks ago, four conservative political candidates from outside Mesa County were given mic time, each stressing that they weren’t there to give campaign speeches before they gave what amounted to campaign speeches.

Richard Harris, executive director of the Truth & Liberty Coalition, sent the crowd home with four “action items.” He told them to call Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubinstein, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Denver, the Republican headquarters in Denver and Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser to complain about the treatment of Peters and Bishop.

https://www.durangoherald.com/articles/ ... her-rally/

More at the link. Worth reading.

Debbie Perry-Smith, who came from Littleton to emcee the event, noted that jet contrails were making Xs in the sky above the rally. She also made repeated references to being “above the targets.”

[northland10]

all organized by the Truth & Liberty Coalition, a Front Range group that promotes erasing the separation of church and state.

Erasing the separation of church and state will destroy liberty. Obviously, they think that liberty means, their right to impose their "beliefs" on others through the government.

A theocracy is not liberty, it's tyranny.

[noblepa]

all organized by the Truth & Liberty Coalition, a Front Range group that promotes erasing the separation of church and state.

Erasing the separation of church and state will destroy liberty. Obviously, they think that liberty means, their right to impose their "beliefs" on others through the government.

A theocracy is not liberty, it's tyranny.

Its the perfect form of liberty . . . for the theocrats.

For everyone else, no so much.

They believe that ultimate freedom is the freedom to do what they tell you to do. After all, they are right and you are wrong.

[neeneko]

They believe that ultimate freedom is the freedom to do what they tell you to do. After all, they are right and you are wrong.

It is one of the classic divisions in how people frame the role of government or authority in general : should it reenforce the strong, or protect the weak?

[Foggy]

!	Message from: Foggy
	Moving this into the new Forensic Audits forum, because that was the goal for the Big Adventure.

[jcolvin2]

Tina has a path back to supervising elections, but Belinda not so much:

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. (KKCO) - Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold (D) is offering Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters (R) a path to resume her election supervision duties, if in a supervised capacity.

***

For Clerk Peters to resume her election supervision responsibilities, she would have to agree to submit any written election-related communications she makes to the Sec. of State’s office by 4 p.m. each workday. Peters would also not be allowed to have any unsupervised access to Mesa Co.’s voting equipment, among other stipulations.

***

In addition to agreeing to a number of terms that would require her to report election-related activities to the Sec. of State’s office, Peters would have to retract former statements regarding voting machines, such as, “We’ve got to get those machines so that they are transparent to the people and they’re not able to do what they’re designed to do,” which the Sec. of State’s office is saying Peters argued over a Facebook Live broadcast on Jan. 6, 2022.

***

These terms also prohibit two individuals, Belinda Knisley and Sandra Brown, from being involved with county elections. Knisley has been charged with second degree felony and cybercrime related to alleged activity at the elections office, and Brown was fired from clerk’s office in November of 2021.

Grand Junction-Montrose KKCO

[Volkonski]

NEW: The Mesa County grand jury will investigate allegations that Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters tampered with election equipment, @thyanhvo reports

https://t.co/mqVPCHX759

[LM K]

Wait. Tina might have consequences for her actions?!

[gshevlin2]

The concern i have is that there may not be anything significant that Tina Peters can actually be charged with.
If you accept that the offer to reinstate her was a good-faith offer, then the fact that they made her an offer instead of moving straight to a Grand Jury suggests that they do have a concern that there is not enough compelling evidence.
Of course, if you theorize that the offer was designed to be unacceptable to Peters (because it would have required her to disavow most of her previous perjorative remarks about the election process and election hardware) then maybe the Grand Jury will indict her on significant charges, instead of the proverbial ham sandwich.

[RTH10260]

My interpretation from far away:
Peters is an elected official and there is no procedure to remove her from office until the next election, she must be reinstated under any circumstances, except she steps down on her own will.
Second the job description may be giving her absolute powers within her jurisdicton of election supervisor. Eg none of her actions of breaching security protocols and offloading intellectual property from the machines can be construed as criminal activity.

[Notaperson]

Lawsuit against Tina Peters moves forward

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold has moved ahead in filing her lawsuit against Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters.

As of Jan. 18, Secretary Griswold announced her filing against Clerk Peters to prevent her from overseeing the upcoming 2022 elections. The secretary’s lawsuit asks the overseeing judge to remove Peters as the Designated Election Official during 2022.

https://www.kjct8.com/2022/01/18/lawsui ... s-forward/

[LM K]

And .... she's running for reelection.

She's running against Bobbie Gross in the Rep primary. She beat Gross in 2018, but Peters no longer has the support of the county commissioners. Peters won the primary last time in part because she had Commissioner Scott McGinnis' endorsement.

She doesn't anymore. McGinnis has called her out publicly.

Peters heckles commissioners, nearly asked to leave meeting

Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters had to be asked to sit down and be quiet — or leave — numerous times Monday during the weekly meeting of Mesa County Board of Commissioners.


The clerk has admitted facts that she now apparently denies at different points, but her attorney in this (court) proceeding admitted to certain facts,” McInnis said, reading a few paragraphs from Judge Valerie Robison’s ruling earlier this month that temporarily removed her as the designated election official, a decision that was upheld by the Colorado Supreme Court when it declined last week to hear Peters’ appeal, affirming former Secretary of State Wayne Williams and Mesa County Treasurer Sheila Reiner to oversee the fall election.


But after about the sixth time when Peters heckled McInnis, she was asked — and then told — to stop interrupting or she would be asked to leave the commissioners’ hearing room, Davis said:

“Madam clerk, madam clerk, you will get your opportunity, you will get your opportunity,” Davis said. “You can sit here and be professional about it, or you can leave. That is your choice.”

“I’m being attacked,” Peters shouted back.

“And you have attacked many people as well without them having the opportunity to respond,” Davis countered. “You will get your opportunity. We’ve lended that to you, so if you would, please sit and listen professionally, or leave."


McInnis ended the meeting calling on the clerk to issue a public apology to county resident Matt Crowe, saying she falsely accused Crowe of pushing Peters’ supporter Roxanne Lewis at a Stand With Peters rally on the steps of the Mesa County Old Courthouse earlier this month.

The commissioner said videos of the event clearly show that never happened.

“There’s no question about it, the investigation looked at the video afterwards and concluded the woman was not pushed, (but) the clerk immediately went to the microphone and said, ‘That man just pushed that woman down,’ ” McInnis said.

“You should have seen the crowd’s reaction as the result of a leader ... making that allegation and turning on somebody who disagreed with their views,” he added. “I’m hoping that the clerk will be professional and have an apology forthcoming to that individual. It wasn’t right. You were wrong there, and you’ve been wrong in other places. At some point, this has got to stop.”

Bobbie Gross has 15 years of experience in Mesa County government. She's much more qualified for office than Peters.

I have served the citizens of Mesa County since 2007, first working in the Motor Vehicle Division then in 2016 working in the Elections Division. Today I currently work at the Treasurer’s and Public Trustee Office.

In 2016, I worked alongside the Election Director assisting hand-in-hand throughout a busy presidential election. I became a Certified Election Official with the State of Colorado and completed the twelve courses needed to become nationally certified as an election administrator. These credentials set me apart.

Unless a third Repub announces that they're running in the primary, I think Gross will win. If she has the support of other local officials. I do know that Peters has burned every bridge she ever built.

[much ado]

And .... she's running for reelection.

She's running against Bobbie Gross in the Rep primary. She beat Gross in 2018, but Peters no longer has the support of the county commissioners. Peters won the primary last time in part because she had Commissioner Scott McGinnis' endorsement.

She doesn't anymore. McGinnis has called her out publicly.

Peters heckles commissioners, nearly asked to leave meeting

[...]

FYI - Here's a news report of that meeting that happened at the end of October...

[notorial dissent]

Such a charming, winning personality. I'd say her future political aspirations are brunt toast at this point.