June 09, 2016 03:07 PM UTC

Jon Keyser's Forgeries: The Post-Perp Walk Question Remains

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• by: Colorado Pols

Last night, 9NEWS aired a jailhouse interview with Maureen Moss, the petition gatherer accused of forging dozens of Republican voter signatures for petitions on behalf of Jon Keyser’s U.S. Senate campaign–what’s been arithmetically determined to be a sufficient number of forged signatures to account for the extremely small margin by which Keyser qualified the ballot in the First Congressional District.

Unfortunately for Keyser and the professional signature gatherers his campaign hired to get him on the ballot, Moss did little to clear them of ongoing questions about how her obvious forgeries were submitted by the campaign as valid signatures.

In fact, she may have made it much worse.

“I have forged signatures, yes,” Moss said.

Prosecutors allege from Feb. 24 through March 31, Moss submitted at least 34 forged signatures to her employer, Denver-based Black Diamond Outreach, which then submitted them to Republican U.S. Senate candidate Jon Keyser’s campaign.

Jefferson and Arapahoe County prosecutors worked with Denver deputy district attorneys for a unitary prosecution in Denver District Court…

After Jon Keyser’s on-camera meltdown when confronted about alleged forged petitions by Denver7’s Marshall Zelinger in mid-May, the campaign belatedly switched messages from repeating the words “I’m on the ballot” to distancing themselves from the people and companies they hired to conduct the petition drive. It’s a defense that would have been far better for Keyser if he had had the presence of mind to offer it immediately–instead of going into hiding for days followed by that disastrous first appearance. Obviously, the apologists would say, Keyser’s campaign didn’t know this lady was forging signatures. Right?

Well, as Maureen Moss tells us from jail and her former employers corroborate, that’s not so simple. At all.

Arrest records say Moss’s employers “noticed something fishy with the M’s” on her petitions “approximately 1/2 to 3/4 of the way through the campaign.”

…Black Diamond Outreach told investigators they weren’t “able to fire her after Ms. Moss denied twice, she didn’t do anything wrong, so she continued collecting signatures for the Keyser campaign.” [Pols emphasis]

Moss was fired May 11, the day after media reports surfaced indicating at least some signatures were fake.

Do you understand what is being admitted to here? Keyser’s signature gathering outfit detected Moss’ fraud halfway through the campaign. We shouldn’t have to remind readers that this was really obvious fraud, with Moss making no attempt to change up her handwriting or anything else to make these forgeries appear unique.

And yet the Keyser campaign took her word that these obviously forged signatures were genuine.

Herein lies the problem. Keyser’s campaign barely submitted enough “valid” signatures to qualify for the ballot, only clearing the margin of sufficiency in CD-1 by 20 signatures. We know now that the Secretary of State does not verify petition signatures in the manner that mail ballot signatures are verified. We didn’t know that until this scandal broke.

But we’d bet money that Black Diamond Outreach knew.

In a situation where you know you are very tight on the margin of signatures needed, and you know the Secretary of State doesn’t check petition signatures for forgery, and you’re faced with a petition gatherer who has obviously forged petition signatures you know will probably pass muster…

Sorry, folks. The questions will not end with Maureen Moss’ perp walk.