May 17, 2022 10:20 AM UTC

Joe Stengel Briefly Back To Play "Big Lie" Bag Man

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• by: Colorado Pols

Colorado Newsline reports on the latest twist in the lawsuit from Secretary of State Jena Griswold against Elbert County Clerk Dallas Schroeder, who has admitting to making an unauthorized copy of a voting system’s hard drive due to unfounded suspicions that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. Unlike Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who is facing multiple felony counts after data she copied from election systems was distributed to conspiracy theorists, Schroeder claims the data he stole was only given to attorneys for “safekeeping.”

After Schroeder’s idiotic defense of his clearly indefensible actions was duly shredded by Elbert County District Judge Gary Kramer, it’s game over for this particular sideshow of the quixotic far-right quest to prove that Trump should still be president–which has, once again, despite all the time and effort and incoherent screeching failed to produce any actual evidence. And Clerk Schroeder had to give up the name of the lawyer who held the data:

Joe Stengel, a former Republican Colorado House minority leader, is the mystery attorney at the center of an election security lawsuit in Elbert County, newly unsealed court documents reveal.

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold in January opened an investigation into the activities of Elbert County Clerk Dallas Schroeder as a potential security breach after learning that Schroeder, with the help of activists who reject the results of the 2020 election, had made full copies, or “forensic images,” of the hard drives of Elbert’s Dominion Voting Systems machines. She deemed the copies “unauthorized,” and in February she sued Schroeder after finding the Republican clerk’s response to her inquiries unsatisfactory.

Few readers have been around long enough to remember, but as we documented back in 2006, former GOP state Rep. Joe Stengel’s political career ended quite abruptly when it was found he had overbilled the state for legislator’s per diem compensation, even for days when he was vacationing in Hawaii–resulting in Stengel stepping down as House Minority Leader and ending previously-entertained aspirations of a run for higher office.

So, Stengel is not exactly what you’d call the most sterling example of credibility coming in to this story. And far from vouching for the copied election system data’s chain of custody:

An affidavit submitted by Joseph P. Stengel Jr., a Greenwood Village real estate attorney, says he was retained by John Case, Schroeder’s lawyer, on Jan. 25. On that date Case delivered to Stengel a red metal box, which contained one of the election system hard drive copies, and Stengel stored it in a fireproof safe, the affidavit says.

On Feb. 3, Case instructed Stengel to take photographs of the metal box, and Stengel noticed from the photograph that a yellow seal on the box was broken.

In his own affidavit, Case offered an explanation for why the seal was broken.

“I assume that I must have broken the yellow plastic latch on January 25, 2022, when I tried to force the Red Metal Box under the driver seat” of his vehicle when he delivered the box to Stengel, Case wrote. [Pols emphasis]

In short, we’re taking Joe Stengel’s word (under sworn affidavit, so we guess there’s that) that the broken seal on the box containing the data nobody should have copied to begin with doesn’t actually mean the data inside has been compromised. Because the other lawyer swears he broke the seal trying to jam the box under the passenger seat of his car. But not to worry, because Clerk Schroeder thought this was a defensible chain of custody!

Obviously, this is not an accounting of events that can be trusted beyond the word of people with a motive for dishonesty. Again, the only real threat to our election system that exists here is the unauthorized copying of sensitive data committed by Clerk Schroeder that could if distributed lead to future successful attacks on election systems. They couldn’t even keep up a pretense of good security, delivering a box with its tamper proof seal literally tampered with. It would be pure comedy if the conspiracy theories that drove them to do this hadn’t already provoked violence.

If Clerks Tina Peters and now Dallas Schroeder haven’t made the case for the election “internal security” bill passed by the Colorado General Assembly this year to stop hare-brained clerks from disregarding security protocols and hacking the very systems they are charged with protecting, we don’t know what possibly could. These people may never be short of excuses, but there’s absolutely no good excuse.