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October 26, 2021 10:27 AM UTC

Tina Peters Joins Mesa County Mobs Heckling Commishes

  • 18 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: KREX-TV with more coverage from yesterday’s wild Mesa County commish meeting:

Tina Peters’ case lies at the hands of the District Attorney’s investigation, and Commissioners are ready to move on. “They’ve made up their mind that I am guilty,” Peters said.

“We’re trying to do everything we can in a positive fashion to make sure this never repeats itself, but your weakest link and the one we least suspected would hack the computer was the clerk herself,” McInnis said. [Pols emphasis]

As Clerk Tina Peters and majority of Mesa County await the findings of the FBI, the state and the DA’s investigations, all eyes are on this Novembers election. “We’ve got some court findings and the facts are pretty clear and it does not support the allegations that Tina has made,” McInnis said.

—–

Heidi Ganahl and Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters.

As the Grand Junction Sentinel’s Charles Ashby reports, last night’s regularly scheduled meeting of the Mesa County Board of Commissioners devolved into the usual chaos we’ve come to expect from months of backlash from far-right residents against public health restrictions to combat COVID-19, even the most gentle persuasive efforts to get residents vaccinated, and most recently in defense of embattled Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters under criminal investigation for allowing election system data to be leaked to conspiracy theorists who proceeded to find nothing nefarious–or even with their limited knowledge, intelligible.

But last night was different in the crucial respect that Clerk Peters personally showed up to join in the heckling:

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…

[I]n response to comments from her and other county residents, Commissioner Scott McInnis tried to set the record straight about what the county has had to do in dealing with Peters’ removal as elections chief and the ongoing criminal investigations against her for alleged breaches in election security protocols by local, state and federal law enforcement agencies.

“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.

“The facts that this opinion is written on were affirmed and put forward by her attorney,” McInnis added. “At some point, somebody needs to start demanding accountability from the clerk. You have every right to be in this room demanding accountability from your commissioners, but it is your responsibility to turn around and demand accountability from the clerk.”

Mesa County commissioners Cody Davis, Janet Rowland, and Scott McInnis, Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters.

The relationship between Clerk Peters and the all-GOP Mesa County Board of Commissioners has been deteriorating ever since the scandal over the breach of security in Peters’ office broke back in August. After Peters spent weeks in hiding and then returned to work like nothing happened that relationship appears to have fully soured, with semi-retired ex-Rep. Scott McInnis citing the ruling from Judge Valerie Robison that both Peters and her deputy Belinda Knisley “have committed a breach and neglect of duty and other wrongful acts” that warranted their removal from duties overseeing elections in Mesa County. Another longtime Republican fixture on the Mesa County Board of Commissioners, former GOP Lt. Gov. candidate Janet Rowland, is now the target of an incipient recall effort for her failure to support Clerk Peters committing what they concede were “well-meaning” crimes to prove that Trump won the election.

McInnis even took Peters to task over an incident we covered in detail earlier this month:

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.

Like we said the day it happened, McInnis is absolutely right–though neither Peters nor her angry mob of supporters wanted to hear any of it. The enmity between the all-Republican elected board of commissioners in Mesa County and their radicalized Republican base who have gravitated to Clerk Peters–keep in mind that 66% of Republicans according to polls believe that Peters is on a righteous quest to prove Trump should still be President–is at this point…alarmingly large? Dangerously large? It depends on whether you take these mobs’ threats of “civil war” as seriously as they do.

When the multiple criminal investigations into Peters’ office finally wrap up, this intraparty conflict is going to come to a head. If the polling that shows most Republicans support the “Big Lie” underlying this entire standoff are accurate, it may not be off base to suggest that Clerk Peters enjoys the support of a majority of rank-and-file Mesa County Republicans.

Politically, and we can only hope this stays within the realm of politics, it’s a volatile situation.

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18 thoughts on “Tina Peters Joins Mesa County Mobs Heckling Commishes”

  2. Tina Peters is in the interesting territory of being judged culpable of actions sufficiently out of the mainstream to justify her removal as an elections official.  That strains the "innocent until proven guilty" presumption quite a bit.

    But unless you have unmentioned sources in a law enforcement agency or government attorney's staff, how do you know she is still being investigated?  Did someone promise an announcement of the end of an investigation and whether the matter reached a prosecute/don't prosecute decision? 

    1. "innocent until proven guilty."

      An administrative process determined there was sufficient evidence to preemptively remove her. Not unlike a grand jury.

      People get held in jail or forced to post bail all the time before trial, simply on the say-so of a prosecutor.

      I'm not sure what your complaint is.

  4. Welcome to Mesa County:  Proud Home of Colorado’s Weakest Link

    Besides the amazing buffoonery of Peters & Co., I think the second most amazing thing in this [words fail me] is that McInnis and Rowland actually are appearing reasonable and also standing against the onslaught.

    Welcome to Mesa County: World’s Largest Unfenced Asylum 

  5. I don't have an ounce of sympathy for our lord high commissioners. Scooter is trying to be a statesman, hard to pull off when he's spent the last several years watching the crazies get nuttier by the day and doing nothing. Rowland was a proud and enthusiastic cheerleader for Boebert and Peters. Only now is she attempting to act reasonable. Davis is slightly less crazy than the right-of-the right, but only because he got elected and does have some liability for county finances.

    They're twisting in the wind and I'm enjoying it.

     

    1. My heartfelt agreement. 

      McGinnis and Rowland are playing in a game they helped make. They have been having their way with things for a long time, but the Trumplicans©️ have turned on them, just as they turned on Mike Pence.

      I must admit, I am encouraged that a tipping point is coming…a dam is soon to burst. As they all banded together to prosecute rebellion, so must they answer for their actions. There will be a lot of singing in this rock opera before the fat lady sings.

      It is my nearly constant wish.

    2. "Scooter is trying to be a statesman, hard to pull off when he's spent the last several years watching the crazies get nuttier by the day and doing nothing"

      He kicked off the whole shit show my self-immolating in the 2010 primary thereby giving Dan "UN Bicycle Kiosk Conspiracy Guy" Maes a platform and a certain degree of legitimacy. 

  6. But what if… she was right? What if all that computery stuff that expert computer ninjas told her to do and acquire and forensically something something flash  hard something drive really did prove anything besides her crime?

    There would be books and movies and maybe a section of the library. 

    And, of course, if she was right then she would have been a leader in saving pillow guy the president something. She could get her Facebook and twitter privilege restored.    

    In the final analysis, I do not blame Grand Junction voters for re-electing her. It’s not like she drove around Capitol Hill drunk with a gun under her seat. Or showed up at DIA with a loaded gun in her handbag. Hell, she may not even have won- according to the Clerk there were irregularities in the last election. 

    She probably needs the paycheck but still , she should resign. 

    1. Yeah, the pillow guy is becoming like Kaiser Soze.  Except he’s real.  And he’s everywhere.

      And he’s a nut job.

      I wonder how many of these dingbats he personally recruited; and bankrolled 

  7. “They’ve made up their mind that I am guilty,” Peters said.

    And oddly enough, that's often what happens when someone suspected of something…goes into hiding.

      1. Jung himself would probably babble about some manifestation of darkness that people instinctively recognize within the collective unconscious, but that might be overthinking.

      2. Did you get tired, grandpa? You said I would run out of steam a while ago, didn’t you? Remember?

        Hey, so I’m having a hard time parsing this application. I’m limited to 7 items for your “commentary,” do you think I could double submit for “editorial” as well? Here’s what I’m thinking:

        1. The quote where you asserted with you publicly identifiable account and then reasserted the lie about an anonymous stranger.

        2. The quote where you suggested an “interdiction” to ice out the person you lied about, offended, and doubled down on said lies. You know, conspiring with other power commenters.

        3. That lovely article about the speech you gave talking about how victims deserve to be heard, and that it’s up to journalists such as yourself to be empathetic.

        4-5. It’s kind of a wash for a lot of your others, but definitely the replies you made confirming (with the same reasoning you use) that you are a homophobe and transphobe, and you have a puritanical view more appropriate for the Texas Horn.

        It wouldn’t make sense to submit the 158 articles again since those are not “winning material” obviously.  This trollbaiting and circa 2000 elementary school internetting is MUCH more respectable, it seems.

        OH! That’s right, and also the lovely part where you used your public account to tell a complete stranger who confessed his sick mother had died to take pot shots.  

        Awesome.  Really powerful stuff for a journalist concerned about investigating “power.”

        You’re a shithead. What was that you said? 

        “Have a shitty night, Trump Breath”

        Tee Hee!

  8. Well actually,  Politically we hope this enters the realm of the legal system…

    Politically, and we can only hope this stays within the realm of politics, it’s a volatile situation.

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