July 29, 2024 12:25 PM UTC

Judge Pre-Emptively Shuts Down Tina Peters' "Big Lie Defense"

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• by: Colorado Pols

The long-awaited trial of ex-Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters on felony charges related to the theft and redistribution of proprietary Dominion Voting Systems software in her charge as part of a failed attempt to supply evidence that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump begins this week, and the Grand Junction Sentinel’s Charles Ashby reports that Judge Matthew Barrett is starting things off with some level-setting about what kind of defense from Peters he is willing to entertain. And as we expected, the idea that Peters was some kind of “whistleblower” acting properly in the alleged plot to steal a third party’s identity and allow access by unauthorized conspiracy theorists to voting equipment is a nonstarter in this court of law:

While Barrett didn’t dismiss out of hand eight of the proposed witnesses Peters hopes to call — he’s withholding judgment on doing so until he learns more about exactly what they want to tell the jury — he did reject numerous proposed defense strategies that center around Peters being some sort of hero or that the entire case is politically motivated.

“This trial is not about whether voting machines accurately and reliably collect voter data,” Barrett wrote in a July 9 order denying several proposed affirmative defenses that Peters wanted to use.

“This trial is not about whether Dominion and the secretary of state conspired to cover up vulnerabilities in the voting process,” he added. “The jury will not be tasked with deciding any of those issues. Rather, the jury will determine whether the prosecution can prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that defendant committed the charged crimes.” [Pols emphasis]

Peters’ claims to protection as a whistleblower were rejected by federal courts before her final appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was denied last week. The biggest reason the court sees no need for the jury to decide the larger question about Dominion Voting Machines’ supposed vulnerabilities is that has already been separately argued and debunked over and over, including by Mesa County DA Dan Rubinstein himself. No evidence produced by Peters’ theft and leak of Dominion software supports the theory that Dominion Voting Systems equipment helped steal the election from Trump, a defamatory claim for which Fox News has already paid dearly and other media outlets who repeated these defamatory claims are about to. The Dominion Voting Systems conspiracy theory is heavily dependent on apparent fabrications by another Coloradan, Joe Oltmann, who all the other “Big Liars” point to as the original source of the false allegations they’re paying millions to settle for repeating.

With Peters’ deputies lined up to testify against her, the specific crimes Peters is charged with are not expected to be difficult to prove. The seeming hopelessness of the situation has Peters’ longsuffering supporters once again rallying the faithful in “prayer warfare” all week:

Followed by a fundraiser next weekend starring Oltmann and Arizona election denier Mark Finchem:

Earlier this month, the Colorado Times Recorder covered a meeting in Grand Junction headlined by Oltmann in which Peters’ supporters called on potential jurors in the trial to “stand with” her, which can be interpreted as a call for jurors to attempt to nullify the laws Peters is charged with breaking. That’s something we expect the prosecution to be watching closely for in the jury selection process. Even the Sentinel itself is taking extra precautions to remind potential jurors to avoid news coverage of the trial, including theirs:

Editor’s Note

WARNING

If you have been called in for jury duty on Monday when the process for choosing a jury begins, The Daily Sentinel encourages you NOT to read this article.

As in all court cases, potential jurors are told to avoid reading, viewing or discussing any stories related to a case they are to hear.

Needless to say, newspapers don’t add this warning to all stories about pending court cases! But this case, due to its connection to the biggest ongoing political crisis of our generation, is different–and it’s easy to understand why this newspaper serving one of the state’s most conservative areas is being so cautious. Mesa County’s Republican elected officials, Peters’ former colleagues, likewise face an impossible task trying to reconcile their support for Trump with Tina Peters’ alleged crimes in support of Trump. If you accept that what Peters allegedly did was wrong, just like every other conspiracy theory regarding the 2020 presidential election was wrong, how can you continue to support Trump while he clings to these discredited conspiracy theories for dear life?

The more you think about it, the less sense it makes–and that’s why so many Republicans will breathe a sigh of relief when this years-anticipated trial is finally over.