Former CO Clerk Tina Peters Tampered With Voting Machines For Trump, No 'Allegedly' About It

Underside of Trump's bus getting mighty crowded.

Former President Donald J. Trump may have a knack for slithering out of consequences, but his helper-minions, not so much! 

Tina Peters, that entitled (former) Mesa County, Colorado, clerk and recorder, conspiracy-theory grifter, certified Karen, and MyPillow pal who kicked a cop, was convicted on Monday of seven of 10 counts related to a 2021 breach of the Mesa County election system, including three counts of attempting to influence a public official; conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation; official misconduct; violation of duty; and failure to comply with an order of the Secretary of State. Hopefully just in time to serve as a warning to other would-be election fraudsketeers in time for the next election! Oh, who are we kidding.

As you might recall, Peters hatched a scheme to break into Mesa County’s elections offices, disable the security cameras, unlock the doors, and sneak in a former pro surfer named Conan Hayes to tamper with Dominion voting machines to prove some kind of anti-Trump fraud, or something. Even though Trump won the county by a large margin. And then SOMEHOW video of the hard drives and passwords made its way to the Gateway Pundit and to (alleged) Lord of QAnon himself, Ron Watkins. And nobody who posted the video had the courtesy to blur Peters’s password, making it easy for the FBI to figure out whodunit. Oops!

Then she ran to Mike Lindell’s cyber fraud hootenanny to complain that someone had been tampering with voting machines in Mesa County, just as the FBI came a-knocking on her door. Two of Peters’s co-conspirators, former elections manager Sandra Brown and clerk’s office employee Belinda Knisley, flipped on her. Which made Peters so pissed she illegally recorded Knisley’s plea on her iPad, which is how she found herself arrested in a coffee shop while “Let it Be” played in the background.

Watch the bodycam footage of Peters’s arrest, it’s great. (Sadly it can’t be embedded, but clicking the link is worth it, promise). Have you ever heard faker crying in your life? Lucky she wasn’t a grandma sitting in her car reading the Bible, she might’ve gotten Tased eight times! She also violated a court order by leaving the state to go to the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association in Nevada, where she told everybody that Lauren Boebert encouraged her break-in scheme, which Boebert denies. (When Boebert is the sanest person in the scenario, you know it’s bad news.)

In court last week, Knisley testified that Peters bought burner phones for Brown and herself from Walmart, and made it damn clear that she knew what she did was illegal by muttering “I’m fucked.” “She told me she was going to go to jail in just about every conversation. She said it to me many times, ‘I’m going to go to jail over this.’”

Peters admitted to the facts of the case, and she never found any evidence of that big fraud she was looking for, so why would she not just plead guilty? One possible reason might be because there’s not much grift in that! She spun her martyrdom into right-wing celebrity and a friendship with MyPillow kook Mike Lindell, who told The Colorado Sun in 2022 that he contributed up to $800,000 of his personal money for her defense. (Back before he supposedly lost all of his pillowbucks.)

Peters got a Rumble channel, where she’s done 50 shows moaning for an hour a week about her “Soviet show trial.” (JD Vance is an investor in Rumble, ICYMI. Just straight-up profiting from lies, no chaser.) Peters made a GoGriftMe that’s raised $135,000. She’s got a web page where you can buy stickers, mugs, posters, tote bags, T-shirts and even a dog sweatshirt with her face on it.

Another possible reason she didn’t just plead out is Dominion Voting Systems’ lawyers say Peters’s case was used by Overstock dot com loon Patrick Byrne and his lawyer Stefanie Lambert to leak discovery. Byrne, a violence-minded election denier who was bumping blinis with Russian spy Maria Butina at the same time he was hanging out with Treason J. Trump, is being sued by Dominion for $1.7 billion, and claims to have donated $1 million to Peters’s defense.

Peters’s sentencing is set for October 3 at 9:30 a.m., “Mountain” time. Can’t wait! She faces more than 20 years in prison, though she might just get parole, too, because she’s 68, and life is unfair.

[Colorado Sun]