37 search results for "Tina Peters felony"

Convicted felon Rod Blagojevich to headline campaign fundraiser for indicted Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters

Kyle Clark of 9News in Denver reported yesterday (video) that convicted felon Rod Blagojevich will headline a Saturday, May 14, 2022 fundraiser for indicted Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters‘ campaign for secretary of state. The fundraiser will be held at Dunafon Castle, a wedding venue in Lakewood, Colorado owned by Debbie and Mike Dunafon, who also own Shotgun Willie’s strip club in Glendale, Colorado. The Dunafons are hosting the fundraiser. The cost to rent the venue on a Saturday for a group of up to 150 people is $9,400.00.

Just how much are taxpayers paying Tina Peters and Belinda Knisely not to do their jobs?

Tina Peters

Everyone wants to know just how much Mesa County taxpayers are shelling out in salary and benefits to indicted Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters and Deputy Clerk Belinda Knisely for not doing their jobs while they obey conditions of their bond to stay away from their workplace and co-workers. During all this time of not going to work, they have continued to collect paychecks.

Thanks to the County, we’ve got the figures.

Between August 10, 2021 and April 22, 2022, Knisely collected a total of $71,524.14 in salary and benefits including health and disability insurance, and Tina collected a total of $83,958.88 for a grand total paid to the pair since August 10, 2021 of $155,483.02.

Belinda Knisely

The two are indicted on multiple felony charges related to election tampering.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Accused felon & election denier Tina Peters leads Republican primary for Secretary of State


In an event that shows just how far out of touch with reality Colorado’s Republic Party has become, election denier Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who was indicted a month ago on multiple felony charges related to tampering with election equipment, was the runaway winner for the Secretary of State nomination at the Colorado Republican Party state assembly April 9, 2022 in Colorado Springs. Peters won a whopping 62% of the vote, making her the Republicans’ front runner for Secretary of State in the primary election on June 28. Peters will oppose former two-term Jefferson County Clerk and Recorder and former president of the Colorado County Clerks Association Pam Anderson, on the primary ballot. Anderson petitioned her way onto the ballot. (Anderson’s mother-in-law is former longtime Colorado Senate Majority Leader Norma Anderson.) While Pam Anderson is a Republican, she not an election denier. Peters also faces Mike O’Donnell, a candidate from Yuma County.

Colorado introduces New “Tina Peters Bill” to stop insider threats to election security

Sen. Stephen Fenberg, President of the Colorado Senate, introduced the bill

A new bill introduced in the Colorado Senate March 11 appears to be tailor-made to address the behaviors exhibited by Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters that led to her 10 criminal indictments last week over election tampering, including seven felonies. If she’s convicted, she could go to prison.

House Bill 22-153 (pdf), titled “Internal Election Security Measures,” would shorten the amount of time newly-elected clerks have to get certified to run elections from two years to six months. The required courses include information in voter registration and list maintenance, accessibility, coordinated elections, mail-in ballot and in-person voting processes, voting systems testing, risk-limiting audits, canvassing, and election security.

Peters never got the state-required certification to run elections

One of Tina Peters’ attorneys is himself ethically and legally challenged

Jason Jovanovich, the Glenwood Springs-based attorney Tina Peters is using for her recent felony indictments (Photo: Facebook)

Jason Jovanovich, an attorney and former district judge from Glenwood Springs, is the attorney handling Tina Peters’ recent criminal indictment for alleged election equipment tampering.

Republican Governor Bill Owens appointed Jovanovich as a judge in Garfield County in 2005.

In 2006, while overseeing a hearing about a dog attack, Jovanovich compared pit bulls to sharks and lions and said “they belong in zoos and should be illegal.” He added,

“If I had a big red button right here that would kill all the pit bulls, I wouldn’t hesitate to press it.”

Tina Peters scandal is having political repercussions in Garfield County

Long-time GarCo County Clerk & Recorder Jean Alberico (Photo: Sopris Sun)

Garfield County is feeling some ripple effects from the Tina Peters scandal, and there’s growing concern about it.

After four terms as Clerk and nearly 40 years of working in the Clerk’s office, long time Garfield County Clerk Jean Alberico, is retiring this year, which means there will be a contested election for the office of Clerk and Recorder in Garfield County for the first time in many years this election cycle. Normally few people care about the Clerk and Recorder’s office in their county, but Garfield County voters need look no further than Mesa County next door to understand the importance of this office and the disaster that can unfold if the wrong person is elected to it, as happened here in Mesa County.

Tina Peters in custody on $500k bond; Chair of the Colorado GOP urges Peters to suspend her campaign for SOS

Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters’ mugshot for her latest arrest on 3/9/2022. She is charged with 8 felonies and 3 misdemeanors related to tampering with election equipment

Tina Peters was booked into the Mesa County jail this afternoon on $500,000 cash-only bond after surrendering at the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office.

According to the Daily Sentinel, if she is convicted on all charges, and if they run consecutively, Peters could get a maximum penalty of 28 years in jail and $2.7 million in fines, and Knisley could get a maximum sentence of 21 years in prison and $2 million in fines.

Peters blamed her arrest on Democrats and establishment Republicans who dislike Donald Trump. She gave a long statement to the Daily Sentinel that said in part, “Using a grand jury to formalize politically motivated accusations against candidates is (a) tactic long employed by the Democrat Party.”

Tina Peters claims she was “framed” with the ballots left in the ballot box from the 2019 election


Speaking to members of the Jefferson County Republican Men’s Club on February 21, 2022 (video), Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters claimed that she was “framed” when election workers found “429 ballots” uncollected in a ballot box from the 2019 election.

The ballots were discovered when election workers went to empty the box for the 2020 election, but Peters refused to petition a judge to open and count them and include them in the final vote tally from the 2019 election. In her talk, Peters also got the number of uncounted ballots wrong. 574 ballots were discovered left in the ballot box, not 429.

Peters claimed without evidence that “they stuffed the ballot box with 479 ballots” in order to “take over my office” and said it was part of an effort to “take over the western slope.”

Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters turns herself in, pays own $500 bond

Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters’ mug shot, 2/10/2022

Over-the-top, rogue Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters turned herself in to the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office this morning on a misdemeanor arrest warrant around 10:30 a.m., paid her own bond of $500 and was soon released, according to news reports.

This arrest was for obstructing a peace officer as she refused to turn over an IPad pursuant to a warrant for the item issued by the DA’s office yesterday. Peters was believed to have illegally used the IPad to record a court proceeding for her former Chief Deputy Clerk Belinda Knisley, who is facing charges of cybercrime and 2nd degree felony burglary.

You can read the warrant for Tina Peters’ arrest here.

On internet TV show, Steve Bannon pledges less than a cent and a half to Tina Peters’ legal defense fund

Tina on Steve Bannon’s internet TV show “War Room” on Dec. 31, 2021

On December 31, 2021, Steve Bannon lionized Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters on his internet TV show “Bannon’s War Room,” in an interview titled “The Deplorables-Gold Star Mom Tina Peters Who Sounded The Alarm On Election Fraud.”

Bannon let Peters spew the usual string of rants we’re all familiar with by now: how terribly she’s been harassed, how “they’re attacking regular Americans,” how they “fired her elections manager with no due process, nothing” and how they so horribly removed her chief deputy in August on “trumped-up charges.”

A minute and a half into the 7-minute interview, Bannon starts trying to play Tina off with increasingly loud bagpipe music, he lets her mechanically drone one for another minute or so. Tina continues… “They booked my chief deputy on a class 4 felony just for coming to work” and “they had a battering ram in the driveway” that she now admits “they didn’t use.”

Bannon cuts her off roughly 30 seconds later to go for a break.

Arrest affidavit: Trump’s racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric motivated strangulation attack on local TV reporter

Patrick Thomas Egan, 39, who attacked and attempted to strangle KKCO TV reporter Ja’Ronn Alex

KKCO TV News reporter Ja’Ronn Alex was followed and physically attacked December 18 by a Trump supporter who yelled “Are you even a U.S. citizen! This is Trump’s America now! I took an oath to protect this country from people like you!”

Elect a criminal, expect crimes

There will be no one to blame but American voters for what is going to happen next.

After a decade in politics, we all knew Donald Trump was a criminal.

He was found guilty last May of 34 felony counts of fraud and was slapped with a $355 million fine after he and his company were found guilty of engaging in a decade-long scheme to defraud banks and lenders by falsifying the values of his properties. In writing the verdict in the case, Judge Arthur Engoron wrote “The frauds found here leap off the page and shock the conscience.” In 2023, a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation.

District 1 Commissioner candidate Dr. Tom Acker to speak at Edgewater Brewery May 9 @ 6:00 p.m.

Retired CMU Professor Dr. Tom Acker is running for the District 1 Commissioner seat, against Cody Davis

If you need a breather from Mesa County Republicans who use their elected offices to violate morals and ethics, deny reality and promote conspiracies, commit felonies, engage in religious grandstanding, double-dipviolate state laws, mindlessly spout racist tropes in public hearings, say things that draw national embarrassment onto our community, engage in cronyism, compromise voting equipment, take credit for the contributions of others and spend hundreds of thousands in taxpayers funds on exacting revenge on people they take a personal dislike to — if you want to consider electing people with integrity for a change, then come and hear what Tom Acker, the only Democrat running for Mesa County Commissioner has to say.

Dr. Acker is a retired Colorado Mesa University professor Emeritus who taught Spanish at CMU for two decades. He is running against Cody Davis for the District 1 county commissioner seat.

Former G.J. Chamber of Commerce CEO Diane Schwenke to run for G.J. City Council

Longtime Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce President Diane Schwenke

The former longtime CEO of the Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce, Diane Schwenke, has announced she will be running for the at-large seat on Grand Junction City Council in 2023.

Yes, THAT Diane Schwenke.

The one who endorsed convicted felony embezzler Steve King for state Senate in 2012.

The one who endorsed Ray Scott as a replacement for convicted felon Steve King. In 2018, Scott double-billed both his legislative and campaign expense accounts for over $1,000 in Uber rides, effectively doubling his personal reimbursements. He was also sued by the ACLU for blocking constituents from his official social media accounts, costing taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars.

The same Diane Schwenke who endorsed Laura Bradford for Colorado House of Representatives in 2012. Bradford was pulled over by Denver police for driving under the influence of alcohol during her first and only term in the House. She quit after that term.

The same Diane Schwenke who endorsed Rose Pugliese for County Commissioner. Pugliese worked to kill the Riverfront Trail System by gutting all funding for it, circulated a petition to force D-51 teachers to stop teaching kids about climate change, and also stumped for the disastrous Tina Peters to be elected County Clerk.

Sherronna Bishop moves to Texas, gets her own show on Lindell TV

Sherronna Bishop in January, 2022

Notorious Garfield County election fraud conspiracist Sherronna Bishop and her husband, Neil, sold their home in Silt in early May and moved to Texas, where Bishop now stars in her own “Americas Mom” video and audio talk shows three times a week on Mike Lindell’s alt-tech streaming platform, FrankSpeech.com.

Political extremists are increasingly turning to small alt-tech platforms like FrankSpeech.com after being banned from broadcast television and major social media services like Facebook and Twitter for continually lying to the public, promoting false information and fringe political views.

Detailed investigation finds no election fraud occurred in Mesa County — Clerk not exonerated of crimes

D.A. Dan Rubinstein and Investigator Michael Struwe tell the Mesa County Commissioners on May 19, 2022 how they arrived at their findings that there was no prosecutable election tampering in the local 2020 and 2021 elections

It came to attention while talking with a friend this morning that some people have misconstrued news reports about Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubinstein’s recent investigation into election tampering (video, 1 hr, 12 min) and his subsequent statement that he will not be taking any legal action on Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters’ claim that criminal election fraud occurred in Mesa County.

Some people believe this statement, that no criminal activity was found, meant that Tina Peters has been exonerated of any wrongdoing.

That’s totally incorrect.

The Grand Junction Area Chamber’s long track record of harmful candidate endorsements

Longtime Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce President Diane Schwenke

Note: In light of Chamber President Diane Schwenke’s recent announcement that she is finally retiring after 25 years at the Chamber, I am re-posting articles about her disastrous tenure at Chamber in hopes that the Chamber Board will see what a boondoggle she’s been and finally take an entirely new direction when they hire a new president after she leaves. This article was originally posted on 9/28/21.

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Local candidates usually tout their endorsements by the Grand Junction Area Chamber of Commerce, but the Chamber’s long track record of endorsing deeply flawed candidates shows that candidates should run from a Chamber endorsement as fast as they can, or at least politely decline it.

Observation of the Chamber’s endorsements going back a decade reveals that the Chamber does not evaluate candidates based on criteria like experience, background, education, knowledge or qualifications to hold office. Rather, the Chamber only considers a candidate’s political and religious ideology before endorsing them, and nothing more.

This extraordinarily narrow criteria has resulted in a flawed process that has proven detrimental to our community many, many times over.

D-51 School Board candidate Voter Guide for the 11/2/2021 election

NOTE: This article is longer than usual owing to the number of people running, the amount of information available on them and the need to put the practical meaning of Chamber endorsements in context so people can accurately grasp their significance. One photo in this article may be unsuitable for kids. Below is a brief summary of my vote recommendations for school board, if you don’t have time to read the whole article immediately:

Recommended Votes:

District C – Trish Mahre

District D – Nick Allan

District E – David Combs

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Following are summaries of the candidates running for District 51 School Board in the upcoming November 2 election. Sources of information included the candidates’ publicly available campaign and work websites, their campaign and personal social media, and other primary and authoritative online resources, including minutes of District 51 Board meetings and the website of Mesa County Libraries.