Tag: Embarrassing Mesa County Republicans

Grand Jury indicts Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters on felony charges; warrants issued for arrest of both Peters and Belinda Knisely without bond

WANTED: An arrest warrant has been issued for Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters after a grand jury indicted her this morning on a mix of 13 felonies and misdemeanors.

The grand jury indicted Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters this morning (pdf) on 13 counts related to her official misconduct and tampering with election equipment. The charges include a mix of felonies and misdemeanors.

Peters is charged with three counts of attempting to influence a public servant (a Class 4 felony), one count of attempting to influence a public servant (a Class 5 felony), one count of criminal impersonation (a Class 6 felony), one count of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation (a Class 6 felony); one count of identify theft (a Class 4 felony) and one count of first-degree official misconduct, a Class 2 misdemeanor. Peters is also charged with one count each of violation of duty and failure to comply with the Secretary of State, both unclassified misdemeanor offenses.

The grand jury also indicted Deputy Mesa County Clerk Belinda Knisely on violation of duty, failure to comply with the Secretary of State, conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, and multiple counts of attempting to influence a public servant.

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.”

Tina Peters: “There’s NO WAY that these people won in our town,” and few on the right actually care enough about her “bombshell forensic report” to read it


On February 11, 2022, the same day she was officially arrested and booked on charges of obstruction, Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters appeared as a speaker at an “Emergency Town Hall” event held by the right wing extremist group Faith, Education, Commerce United in Castle Rock, Colorado.

During the Q &A, a member of the audience asks Peters:

“I’d like to hear from Tina. Would you bring us up to speed on all this? I read in the paper … I don’t get it, I mean I sort of get it, but the whole thing .. They walk into a restaurant, they arrest you and then they let you go. I don’t get it. Could you give us a nice little synopsis here? What started this in the first place?”

Tina responds by saying in part,

“So I did not go out on a fishing expedition, I did not go out to, you know, find something to prove that Trump won. It was very obvious, I think, to everybody. But when I saw the City Council election, I said ‘there’s no way, there is NO WAY that these people won in our town.'”

Matt Crane, the Executive Director of the Colorado County Clerks Association, who is a Republican, responded to this statement by Tina Peters by saying:

Tina Peters now says she is running for Secretary of State, but there’s no evidence of it so far

Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters grins for her mug shot at the time of her arrest in Grand Junction on 2/10/2022

Update: Tina Peters finally filed a candidate affidavit saying she is running for Secretary of State on 2/23/22.

Adding a whole new level of crazy to her repertoire, after getting arrested last week on charges of obstruction, and then telling an adoring election conspiracy-theory endorsing crowd in Castle Rock immediately afterward that no one can stop her, Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters announced this morning that she is running for Secretary of State (SOS), and will challenge incumbent SOS Jena Griswold for the seat.

No proof of candidacy for SOS so far

The only problem is Peters declared on the steps of the Mesa County Justice Center on January 13 that she was running for re-election as Mesa County Clerk. She can’t run for both offices at once, and so far the only candidate affidavit on file with the Secretary of State’s office is the one that says she is running for County Clerk. There is no affidavit on Tracer showing she is actually running for Secretary of State. A call to the Secretary of State’s Campaign Finance Office (CFO), where candidates must submit their affidavits to officially be considered running for any office, revealed that so far no affidavit for Peters’ run for SOS exists either on their website or in the pending queue of the CFO, and Peters hasn’t taken any action to nullify her affidavit to run for clerk.

Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters unrepentant, tells crowd “They cannot stop me”

Tina Peters speaks to a far right wing crowd on the same day she was charged with crimes by the Mesa County Sheriff's Office.

On the same day the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office booked County Clerk Tina Peters on charges of obstructing a police officer and obstructing government operations, she was a guest speaker at an “Emergency Town Hall” held by the far right wing group “Faith, Education and Commerce United “(FEC United) in Castle Rock, Colorado where she got a standing ovation with rousing applause.

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.

Video of Tina Peters getting cuffed and resisting officers at Main Street Bagels

The above is a 2 minute video of Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters getting cuffed and detained this morning around 10:45 a.m. by law enforcement officers in the front room at Main Street Bagels. The video was posted on the website of 9News in Denver.

The video shows Peters kicking at an officer, struggling to get away, yelling “That hurts! Let go of me! Give me my car keys!” The officers cuff her and take her outside onto the sidewalk in front of the restaurant.

Peters was detained for resisting a search warrant for her IPad, which she allegedly used to record a court hearing she attended for her former Chief Deputy Belinda Knisely earlier that morning, despite the judge having admonished people inside the courtroom not to record the proceedings.

Tina Peters handcuffed by law enforcement at Main Street Bagels for failure to turn over IPad pursuant to warrant

Tina Peters

Word is that rogue Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters was handcuffed this morning at Main Street Bagels, around 11:00 a.m. in the front area of the restaurant. Peters was wearing a red jacket, was surrounded by law enforcement officials in county uniforms, including one woman, and some plain-clothes cops. Peters was cuffed with her hands behind her back in the front portion of the restaurant. More soon.

Update, 1:08 p.m., 2/8/22 – There’s information on Twitter from Jesse A. Paul of the Colorado Sun, formerly of the Denver Post, that Tina was “briefly detained and released,” that her detainment did not have to do directly with the breach of an election system, and that authorities are going to release additional information soon.

“Stand for The Constitution” is little more than Constitution theater

Comments under a video Stand for the Constitution posted of the Tina Peters Rally Dec. 1. The group blocks speech they don’t like from their Facebook page, showing they oppose the spirit of free speech enshrined in the U.S. Constitution

“Stand for the Constitution,” (SFTC) a Mesa County group that claims to defend the rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and the integrity of local elections, has started blocking critics and deleting comments it doesn’t like from its public Facebook page while defending the only person in Mesa County who has ever publicly refused to count hundreds of legitimately-cast ballots: Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters.

The First Amendment of the Constitution makes it illegal for government to enact laws restricting freedom of speech and expression. Stand for the Constitution is a private group, not a government entity, so it has every right to block people from its social media pages. But despite claims that it exists to promote freedoms enshrined in the Constitution, SFTC blocks speech they do not want to acknowledge.

CO SOS Elections Division files another lawsuit against Tina Peters, this time over campaign finance violations

Tina Peters is soliciting donations for her “Legal Defense Fund” in violation of Colorado law, according to new lawsuit

The Elections Division of Colorado’s Secretary of State’s office filed a lawsuit (pdf) November 5 against Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters for Peters’ ongoing efforts to raise funds for a re-election campaign that so far doesn’t exist.

The lawsuit says Peters also accepted illegal illegal contributions “in the form of travel expenses, including a flight on a private jet and lodging, contributed by Mike Lindell, founder and CEO of MyPillow, in connection with Ms. Peters’ appearance at a Cyber Symposium on or about August 10-12, 2021 and thereafter.”