Tag: Lies

Lies, Republicans violating laws, Sherronna Bishop

Is nationally-known election denier & “America’s Mom” Sherronna Bishop committing voter fraud by faking Colorado residence?

by Anne Landman • March 26, 2025 • 7 Comments

Sherronna Bishop

Former western Colorado resident and vocal right wing extremist Sherronna Bishop and her family moved to Carthage, Texas in May of 2022, several months after the FBI executed a search warrant on their house in connection with the Tina Peters election equipment breach scandal, and they’ve resided there ever since. Sherronna was an unindicted co-conspirator in Tina Peters’ criminal case and is generally credited with hatching the plot that got Tina sentenced to 9 years of incarceration. What hasn’t been made public until now is that in November, 2023, a year and a half after the Bishops relocated to Texas, Sherronna re-registered to vote not in her new home state of Texas, but here in Mesa County.

Fact-checking convicted felon, adjudicated sexual abuser and President Donald Trump’s speech to Congress on 3/4/25

by Anne Landman • March 5, 2025 • 5 Comments

Donald Trump flat-out lied to Congress and Americans last night in his talk to Congress and the country. Here are some of the lies, fact-checked immediately after the speech by political commentator Rachel Maddow.

Here is more vetting of Trump’s lies by the New York Times.

Here is more fact-checking of Trump’s lies by CBS News.

More checking of Trump’s lies by ABC News/Politifact.

The Guardian: “Trump’s talk was littered with false claims he’s been corrected on but continued to repeat.”

Convicted felon Steve Bannon, who gave a Nazi salute at CPAC on 2/21, is set to headline the Colorado Republican Party’s 2025 annual fundraising dinner in Denver

by Anne Landman • February 25, 2025 • 1 Comment

Convicted felon and former Trump aide Steve Bannon will headline Colorado’s Republican fundraising Centennial Dinner on March 28, 2025 in Denver.

Bannon plead guilty February 11, 2025 to defrauding donors to his “We Build the Wall” nonprofit organization, which told donors it was carrying out a private effort to build a border wall between the U.S. and Mexico. Charges against Bannon included money laundering, conspiracy and fraud. Bannon was also convicted in another similar federal case in 2020, but escaped prosecution in that case after Trump pardoned Bannon at the end of his first term. Bannon has also been banned from serving as an officer or director of any charitable organizations or nonprofits that has assets in New York, and is banned from accessing the names of people who donated to “We Build the Wall.”

Trump lies on the world stage, saying Ukraine started the war with Russia

by Anne Landman • February 19, 2025 • 12 Comments

In an incredible statement the equivalent of blaming a rape victim for being raped, Trump blamed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Ukraine itself during talks with Russia in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, February 18, 2025.

Ukrainian authorities were upset over not being included in Tuesday’s talks in Riyadh, but Trump dismissed the country’s concerns, saying Ukraine had “had three years to end the war,” before blaming the start of the conflict on Kyiv.

“You should have never started it,” Trump said, echoing a Kremlin talking point. The Kremlin has previously accused Ukraine of starting the war against Russia.

It is an undisputed fact that Russia invaded Ukraine unprovoked on February 24, 2022, after seizing the Ukrainian territory of Crimea in 2014.

Caroline Kennedy’s recorded statement to U.S. Senators warning of the dangers of approving her cousin, RFK Jr., to lead DHHS

by Anne Landman • January 28, 2025 • 19 Comments

Caroline Kennedy, daughter of John F. Kennedy, niece of Robert F. Kennedy, Sr. and cousin of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., recorded this video of herself reading a scathing letter she sent to all U.S. Senators warning them that her cousin, RFK, Jr., who was nominated to head the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), is not just completely unqualified for the position, but that he has personality traits that are extremely disturbing and worrisome.

Trump’s nominee to head public health agencies pushed FDA to revoke approval of Covid vaccines during a deadly phase of pandemic

by Anne Landman • January 18, 2025 • 2 Comments

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has no medical background and no experience running a large agency. (Photo: Encyclopedia Britannica).

Activist and vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy, whom Trump has nominated to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) despite his having no experience in public health, formally petitioned (pdf) the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in May of 2021 to revoke the Emergency Use Authorization for Covid vaccines at a time when thousands of Americans were dying weekly from Covid infections.

Meta’s Abandonment of Fact-Checking Empowers a President Who Traffics in Lies

by Anne Landman • January 17, 2025 • 9 Comments

Republished from The Contrarian with permission from the author, Barbara McQuade, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan and author of the New York Times bestseller Attack from Within: How Disinformation is Sabotaging America. As a legal analyst, her work has appeared in The Washington Post, Foreign Policy, Lawfare, Just Security, Slate, and National Public Radio, and she has been quoted in The New York Times, Time, Newsweek, Politico, and other publications.

As false information about wildfires in Los Angeles rages online, Mark Zuckerberg is fanning the flames of disinformation.

Last week, the Meta CEO announced that the company would stop fact-checking posts on its social media sites. Meta will move to a community notes model, similar to that used by the X platform, relying on users to flag false claims rather than using professional fact-checkers, such as PolitiFact. While conceding that more “bad stuff” will appear on Meta’s platforms — Facebook, Instagram and Threads — Zuckerberg said the change was necessary to prevent “too much censorship.”

Disinformation now identified as the greatest global threat

At a time when the World Economic Forum identifies disinformation as the greatest global threat, Zuckerberg is burning down the defense system of a social media company with 3.5 billion users worldwide. What could possibly motivate a move that will certainly lead to more chaos and upheaval in society?

Trump threatens to seize Greenland and the Panama canal, and use economic pressure to make Canada the 51st state

by Anne Landman • January 7, 2025 • 22 Comments

Trump said he wouldn’t rule out the use of military force to seize Greenland from Denmark and seize the Panama Canal from Panama. He also says he wants to erase Canada’s borders and make Canada America’s 51st state

In an hour long news conference on Tuesday, January 7, 2025, convicted felon, sexual abuser and president-elect Trump insisted Denmark should “give up” Greenland to the United States and refused to rule out use of military force to seize the island. Trump also repeated his desire that the U.S. should seize the Panama Canal from Panama. The canal, which was built by the U.S. over a century ago and returned to Panama by the Panama Canal treaty, signed by President Jimmy Carter in 1977. Trump also suggested using “economic force” instead of military force to make Canada into America’s 51st state. Trump has threatened Canada with a 25% tariff on all Canadian goods coming into the U.S., and told reporters that if Canada voluntarily merges with the U.S., there “would be no tariffs.” Trump mused, “Canada and the United States. That would really be something.”

Trump also said he wants to rename the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America.”

CO House Rep. Matt Soper (R-District 54) posts & then deletes controversial comment on Jimmy Carter’s death

by Anne Landman • January 3, 2025 • 15 Comments

Colorado House Rep. Matt Soper posted this comment about the death of former President Jimmy Carter on Twitter/X at 11:51 p.m. on 12/29/2024, the day Carter died. Soper deleted the comment shortly after, but not before a lot of people noticed and got screen shots of it.

Why we keep hearing about a gang “takeover” in Aurora

by Anne Landman • September 27, 2024 • 17 Comments

Fox News helped spread the lie being promoted by former President Trump and MAGA extremists that Venezuelan gangs were “taking over Colorado”

Message from Colorado Senator John Hickenlooper, September 26, 2024:

You’ve probably been hearing nonstop from conservative media and MAGA Republicans, including Donald Trump, that Aurora has been “taken over” by Venezuelan gangs. You might be confused why this information continues to spread even though it has repeatedly¹ been² proven³ false. You might also be wondering what the truth is – the actual ground truth stripped of the politics.

I wouldn’t blame you. This whole thing has been a confusing mess with plenty of misinformation. So let’s look at the facts without the games.

Paonia’s High Country Shopper under fire for running outrageous, false political ad

by Anne Landman • June 15, 2024 • 4 Comments

Ad that ran in June 12, 2024 edition of the classified ad paper the High Country Shopper

Delta County residents are up in arms about a display ad that appeared on Page 20 of the June 12 edition of the High Country Shopper, a weekly newspaper published in Paonia that runs classified ads and promotes local businesses.

The ad, which is a departure from the norm for the Shopper, shows a photo of President Biden among an array photos of fascist dictators who have “had their opponents arrested,” including Hitler, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Fidel Castro, Stalin and others. The ad was paid for by Cedaredge resident Wes Fisher.

Where could someone get such a misleading idea as this?

Mesa County Public Library to offer class on how to tell good sources from bad on the internet

by Anne Landman • June 11, 2024 • 9 Comments

The Mesa County Central Library will hold a very important 90 minute class Monday, June 24 from 3:00-4:30 p.m. on how to evaluate online sources for credibility and authoritativeness to help boost internet users’ ability to tell fact from fiction.

This class is sorely needed in Mesa County, especially by Republican local elected officials who have demonstrated a lack in the ability to tell credible sources of information from websites that peddle lies and false information to readers.

In 2020, Mesa County Commissioner Janet Rowland displayed a chilling inability to tell fact from fiction after she publicly promoted the Infowars conspiracy theory that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control was intentionally inflating the number of Covid deaths. Rowland wrote on her her social media that hospitals were being pressured to inflate the numbers of Covid deaths because it meant they would get more funding. The truth is that hospitals make money by treating people, not by listing specific causes of deaths on death certificates. At the time, Rowland’s false theory was being promoted by Laura Ingraham of Fox News — one of Rowland’s most frequently-cited news sources. Fox News has a reputation for knowingly

Stephen D. Daniels, Janet Rowland-appointed Chair of the Mesa County Board of Public Health, is a prodigious spreader of disinformation on social media, including about vaccines and gender issues, without citing credible sources. (Photo: Mesa County)

telling lies to the public.

Rowland’s new Director of the Mesa County Board of Public Health, Stephen D. Daniels, is also prodigious spreader of lies and disinformation on his social media. His posts target a wide range of subjects including the U.S. Department of Justice, gender issues, religion and the efficacy and safety of vaccines, including ideas spread by anti-vaxx presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who claimed that Covid-19 was “ethnically targeted” to attack caucasians and Black people, and to spare Jews.

Janet Rowland, whose college degree is a bachelor in Bible studies, is running for a 4th term as County Commissioner, after lying to the public on her social media about Covid topics and never apologizing to the public for spreading disinformation. (Photo: Janet Rowland campaign website)

In 2019, while still a State Senator, Ray Scott cited a full-on wacko nutbag information source in a tweet about climate change in which he wrote “NASA admits that climate change occurs because of changes in Earth’s solar orbit, and NOT because of SUVs and fossil fuels.” To support his claim, Scott cited an article published on a website called “NaturalNews.com.” NaturalNews.com had been discredited as an off-the-wall, full-on wacko conspiracy website and was rated #1 on the list of the Top Ten Worst Anti-Science Websites. Scott also said that studies about climate change made no sense and that we “have better things to do” than to address the crisis.

Let’s hope some of these Republican elected officials attend this talk.

Former State Senator Ray Scott cited a full-on wacko website as a source of information on climate change in 2019. The site was rated #1 on a list of the top ten worst anti-science websites.

Bad behavior, Conservatives, Crime, Lies, Local concerns, Republican lies, Republicans violating laws, Trump Insanity

New York jury convicts Donald Trump on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records

by Anne Landman • May 30, 2024 • 12 Comments

A New York jury has found Donald Trump guilty on all 34 criminal counts of falsifying business records in his so-called “hush money trial” about payments he made to porn star Stormy Daniels to keep her quiet in the run-up to the 2016 election. He is the first U.S. President to be convicted of felony crimes.

Trump will be sentenced July 11 at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time by Judge Juan Merchan, who presided over the case.

Republican CD-3 candidate Jeff Hurd straight-up lies in new TV ad

by Anne Landman • May 26, 2024 • 14 Comments

Scene from a new Jeff Hurd ad titled “Fight for American Energy” that’s running on local TV

We had hoped that maybe Jeff Hurd, a home-grown Grand Junction Republican running to represent Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District in Washington, D.C., might be a slightly more honest politician than we’ve had in the CD-3 office for several years now, but Hurd just disappointed us all.

He put out a new TV ad two days ago in which he straight-up lies to viewers.

Hurd casts himself as a strong proponent of fossil fuels in the ad, showing piles of coal and people filling up their cars at gas pumps. But he lies to viewers right out of the gate by making a false claim that “Biden is waging war on American energy.”

Whether we like it or not, that’s hardly the case.

Janet Rowland says she’ll “fight for the truth” while having a history of being untruthful herself in the local media

by Anne Landman • April 16, 2024 • 7 Comments

Janet Rowland’s March 28 Instagram post touting her devotion to “the truth.”

County Commissioner Janet Rowland (R), in a campaign plug she posted March 28 on her VoteJanetRowland Instagram page, says she “will always fight for the truth, even when the media presents the facts in a way that distorts the truth.”

But even as Janet denigrates the local media as untruthful, we must remember an episode in 2007 when Janet deceived the public herself by using local media.

Making it worse is the fact that even after it was exposed, she’s never taken responsibility for it, or apologized for it.

Shortly after losing statewide election for lieutenant governor as Bob Beauprez’s running mate in 2006, while she was previously Mesa County Commissioner, Janet was a columnist for the Grand Junction Free Press, at the time a competing newspaper to the Daily Sentinel. She wrote several columns for the Free Press under her own name until one day a sharp reader spotted the fact that Janet had been lifting the text of her columns word for word from government pamphlets, and brought this to the attention of the Free Press’s editor.

Relative of Tina Peters calls her “vile” in 2/28/24 Daily Sentinel article

by Anne Landman • March 2, 2024 • 12 Comments

Tina Peters and her financial benefactor Mike Lindell, the My Pillow CEO

In a February 28, 2024 article in the Daily Sentinel about a lawsuit against Tina Peters in which she is accused of stealing her ex-husband’s house (pdf) by converting the deed to her own name while she was county clerk, Sentinel reporter Charles Ashby interviewed Tina’s former brother in law, Jack Peters, whose brother, Thomas, died December 31, 2023. Tina and Thomas Peters were married for 36 years.

Jack Peters describes himself as “extremely conservative” and says he believes there might be election fraud going on, but says Tina “is unfairly using her former husband and her deceased son, Remington, to gain sympathy in her criminal case in order to gather legal defense money. Remington, the couple’s only son, died in a 2017 parachute accident as a Navy seal performing at an air show in New York City,” the Sentinel writes.

‘I’ve always been a bit at odds with Tina, she’s always been somewhat abrasive,’ Jack Peters said. ‘My brother-in-law John and my sister Kathy are being unjustly persecuted by this vile woman.’ —The Daily Sentinel

Mesa County GOP official decries her party’s continued support of Tina Peters and Donald Trump

by Anne Landman • February 11, 2024 • 9 Comments

Mesa County Republican Party Secretary Terry Porter stood up to Colorado Republican Party Chair Dave Williams, saying his support of Tina Peters and Donald Trump is making “too many of us ashamed of being a Republican in Colorado right now.”

Mesa County Republicans may be starting to see the harm they are doing to their party and America by continuing to support Tina Peters, Donald Trump and others like them.

On February 2, shortly before Tina Peters’ criminal trial was about to start, Colorado Republican Party Chair Dave Williams sent a mass email out to Colorado Republicans telling them to “Keep Tina Peters in your prayers while she fights the establishment and our corrupt judicial system in her upcoming trial which will begin on February 9^th in Mesa County.” He called the criminal charges against Peters “retaliation, persecution, and prosecution for preserving our election records and exposing the fraud inside the machines.”

That email drew quick pushback from Republicans across the state, including former Secretaries of State and current and former Republican county clerks. It also drew a sharp rebuke from Mesa County Republican Party Secretary Terry Porter.

Porter quickly emailed Williams back and included Colorado GOP Vice Chair Hope Scheppelman and Secretary Anna Ferguson in the thread, saying:

CO Republican Party Chair praises Tina Peters, gets pushback from GOP members & former Mesa County GOP Chair Kevin McCarney

by Anne Landman • February 9, 2024 • 3 Comments

Dave Williams

In a mass email to members of the Colorado GOP on Feb. 2, Colorado Republican Party Chair Dave Williams praised Tina Peters for “fighting the establishment and our corrupt judicial system.” He wrote that the charges against her were “retaliation, persecution, and prosecution for preserving our election records and exposing the fraud inside the machines” and said Tina has “risked so much to expose the fraud by doing her job as a county clerk…” He concluded by saying that “We must all unite in prayer and support for Tina Peters so that the jury sees this for what it really is and acquits her of all charges.” Williams added, “We are praying for you, dear Tina. You are loved and appreciated by all.” [All Italicized emphasis in original.]

No proof of fraud has been found in Colorado’s or Mesa County’s elections.

The letter drew immediate pushback from a long list of prominent Colorado Republicans including former Republican secretaries of state. According to a February 6 article in Colorado Newsline by Sharon Sullivan, the written response to Williams said,

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