Tag: Trump Insanity

Trump aides, appointees & family all testify that Trump kept pushing the lie of widespread election fraud to the public even after they told him no proof of fraud exists

In this video clip from a House Jan 6 Select Committee public hearing posted to the public on June 14, William Barr, Trump’s Attorney General, Trump’s daughter and White House Advisor Ivanka Trump, multiple Trump campaign aides and attorneys all testify that they informed Trump in no uncertain terms that no evidence of widespread election fraud existed and his claims about it were false, and in spite of this, Trump continued to push the lie out to the public that widespread election fraud had cost him the election.

Trump admitted to aide he had lost the election

Here is just one piece of proof former President Trump is lying by continuing to insist he won the 2020 election. In this video,  Trump’s former White House Director of Strategic Communications, Alyssa Farah Griffin, tells the interviewer that Trump admitted to her right after the election that he had lost the election.

Trump is continuing to promote the Big Lie even long after it has been thoroughly debunked to get his followers to send him money. Trump has already scammed his followers out of $250 million by promoting a non-existent “official election integrity” fund.

Griffin’s conservative credentials are solid. She previously wrote articles for the far-right conspiracy website World Net Daily, she was an associate producer for the Laura Ingraham Show and previously served as Communications Director for Trump’s White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, among other positions.

Oklahoma is just the beginning of what life will be like under Republican rule

In late May 2022, Oklahoma once again passed the nation’s worst abortion ban, making it the first state to effectively end women’s right to have an abortion, and making this article, that I first published on May 20, 2019, even more relevant.

Oklahoma Republicans just passed a mind-blowingly strict law that makes abortion illegal in virtually every circumstance, effectively terminating the right of women in the state to control their own bodies and reproductive fate.

Oklahoma wasn’t alone in this, either. Other Republican-dominated states are also enacting extremely strict laws that effectively make abortion illegal, with some banning the procedure as soon as a fetal heartbeat is detected.

Republicans base these laws on their belief that a fetus is a fully legal person entitled to all the rights and privileges that all legal American citizens enjoy.

But if actually put into effect, what do these beliefs really portend for life in America?

When and where to watch the Jan. 6 Select Committee hearings locally — will keep this page updated

Update July 8, 2022 – The next hearing of the Jan. 6 Select Committee will be on July 12, 2022 at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time, 8:00 a.m. Mountain (local) Time. A summary of what previous hearings have revealed is here.

Update – Wed., June 22, 2022 –The next January 6 Committee hearing will be Thursday, June 23 at 1:00 p.m. local time (3:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time). After posting a tipline with its last hearings, the Committee has received additional video footage and is also talking to Ginni Thomas about her cooperation, and because of all the new information, following hearings will be held in July.

Update – Tuesday, Jan. 21- The Jan 6 Select Committee examining the assault on the U.S. Capitol convenes today for its fourth public hearing this month. This session will focus on Trump’s efforts to pressure state officials into falsifying election results to make it appear as though he had won, as part of his broader campaign to cling to office for a second term after he was informed by his White House attorneys, aides and family that he had lost the election. Today’s hearing starts at 11:00 a.m. local time and will be broadcast live on CBS (KREX, Ch. 5) ABC (KJCT Ch. 8) and NBC (KKCO Ch. 11) television stations starting at 11:00 a.m. Mountain Daylight (local) Time, (1:00 p.m. Eastern). You can also watch the hearings live on the website of the PBS News Hour and the Jan. 6 Committee’s YouTube channel.

***WARNING – the hearing may contain video of violence and foul language***

Local rally planned to urge use of the 14th Amendment to disqualify Boebert from the ballot

The national progressive group OurRevolution, named after a book by Sen. Bernie Sanders, is planning a local rally at Rep. Lauren Boebert’s Grand Junction office on Horizon Drive to urge Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold to disqualify Boebert from being on the Colorado ballot by applying Section 3 of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which says:

No Person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Like Tina, Mesa County Sheriff Candidate Bob Dalley believes The Big Lie

Dalley is overtly politically partisan, and promotes himself repeatedly as a Christian who loves guns. But more than this, he believes in Trump’s Big Lie, just like Tina Peters does.

The front page of this Saturday’s Daily Sentinel featured an article about the debate held recently between the two candidates running for Mesa County Sheriff in the Republican primary election coming up June 28: Bob Dalley and incumbent Sheriff Todd Rowell.

At the debate, Dalley cited statistics about alarming increases in crime within the county, without giving any sources for his statistics, while Sheriff Rowell cited Colorado Bureau of Investigations data that show Mesa County actually has lower crime rates than the rest of the state as a whole.

That Dalley would quote statistics, as he does on his campaign website as well, without citing even a single source for any of the information, is always a red flag, since he could be making up this information, but the biggest bombshell in the Sentinel article was really near the end, and was presented with little fanfare or attention:

It was this:

“Dalley said he doesn’t believe Joe Biden fairly won his election to president of the United States in 2020.”

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lindell steps in it, seals the case for the ethics complaint against Tina Peters; makes a statement that could leave her liable for a $1.6 million fine

My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell just sealed the case for Complaint #22-07 (pdf) to the Colorado Independent Ethics Commission against Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters for her skirting Colorado’s anti-corruption law by raising unlimited amounts of money through her legal defense fund.

In an apparent effort to try to get out of the ethics complaint, Peters recently shut down her Colorado-based legal defense fund website and moved her legal fundraising to a Minnesota-based “legal offense fund” operated by her fellow election conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell.

At an election denier rally today at the state Capitol in Denver, a 9News reporter asked Lindell how much he has raised for Peters’ legal defense fund. Lindell said, “I just put in all the money myself.” When the reporter asked Lindell how much that was, he answered, “I don’t know, I put in 3,4,5, maybe $800,000 of my own money.”

$800,000 would be the largest amount ever given to a Colorado politician or elected official.

Tina Peters shifts legal defense fundraising out of state, continues to accept largesse from Pillow Guy Mike Lindell

See video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksNf_iQcjTQ

A report yesterday evening from Kyle Clark of 9News in Denver confirmed that indicted Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters has closed down her legal defense fund website, StandWithTina.org, and shifted her legal fundraising out of state to a Wisconsin fund operated by My Pillow CEO and fellow election conspiracist Mike Lindell. Lindell told Clark he is now funding Peters’ legal defense through the site, and is using some of his own funds to help her as well.

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.”

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.

It’s time to admit something’s wrong with Tina

Embattled election conspiracy theorist Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters grins proudly for her mug shot taken upon her arrest on 2/10/2022

Lots of people have been saying it under their breath, but no one has come out and said it publicly. Mostly people have just gotten angry at Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters for her increasingly strange behavior, but maybe it’s time to start pitying Tina.

We can all agree that Tina’s behavior has been very far outside what is considered normal for an elected county clerk:

Normal clerks don’t compromise their own election equipment. They don’t flee the state on private jets, spend weeks hiding in safe houses in secret locations around the country or accept largesse from multi-millionaires to promote wacky election conspiracy theories. Normal clerks don’t blow off their obligation as clerks (pdf) to get certified to run elections as the state requires. Normal clerks don’t proclaim that the candidates who won an election shouldn’t have won because they were the wrong people to win. Normal county clerks don’t get their homes raided by the FBI.

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:

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.

A look at where Mesa County is now with Covid, and how other places are doing by comparison

New York Times’ calendar of average Covid cases per capita in Mesa County dating from January, 2020 until now. We are clearly back where we were last Dec-January, when we were in the thick of the pandemic the first time and had full precautions in place. For months, the NY Times has rated Mesa county as “extremely high risk for unvaccinated people.”

Arguably, Mesa County citizens’ denial of the science around Covid-19 transmission, and the overall lax attitude of our area’s elected officials toward reining in the pandemic are worsening and prolonging the pandemic in our area, making more people sick, putting more people in the hospital and giving Mesa County a good chance of staying a perpetual pandemic state into the foreseeable future.

For comparison, here are how some other areas around the country are doing in managing the pandemic compared to Mesa County:

Commissioner Scott McInnis: Upcoming election will cost County $1 million

Election conspiracy theorists are an expensive bunch to lend any credence to, and humoring them is about to cost Mesa County taxpayers dearly.

At the County Commissioners’ meeting yesterday, Monday, October 25, 2021, Commissioner Scott McInnis let it spill how much County Clerk Tina Peters’ election conspiracy antics are going to cost County taxpayers in the upcoming election.

Hold onto your hats.

McInnis says the tab is going to be about $1 million.

ROLLING STONE: House Rep. Lauren Boebert participated in multiple planning meetings with organizers of Jan. 6 insurrection

Oct. 24 Rolling Stone article says Boebert participated in planning Jan. 6th events at the U.S. Capitol

According to an exclusive article published in Rolling Stone magazine October 24, 2021, two people who helped plan and organize the violent January 6 insurrection on the U.S. Capitol, and who have already spoken to the House Select Committee investigating the insurrection, have named members of Congress involved in planning the attack.

One of them was CD-3 House Representative Lauren Boebert, who represents Colorado’s western slope.

Court legally bars Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters & Deputy Clerk Belinda Knisley from any involvement in the November elections

A District Court Judge today legally barred Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters from running elections in the county. Despite her refusal to faithfully carry out the duties of her elected office, displaying an overt political bias in regard to whom she believes should and should not win elections in Mesa County and her bizarre antics promoting false claims of widespread voter fraud, Peters will keep getting her taxpayer-funded salary and can only be removed from office by resigning or through a recall election.

Mesa County District Court Judge Valerie Robison today issued an injunction  officially preventing embattled Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters and her hand-picked Deputy Clerk Belinda Knisley from having any involvement with the November elections. The ruling officially removed Peters as Designated Election Official and installed former Secretary of State Wayne Williams in that position. It also confirmed Sheila Riener as the Election Supervisor.

The ruling was in response to a lawsuit brought against Peters and Knisley by Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold. The suit was joined by Mesa County Commissioners Janet Rowland, Cody Davis and Scott McInnis, who were listed in the suit as intervenors.