Until this week, when we thought about county clerks behaving really, really badly, the first person to come to mind was Kentucky’s Kim Davis, who obstinately refused to issue marriage licenses to anyone for much of 2015, rather than risk granting one to an LGBTQ couple.
Well, based on what we now know, Davis’ obstinacy looks minor league compared to the suspected misdeeds of Mesa County, Colorado, Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters. She’s now the target of federal and state investigations into her role in allowing election data for Grand Junction and its suburbs to be leaked. But there’s one problem—it’s not likely that the investigators have heard from Peters for a couple of weeks, because MyPillow Guy Mike Lindell is helping her hide out.
In case you missed it, Peters is accused of allowing an unauthorized third party access a secure facility where the county’s voting machines were stored, then copy sensitive data from those machines. The data ended up in the hands of 8chan/8kun’s Ron Watkins, who presented the data at Lindell’s sham “Cyber Symposium.”
Peters was already under investigation by the office of Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who has ordered all of Mesa County’s voting machines replaced and booted Peters from her normal post as county elections officer. The local district attorney launched an investigation of his own soon afterward. On Tuesday, the FBI joined the investigation.
By that time, however, Peters was in hiding. Lindell told VICE News that he’d taken Peters to Texas after the Cyber Symposium—supposedly to hide her from Dominion and Griswold, saying that they are “ruthless.” However, after a member of Lindell’s security team leaked Peters’ location, Lindell helped Peters move to an unknown location. It’s not known if investigators have tried to reach her, but VICE reported that all attempts to call her went straight to voicemail. Lindell himself claims that he urged Peters to speak up, but Peters was “getting advice on other people” to keep quiet.
Meanwhile, Lindell is claiming that he has some sort of evidence from Mesa County that will prove the election really was stolen. Hmm, let’s see. Mesa County is arguably the reddest urban county in Colorado—even more so than El Paso County, home to Colorado Springs. The last Democrat to win it was LBJ in 1964, and JFK and Hubert Humphrey are the only other Democrats since Truman to even get 40% of the vote. Trump won it in 2020 by a punishing 62-35 margin over Biden, easily his best showing in an urban county in Colorado.
A grand total of 90,600 votes were cast in Mesa County, not even a fraction of Biden’s 439,000-vote margin over Trump. Lindell is trying to convince us that if we take a closer look at a county where Donald Trump won by almost 2:1, it would prove that Biden’s 14-point win in Colorado was fraudulent.
Am I the only one wondering if Lindell is back on cocaine—or maybe using oxy? What we do know is that he and Peters are digging themselves an even bigger hole.
A previous version of this story misidentified 8kun site administrator Ron Watkins. ~Ed.