As if life weren’t bad enough already for controversial Colorado Republican House Rep. Lauren Boebert — what with losing the lease on her Hooters-inspired, 2nd Amendment-themed restaurant, getting trashed by her own former employees for getting a boob job instead of paying them their wages, and that whole thing with the prostitution and abortion allegations from the Fir Boebert PAC — she now stands accused of some seriously shady sh*t by an indicted election official, who claims Boebert was “encouraging” her when she carried out the security breach of voting machines in her district, in an attempt to prove there was corruption in the 2020 presidential election, that led to her indictment.
The New York Times recently published a deep-dive profile on Tina Peters, the indicted Mesa County clerk who is now running for the Republican nomination for Colorado’s secretary of state. Peters is a staunch Trump loyalist and 2020 election denier who was charged with multiple felony offenses after she tampered with election machines and copied sensitive software in an effort to prove illegitimacy and fraud that did not exist in Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential win.
Now, it seems, she says Lauren Boebert played a role in what she did.
According to the Times’ profile, Peters found herself overtaken by the rampant conspiracy theories in Mesa County, following the 2020 election, and “she connected with a local group, organized by Ms. Boebert’s former campaign manager, that met regularly to swap theories.”
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Court records show that Peters invited one of the group’s hosts to join her for a “trusted build” of the county election equipment. According to the Times, the process was “essentially a software update — performed in a secure location by officials from the secretary of state’s office and employees of Dominion Voting Systems, the voting machine manufacturer — that election skeptics have come to believe erases critical election data. It does not.”
The NYT report goes on to tell of Conan Hayes, an ally to former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne — Byrne was involved in his own unhinged attempts to overturn the 2020 election, but was reportedly affiliated with Hayes, who had the following interaction with Peters:
Mr. Frank did not accept the offer, but another member of the election denier network did attend, according to court records and interviews. Conan Hayes was a former pro surfer who had worked with Mr. Trump’s legal team as it challenged the 2020 results. In 2021, Mr. Byrne paid him around $200,000 to continue his work for a year, according to Mr. Byrne.
According to an account from Mr. Byrne, and confirmed by Mr. Hayes, he attended the trusted build on May 25, 2021. Mr. Hayes called Mr. Byrne from inside the Mesa County election offices, speaking in a hushed voice and explaining that he’d been invited to make backup copies of machines by a government official who thought that a cover-up was underway, Mr. Byrne said. When the two spoke over FaceTime, Mr. Byrne saw Mr. Hayes was dressed like a computer “nerd” and wearing someone else’s identification tag, Mr. Byrne said.
Ms. Peters had introduced a contractor at the event and identified him as Gerald Wood, a local I.T. consultant, according to court records. The real Mr. Wood, however, told investigators he was not there that day, or two days earlier, when his badge was used to enter a secure area.”
Following this incident, the passwords for Mesa County’s election equipment began cropping up all over QAnon social media platforms and Peters personally participated in the “cyber symposium” that was hosted by staunch Trump ally, election denier, and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell. Ultimately, Peters was indicted on multiple felonies and 10 criminal counts including attempts to influence a public servant, criminal impersonation, conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, identity theft, and first-degree official misconduct.
Peters has claimed, straight out of Donald Trump’s playbook, that the charges lodged against her are purely politically motivated, as she tries to garner campaign momentum among the most unhinged of Right-wing conspiracy theorists. Peters personally spoke with the Times about the charges against her and claimed that her own congresswoman, Lauren Boebert, “encouraged me to go forward with the imaging.”
The Times notes in their report, “A press officer for Ms. Boebert, a Republican, called the claim false.”
Read the full profile from the New York Times here.
Featured image via Flickr/Gage Skidmore, under Creative Commons license 2.0
