A Republican county clerk in Colorado who was stripped of her responsibility to oversee the county election joins a growing movement of people across the country spreading false claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election and overseeing the next one .
Tina Peters, the Mesa County clerk charged with breaching voting machine security, announced Monday that she would run for election to become Colorado’s top election official.
At least three Republican challengers are already running to topple current Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat.
Colorado is a purple state that won President Biden in 2020 with 55 percent of the vote. The state primaries are on June 28, and Colorado is one of 27 states to have the highest-ranking election official on the ballot this year.
In 2020, when former President Donald J. Trump and his allies tried to undo the election results, they focused their campaign of pressure on these relatively unknown office holders.
“I am the wall between your vote and nationalized elections,” Ms. Peters said during a performance Monday on a podcast hosted by Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s controversial former top aide. “They come after me because I stand in their way – of truth, transparency and elections closest to the people.”
Ms. Griswold, who is also the head of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, said in a statement Monday that Ms. Peters was “unfit to be secretary of state and a danger to the Colorado election,” citing Ms. Peters to discredit the results of the 2020 presidential election.
Ms Peters did not immediately respond to phone and email messages on Monday seeking comment.
Elected in 2018, Ms. Peters took office as the clerk and recorder of Mesa County, in far western Colorado, in 2019. By the end of 2021, a Mesa County Court judge had upheld Ms. Griswold’s removal of Ms. Peters from surveillance. hold on to elections in the county and replace her with an appointee.
In May last year, Ms. Peters and two other people entered a secure area of a warehouse in Mesa County where crucial election information was stored. They copied hard drives and election management software from voting machines, authorities said.
In early August, the conservative website Gateway Pundit posted passwords for the county’s election machines. In October, Mrs. Peters at a rally in South Dakota with people determined to show that the 2020 election had been stolen from Mr Trump.
The meeting was also shown on a large screen that at one point showed the software of the election machines in Mesa County.
Ms Griswold said her office concluded that the passwords had been leaked when Ms Peters engaged a member of staff to accompany her to covertly record a routine voting machine maintenance procedure. State and county officials announced last month that a grand jury was investigating charges of tampering with Mesa County’s election equipment and “official misconduct.”
More recently, Mrs. Peters was briefly detained by police when she interfered with officials’ efforts with the local district attorney to issue a search warrant for her iPad. According to Stephanie Reecy, a county spokeswoman, Ms. Peters may have used the iPad to record legal proceedings regarding one of her deputies.
In video of the February 8 encounter, made by a bystander and posted on Twitter, you can hear Ms. Peters repeatedly say, “Let go of me,” as officers try to hold her. “It hurts. Let go of me,” she says, before bending her leg and lifting her foot to the cop standing behind her.
An officer replies, “Don’t kick,” according to the body camera video posted by KJCT News 8, a local station. “You understand?”
Ms. Peters was charged with obstructing a peace officer and obstructing government operations, according to the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office. She turned herself in to authorities on Thursday, deposited a $500 bond and was released, according to provincial officials.
“I still have the bruises on my arm where they mistreated me,” Ms Peters told Bannon on Monday. She later said: “I just want to say that I love the people. That’s why I’m doing this.”
Mr Bannon said Ms Peters had been targeted for her fight against “this globalist apparatus”.
“Thank you,” Mrs. Peters said to the host. “I will work hard for you.”