Please follow us on Gab, Minds, Telegram, Rumble, Gettr, Truth Social, Twitter
Colorado residents are living in different realities. Recently, I wrote a column about January 6 – the real story – and, in response, some Coloradans advocated that I be silenced. Underscoring my point, when members of the January 6th Select Committee received preemptive pardons from Joe Biden, these same critics were silent.
And it’s not just January 6th.
These same government bootlickers celebrated the prosecution, conviction, and incarceration of former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters. Peters is currently in Fort Collins serving nine years for her unauthorized investigation of Jena Griswold and the Colorado Department of State (CDoS).
Following the 2020 election – where Joe Biden allegedly received 81 million votes – Peters launched an investigation. After all, Peters was elected by the people to ensure their elections were verifiably accurate, and she was unable to reassure her concerned constituents.
When the state learned of Peters’ investigation – and specifically that she obtained machine images before and after the CDoS “Trusted Build – Peters became a targeted enemy of the state.
In hindsight, the CDoS response makes sense. The images are the smoking gun of wireless access, deleted log files, and shadow database structures. The images are a smoking gun of the gaslighting and lies about Colorado’s “gold standard” election system.
In the early days of Peters’ plight, CDoS maintained that the clerk had stolen and leaked BIOS passwords, and that her actions constituted a massive security breach of Colorado elections. Notably, Peters never had access to the BIOS passwords. In fact, at her trial, CDoS testified that those passwords fully locked down to just a few key staff.
The former clerk’s real crime in the eyes of CDoS appeared to be obtaining the images; but that wasn’t a crime. In fact, one of the sworn duties of the clerk was to preserve election records for 25 months under Colorado law.
Despite being false, the story of a “breach” by Peters created a mandate to change the narrative and change the law. Her office was raided, her staff were threatened, her reputation was destroyed, and her voice was silenced. Any efforts Peters made to explain her intent and findings were met with mockery and disdain. In 2022, the General Assembly passed the Colorado Election Security Act, at the urging of CDoS and election sector lobbyists.
In August of last year, Tina Peters went to trial. The charges amounted a set of COVID-19 emergency rule violations, cobbled together to resemble something similar to a Colorado Election Security Act violation – despite the fact that the law didn’t exist at the time of Peters’ actions.
Peters, the defendant, was not allowed to explain her intent or present her findings to the jury. CDoS, the aggrieved party, was qualified as an expert to explain how alleged rule violations can amount to multiple felonies based on a law that didn’t exist at the time of the rule violations.
Peters never had a chance at a fair trial. She was convicted of four felonies and three misdemeanors and sentenced to nine years in prison.
Shortly after, on October 28th, the public learned that CDoS posted hundreds of BIOS passwords for election equipment on their website. The passwords were live during Peters’ trial, as CDoS staff were testifying about the seriousness of such a breach. It was later confirmed that the passwords were live during the whole of the 2024 primary and for most of early voting in the general.
Worse, CDoS knew of the breach on October 24th, but hid it from the clerks who had custody of the impacted equipment. Kyle Clark posted on X in November, “An audio recording reveals Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold (D) and her team didn't tell county clerks that her office had inadvertently leaked voting machine passwords because they feared a media frenzy.”
To summarize, what Peters did was a threat to democracy deserving of a nine-year prison sentence. What CDoS did was an innocent and immaterial mistake. They did the same thing – breached secure passwords then lied about it (allegedly).
This is the essence of weaponized justice, and the Trump DOJ is now looking into it.
"DOJ is reviewing cases across the nation for abuses of the criminal justice process… This review will include an evaluation of the State of Colorado’s prosecution of Ms. Peters” and “whether the case was oriented more toward inflicting political pain than toward pursuing actual justice or legitimate governmental objectives.”
While different factions of Colorado residents are living in different realities, truth still matters. Now, with President Trump back in the White House, justice seems not only possibly, but likely.
This is adapted from Ashe Epp's March column in Glendale Cherry Creek Chronicle.
Please follow CDM and CFP on Gab, Minds, Telegram, Rumble, Gettr, Truth Social, Twitter
