“That’s what I did.”īut the way she chose to go about “preserving” those records has wrought havoc on Mesa County and on Peters herself. “If I want somebody to come in and preserve my election records, that is my role, and that is my duty,” Peters said. And she believes those copies have revealed serious vulnerabilities in the county’s election equipment. There, sitting on a patio with her bright white bob sparkling in the sun, she told me that her decision to copy the election equipment hard drives was not only allowed but required. She’s now running for secretary of state. When I visited last month, I found her at the Hilton DoubleTree in Grand Junction - the county seat - where she was attending the county GOP Assembly to campaign for her spot on the primary ballot. She can’t leave the state after being recently indicted by a grand jury on 10 counts, including seven felony charges, for allegedly using a false identity and lying to state employees while allowing an unauthorized individual to make copies of the election equipment hard drive. These days, Peters is back in Mesa County. Watkins is so deeply entangled with QAnon that many experts believe he may have been Q himself. The man talking about them was that same QAnon leader - Ron Watkins - the former administrator of the message board where Q, the shadowy figure behind the QAnon conspiracy movement, posted the bulk of their posts. Data from Mesa County election equipment hard drives were later displayed at the symposium. She was on her way to South Dakota for a “Cyber Symposium” hosted by Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow and one of the most prominent peddlers of the Big Lie. The Colorado secretary of state launched an investigation and issued an order for Tina Peters, the county clerk, to let them inspect the equipment and try to get to the bottom of what happened.īut there was a problem. Images of screens displaying the passwords had been shared a few days earlier on the chat app Telegram by a QAnon leader. “We’re saying, ‘What are you talking about?’” recalled Mesa County Commissioner Scott McInnis. But the powers that be in Mesa County didn’t even know the passwords had leaked. The Colorado secretary of state’s office was on the phone and wanted to know why the passwords for Mesa County’s election equipment were on the internet for anyone to see. GRAND JUNCTION, COLORADO - Nine months after the 2020 election, the call came in. McKenzie Lange / The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel via AP
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