In what must seem like a bad dream for what’s left of the Colorado GOP establishment, Tina Peters is finally on trial for her role as Clerk Tina — you remember: the MyPillow Guy’s favorite election official — in the long-running 2020 election-denial saga.
In actuality, though, I think the trial of the former Mesa County clerk could be a good thing for state Republicans, who are in desperate need of, at minimum, a few good things.
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If a jury of her peers on the conservative Western Slope finds Peters guilty of tampering with election equipment — in a case, which from a few hundred miles away, seems pretty much open and shut, but you never know — it would close one sordid and embarrassing chapter for Colorado Republicans.
And it could happen in the same relative time frame in which state Republicans may finally be prepared, if a judge allows it, to kick Dave “God Hates Flags” Williams — who basically made election denialism, not to mention petty corruption, official party policy — out of his job as state chair.
If Williams goes — even Lauren Boebert seems to have jumped ship — that would close yet another sordid and even more embarrassing chapter for the all-but-moribund party.
In fact, the official demise of Peters and Williams would amount to nothing less than a double exorcism.
You know the Peters story. It has been with us for more than three years. Everyone agrees to the basic narrative — that Peters brought in an election conspiracy theorist, who was using a fake ID, to copy the hard drives of the Mesa County voting equipment, which were then leaked and ended up, with passwords included, on the internet for all to see.
Peters’ defense team says she did this in order to save data from being erased during the state’s “trusted build” process. She said she wanted to preserve the data because, against all reason, she believed the Dominion Voting Systems were, yes, rigged and that the Secretary of State’s office would cover up the, uh, crime. In fact, she still seems to believe it.
Prosecutors say, well, you can guess what they say. Peters is an obsessive delusional who believed in the Big Lie so fervently that she broke the law — she is charged with 10 counts, seven of them felonies — to prove the unprovable.
In the process, she became a hero in the election-denial community, and, as if that didn’t seem crazy enough, there’s a fundraiser scheduled for her in Grand Junction during the trial with tables selling for as high as $5,000.
I know that in some ways, this oft-delayed trial seems like a relic from a long-ago story.
But it isn’t.
It’s as up to date as the 2024 presidential race. It’s as up to date as the GOP’s anti-cat-lady vice-presidential pick. It’s as current as Trump’s antagonistic date this past week with the National Association of Black Journalists.
The headline from Trump’s sitdown with Black journalists was his insistence that Kamala Harris used to identify with — as Trump put it — her “Indian heritage,” and only recently “happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black.”
Although many thought Trump was having a meltdown, I’m pretty sure that this was part of a game plan, harking back to the birtherism strategy he employed against Barack Obama.
You’ve seen Trump, and many of his allies in right wing media, doubling down on the strategy, which can’t be surprising. For Trump, race is always front of mind, which is apparently how the MAGA base likes it.
But it wasn’t the only headline material to emerge from the interview. He was also asked whether he would pardon those found guilty in the January 6 attack.
His answer: “If they’re innocent, I would pardon them.”
When the questioner noted that they had, in fact, been found guilty, with some of them guilty of assaulting officers trying to defend the Capitol, Trump said they were convicted “by a very tough system.”
That’s the same system, you might note, in which Trump has been convicted on 34 felony counts.
It’s also in line with Trump’s alliance with the rioters, whom he calls “J6 hostages” and victims of a corrupt system.
It’s obvious that Trump will never give up on the notion that the 2020 election was rigged. It’s way too late for that. It’s basically the essence of his campaign — which amounts to a Trump restoration and the promise of retribution that would come with it.
And it’s a major reason why JD Vance is Trump’s running mate. Among Vance’s crimes against truth and justice, he says he wouldn’t necessarily accept the outcome of the 2024 election, using the Trump line that the election would have to be “free and fair.” He has railed against the so-called danger of mail-in ballots, although he has voted by mail himself.
And in what was clearly a play to earn Trump’s affection, Vance said that unlike Mike Pence, he would have recognized the fake electors at the heart of Trump’s scheme to overturn the election and would have sent multiple slates on to Congress.
Where does that leave us?
The country may yet elect Trump and return election denialism to the White House. Polls continue to show that a majority of Republicans believe the election was rigged.
And in a swing state like Arizona, two prominent election deniers won contested GOP primaries.
But if Republicans ever want to make headway again in solidly blue Colorado, where Democrats own every statewide office, that’s one part of the culture war they’ll have to eventually abandon. If you’re looking for a sign, you could look to the reliably red 5th Congressional District, where Dave Williams ran in the GOP primary as an election denier and a Trump endorsee. He was crushed by the very conservative Jeff Crank, who pointedly did not run as a denier.
Meanwhile, the case against Peters has begun. The judge has ruled that the trial won’t be about election conspiracies or the efficacy of voting equipment. He also ruled that Peters can’t claim that she was a whistleblower. And the prosecution, falling into line, told the jury that this is “a simple case of deceit and fraud.”
You’d think it was simple. You’d think it was obvious. Soon we’ll find out if a jury in a Republican stronghold sees it the same way.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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