Feel free to read the indictment of Tina Peters and Belinda Knisley, former MAGA election officials in Mesa County Colorado. Also included in the story is My Pillow guy, and all around whackadoodle, Mike Lindell. To be clear, Lindell is not indicted (at least yet) but the story arguably begins with him and his laughable failure of an election fraud “symposium” in August 2021.
At such symposium Tina Peters, a county election clerk, showed up with a basketful of data illegally downloaded from the Mesa County Colorado’s Dominion voting machines used in the 2020 election. Lindell put it up on the internet so everyone could see the fraud it proved. Only problem, it didn’t evidence any fraud at all. Oh well.
Today a grand jury handed down a 13 count indictment for Ms. Peters and Ms. Knisley and it is a fun read. The schemes within schemes here include identity theft. Allow me to summarize.
The state notified Peters and Knisley of an impending software update for their voting machines. Per procedures, the machines were to be secured and under constant video surveillance, to include during the update. Unauthorized people were not to access the machines. Facts made clear in correspondence from the Colorado Secretary of State to Peters and Knisley.
Peters and Knisley then requested that HR allow the hiring of a temporary IT assistant. They contacted a man named Gerald Wood to do this job. They provided information to HR about Mr. Wood and HR conducted a background check on Wood, which he passed, and issued him an access badge. When Wood showed up he was told he wouldn’t be needed and he gave his access badge back to Knisley. He was never hired by the state.
However, the objective of an additional free floating access badge had been achieved by the conspirators. Knisley completed the preparations by successfully requesting that security cameras be disabled. Sandra Brown, another elections manager, (also not yet indicted) sent an email stating that Gerald Wood would be the third member on the team that would perform the security update.
On May 23, 2021 the access badges of Tina Peters, Sandra Brown and Gerald Wood were used to otherwise secretly get to the voting machines. May 25th was the day of the software update. Tina Peters introduced a man around the office as Gerald Wood, a new assistant who would participate in the process.
Here’s the thing. Whoever that man was (and he is not identified in the indictment) he was not Gerald Wood. Wood testified to the grand jury that he never went to that building on either May 23d or May 25th and he gave the grand jury proof he was elsewhere.
Then, in August, Tina Peters shows up at the Lindell circus with data from those voting machines. The county concluded the breach could not be repaired, because they did not know what had been done to the machines, and that they would all have to be trashed.
If this story seems incomplete, with perhaps some gaps in it, worry not. When releasing the indictments prosecutors made clear the investigation continues, the grand jury’s work is not done, and that there may be more indictments. Certainly whoever impersonated Gerald Wood is a prime candidate.
Another potential future indictee is a woman named Sherronna Bishop whose home was the subject of an FBI search warrant and raid in November 2021 related to this investigation. While not a household name Bishop is the former Campaign Manager for whackadoodle Representative Lauren Boebert.
As for Mike Lindell, I don’t know. He received and published the stolen data and he supported Peters afterwards. We can only hope.
