{"id":44997,"date":"2021-08-26T13:51:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-26T19:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-attorney-general-joins-investigation-into-mesa-county-election-system-leak\/"},"modified":"2021-08-26T19:51:00","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T19:51:00","slug":"colorado-attorney-general-joins-investigation-into-mesa-county-election-system-leak","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-attorney-general-joins-investigation-into-mesa-county-election-system-leak\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado attorney general joins investigation into Mesa County election system leak"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Mesa
Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters reads an election update June 30 in Grand Junction. Peters is accused of participating in activity that led to the release of election-system hard drive images and passwords. (McKenzie Lange\/The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel via AP)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The office of Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser is involved with the investigation into a reported election-system security breach in Mesa County, a spokesperson for Weiser confirmed to Newsline.<\/p>\n

Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters is accused by Secretary of State Jena Griswold of participating in activity that led to the release of election-system hard drive images and passwords to election-fraud conspiracy theorists, including Ron Watkins, a leading QAnon figure.<\/p>\n

The reported breach is the subject of an investigation by the secretary of state, as well as a criminal probe by the 21st Judicial District Attorney Dan Rubinstein and the FBI. As of Wednesday, no criminal charges had been filed against Peters in connection with the incident.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur office is working with the Mesa County DA in the election system breach investigation,\u201d attorney general spokesperson Lawrence Pacheco told Newsline, adding that Weiser\u2019s involvement is related to the attorney general\u2019s role in representing the secretary of state\u2019s office. He decline to elaborate about the nature of the attorney general\u2019s involvement in the Mesa County case.<\/p>\n

Peters, a Republican adherent of debunked claims that the November election was fraudulent, has not cooperated with investigators from the Secretary of State\u2019s Office, and she\u2019s reportedly out of the state \u201cin hiding\u201d and under the protection of MyPillow CEO and election conspiracist Mike Lindell.<\/p>\n

Griswold ordered that Mesa County\u2019s election equipment had to be replaced, and she designated a new supervisor, Mesa County Treasurer Sheila Reiner, to oversee elections in Peters\u2019 place. Griswold also prohibited two clerk\u2019s office staff members accused of involvement in the election-system breach \u2013 Deputy Clerk Belinda Knisley and elections manager Sandra Brown \u2013 from any role in elections. On Saturday during a rally in Grand Junction in support of Peters, Knisley told Newsline that Peters was \u201cworking remotely\u201d and said, \u201cI\u2019m chief deputy so when she\u2019s not in the office I am the clerk.\u201d<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for Griswold declined to say whether the attorney general\u2019s involvement in the case was related to the secretary\u2019s order regarding Peters\u2019 role in Mesa County elections.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are still considering next steps,\u201d spokesperson Annie Orloff said.<\/p>\n

To read more stories from Colorado Newsline, visit www.coloradonewsline.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Peters suspected of participating in activity that resulted in release of passwords<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44242,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,1722,1509,1621],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-44997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-regional-elections","tag-state-elections","tag-voting"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44997"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=44997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}