March 31, 2023 01:30 PM UTC

Everything's Coming Up (Temporarily) Roses For Tina Peters

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• by: Colorado Pols

9NEWS’ Kyle Clark yesterday confirmed what new Colorado Republican Party chairman Dave “Let’s Go Brandon” Williams has been suggesting ever since winning his post–indicted Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, awaiting trial on a range of misconduct and impersonation charges related to the theft of election system data in a failed bid to prove Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election, is taking a leadership role in the party:

NEW: Indicted election denier Tina Peters says she’s been offered the job of Executive Director of the @ColoGOP. State Chairman Dave Williams says Peters was actually offered a formal party job in an “election integrity role.” #copolitics

— Kyle Clark (@KyleClark) March 30, 2023

As readers know, Clerk Peters faces sentencing April 10 on an obstruction charge she was convicted of early this month, charges stemming from her refusal to turn over an iPad to investigators leading to a public scuffle. Peters could spend up to six months in jail on that charge alone, which is just the icing on the legal cake for Peters with trial on contempt of court followed by far more serious felony charges looming on the horizon.

But as KKCO-TV reported last night, Peters’ ultimate date with legal destiny has been put off yet again:

The trial was originally supposed to start at the end of March before being pushed back to the end of August.

The last time the trial was pushed back was at Peters’ request. The district attorney’s office said that this time, after the trial was scheduled, two prosecution witnesses who work for the clerk & recorders have a mandatory certification in order for them to do their jobs during the trial.

The date for the trial is now set for Oct. 17 through 30.

Peters has no incentive to push for a speedy trial at this point, and now that she’ll be drawing a salary from the state party–which, let’s be fair, she may well have raised from “MyPillow Guy” Mike Lindell with one easy ask–Peters can only benefit from pushing the trial on the principal charges against her off as long as possible. If Peters is ordered to jail for a short sentence on these secondary offenses, Dave Williams will attempt to cast Peters as a martyr and embrace her even more tightly.

But at some point, now scheduled for October, the party will be over. Peters is innocent until proven guilty, but the case is also not considered to be particularly close with Peters’ co-conspirators singing like canaries and Peters herself having readily confessed to many key details. The election conspiracy theories that justify Peters’ actions among believers in the “Big Lie” are meaningless in a court of law, and Peters won’t be the first to discover that. This crackpot scheme involving identity theft and shutting off security systems to steal data is the only actual security threat to have occurred. Like a January 6th insurrectionist, Peters’ defense rests entirely on one central lie that, once debunked, leaves them with no defense whatsoever.

This is the future that the Colorado Republican Party under Dave Williams has voluntarily shackled itself to.

Needless to say, we don’t ever want to hear about “moving on from 2020” again.