Republicans rally for Tina Peters and against “communism,” the press and chemtrails

Local Conservative political candidates and activists traveled to Grand Junction for a Dec. 1 “Truth and Justice” rally where they espoused increasingly bizarre conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, the media and President Joe Biden in support of Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters and Sherronna Bishop, former campaign manager for Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CD3), who are both under federal investigation.

Todd Watkins, running for El Paso County Sheriff; Shawn Smith, a Colorado Springs-based organizer with the U.S. Election Integrity Plan; Richard Harris, executive director of Andrew Wommack’s Truth and Liberty Coalition; and Fremont County’s Rep. Ron Hanks (R-HD60), a current candidate for U.S. Senate, all spoke in support of Peters, Bishop and what they called “election integrity” to an audience of approximately 250 people.

Peters and Bishop were served search warrants by the FBI and local law enforcement officers on Nov. 16 as part of an ongoing investigation. Peters is currently under investigation for a breach of Mesa County’s Dominion voting machines and Bishop is under investigation for wire fraud, according to reporting from the Grand Junction Sentinel.  Bishop, Peters and Smith appeared at MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Cyber Symposium on Aug. 10 — the day after the Colorado Secretary of State announced an investigation into the Mesa County Clerk and Recorder’s Office — to discuss claims of election fraud, which they say they found evidence of on illegally obtained copies of voting machine hard drives that were leaked to Lindell and Ron Watkins, a figure in the QAnon movement and a current Arizona congressional candidate.

Peters and Bishop have both claimed excessive use of force when law enforcement agencies executed warrants against them, but Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser and Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubinstein disagreed, saying in a joint statement released after the warrants were served, ”At no time was force used on Ms. Peters or her home. Ms. Peters was allowed to move around her home and fix herself breakfast while agents gathered items before departing.”

The speakers at the Grand Junction rally repeated the claims of use of excessive force. “We are talking about state violence,” said Smith, who is also part of a national group, Cause of America, that is being funded by Lindell. “We’re being smeared, patriots — even people who didn’t know they were patriots who were just asking questions, people who can read the Constitution, maybe, and the Bill of Rights — they’re being smeared as being violent and conspiracy theorists and radicals. None of that is true. If that’s true about us it’s true about the founders of the nation.”

Despite his dislike of the term “conspiracy theorist,” Smith — and many of the speakers that day — touched on issues popular in conspiracy circles, including the idea that billionaire investor and philanthropist George Soros is masterminding all opposition. “These are the narratives that have been pimped in our media by people like Mr. Ashby [Charles Ashby of the Grand Junction Sentinel] and people like Quentin Young [Colorado Newsline editor], who literally is paid by Soros,” he claimed.

Smith went on to a list a conspiratorial chain of connections he claimed funds States Newsroom, the nonprofit behind Colorado Newsline. “Same thing with Erik Maulbetsch [of the Colorado Times Recorder],” Smith said, without evidence. “These are not journalists, they’re propagandists.”

Watkins began his remarks by suggesting that the rally was being observed, or infiltrated, by the FBI, a common claim made about the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. “I am a recent alum of the federal government and a federal law enforcement agent,” he said. “I’d like to give a shout-out to all the federal agents who might be here today. I’d like you to stand up and raise your hand so we can show our appreciation to you. We’d like to recognize you, brother.”

Despite his service for the federal government as a Customs and Border Patrol agent, Watkins said he had to leave federal employment due to what he felt was the “communist” influence of the Biden administration. “I saw what happened in November and through January,” he said. “I joined the Army when the communists were the bad guys the first time. I know one when I see one. I will not serve this Marxist regime. I’m not going to take orders from a communist authority, a communist government. The only way I could see that I could actually fight against it was to get out of the government and come back from the outside. That’s why I think we need to understand the role of law enforcement.”

Watkins delivered a meandering speech on the history of law enforcement, the “unconstitutional” nature of federal law enforcement and dangers of what he described as the “runaway executive branch.” Watkins ended with a message for the federal government: “If you don’t want to fear we the people, then don’t steal elections and don’t replace our constitution with The Communist Manifesto.”

Despite concerns about a federal law enforcement presence at the rally, Hanks began his remarks by asking participants of the Jan. 6 riot to identify themselves. “How many people went to the 6 January rally in Washington, D.C.?” he asked, to a scattered but enthusiastic show of hands. “I was there too, and as a result of it, the lying media and the yellow journalists called me a seditionist and a conspiracy theorist and all of these other things. It’s trash, but it’s amusing at the same time. I went to 6 January. I went to Arizona to look at the audit. I was the only elected official to go. I went a second time; we brought volunteers. They needed help, that’s where I met Todd Watkins who is running for sheriff in El Paso County. I went to the Cyber Symposium. The expertise up there, the courage of Tina Peters to show and to tell her story and to preserve the evidence, 29,000 packets. That’s a lot of information that would have been destroyed by a bravo sierra trusted build [‘bravo sierra’ is ‘BS’ in the phonetic alphabet].”

Hanks also warned the audience of perceived future dangers. “We already are at a threshold moment where more Americans believe there was election fraud than don’t,” he said. “We have crossed that Rubicon. You watch what a weaponized federal government does to start to convince the rest of the people that we have a serious problem here. By the spring time, I am confident we are going to have a rough winter, I have no doubt about it. The tyranny is doubling down. From the school boards and the counties, we’re seeing it in the news, we’re just starting to hear about it. By the spring, I believe there is going to be a huge awakening and for the Democrats this is going to be 1973, the Watergate year. Like the Republicans suffered, they are going to start drowning in corruption and the truth, exposing their corruption. To be candid with you, let’s let them take some Republicans with them. I’ll call myself a Republican, but I call myself a conservative first.”

For her part, Peters, who was at the center of the rally, kept her comments light. 

“When it gets to the point where speaking about our country, and patriotism and love for one another, the things we hold dear, family, when it gets to the point where that’s wrong, then I don’t want to be right,” she said.

Before ending the event with a prayer that invoked God’s protection against chemtrails, and a rendition of “God Bless America,” Harris spoke about the importance of the “rule of law,” while invoking nearly every major conspiratorial talking point from the last 10 years. “It was in the news recently that Hunter Biden owns 10 percent in a Chinese company that produces lithium batteries,” he claimed. “Did you know that Afghanistan has trillions of dollars in minerals that are used to manufacture lithium batteries? Is there any connection between Hunter Biden’s investment, 10 percent in a lithium battery company, and the sudden withdrawal from Afghanistan? Is anybody asking that question today? They need to be. There are double standards everywhere. How is it that the power of the federal government is unleashed against Edward Snowden for revealing the spying on Americans being committed by the federal government, yet Hillary Clinton, who is the Secretary of State of the United States has her personal emails on an unprotected server, but gets off scot-free? How does that happen? Disrespect for the rule of law. Our law enforcement agencies are being politicized.” He went on, railing against former President Obama, the IRS, former President Bill Clinton, the FBI, the CIA, and what he called “the Russia Hoax,” which he claimed was designed to keep Donald Trump out of office. 

“Now under Obama’s successor, Joe Biden, the Justice Department is using the FBI again to target parents who speak out against ungodly and immoral practices at school board meetings, and we fear that they have used the FBI in this county, in this situation to go against a lawful whistleblower, Clerk Tina Peters, and a political activist, Sherronna Bishop. … The head of the WHO, the World Health Organization, is in bed with the Chinese Communist Party. How about [the president’s chief medical adviser Anthony] Fauci lying about gain of function research conducted at the Chinese laboratory? How about so-called experts at the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and the [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] financially connected to vaccine manufacturers?” he continued, adding to a string of assertions unsupported by evidence. “How about the FBI raid that happened two weeks ago on James O’Keefe, the founder of [far-right activist group] Project Veritas, who should be protected by the First Amendment, which says that Congress makes no law restricting freedom of press. You see this disrespect for the rule of law has seeped into our country, it’s seeped into our government, and it is causing all kinds of corruption that is taking our republic away from us.”