Mike Lindell Is Hiding A County Clerk Amid FBI Probe Of A Vote Data Leak: Report

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has provided a secret safe house for a Colorado county clerk amid an FBI investigation into a leak of vote machine passwords in the county to a QAnon leader, Vice News reported Thursday.

Lindell told Vice that he initially took Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters to Texas after she spoke at his bizarre Cyber Symposium last week in South Dakota, where he again failed to provide promised proof that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against former President Donald Trump, whom Lindell supports.

Lindell said he has since whisked Peters off to a new secret location after a member of his own security team revealed her whereabouts.

“She’s worried about her safety; these people are ruthless,” Lindell told Vice. He was referring to Dominion Voting Systems, which is suing Lindell for $1.3 billion for defamation over his baseless claims of election fraud. There’s no indication Dominion has threatened anyone’s safety.

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold last week accused Peters of allowing an unauthorized individual to attend a software update in May for election equipment made by Dominion.

That unnamed person allegedly took images of software passwords, which then turned up this month on a conservative blog and on the website of QAnon leader Ron Watkins. Speculation on the identity of “Q,” the self-proclaimed government insider who gave the conspiracy theory its name, has long centered on Watkins, a site administrator of far-right message board 8kun, which promoted QAnon.

“To be very clear, Mesa County’s clerk and recorder allowed a security breach and, by all evidence at this point, assisted it,” Griswold said at a news conference. Griswold accused Peters of “actively working to undermine confidence and spread disinformation.”

Peters, who has baselessly challenged President Joe Biden’s win in her state, has not denied Griswold’s accusations. She issued a statement simply saying that “citizens of Mesa County have been critical of election integrity. They have brought me their concerns and I have told them I will do everything in my power to protect their vote.”

The compromised Mesa County voting equipment was decertified following what Griswold called the profound “breach in security.” Griswold said her office “cannot establish a verifiable chain of custody for any of the [current] voting systems components in Mesa County and cannot establish confidence in the integrity or security of those components.”

That will leave taxpayers with a hefty bill to replace or completely overhaul the machines.

Officials of Maricopa County in Arizona are in a similar situation and have just submitted a $2.8 million claim to state Senate Republicans to cover costs to replace that county’s voting machines. The demand follows a partisan, hugely controversial vote audit by the inexperienced Cyber Ninjas company, headed by a QAnon acolyte. Officials said the voting machines were compromised and unusable after the Cyber Ninjas had unfettered and unsupervised access.

Mesa County prosecutors have launched a criminal probe into the suspected breach. FBI agents are now working with them “on the forensic review and analysis of county voting systems to determine if there was a potential federal criminal violation,” FBI spokesperson Courtney Bernal said in a statement Tuesday.

Peters could not be reached for comment. 

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