Fox News, Sean Hannity and others will be added as defendants in a defamation lawsuit against Rep. Lauren Boebert, the plaintiff in the case said this week.

North Carolina political activist David Wheeler sued the Silt Republican in June, claiming she made multiple false statements about him and the political group he leads, American Muckrakers, which is also a plaintiff in the case.

His complaint, in U.S. District Court of Colorado, alleges Boebert made “maliciously false statements” about Wheeler and American Muckrakers on multiple occasions last summer, particularly during broadcasts of Hannity’s Fox News shows and on radio. Fox personality Tomi Lahren is also singled out in the complaint as having provided a platform for Boebert to allegedly defame Wheeler.

“They conspired with Lauren Boebert to defame me,” Wheeler said Monday. “I repeatedly asked to go on their news shows to discuss the allegations she was making against us and was either ignored or told ‘no’ over and over again while she continued to go on their shows bashing me.”

He also plans to add Lahren and Premiere Networks, a radio syndication service that handles “The Sean Hannity Show,” as defendants in the defamation suit. In an email he identified 10 other organizations and individuals, including members of Boebert’s staff, as defendants he plans to name in an amended complaint.

Newsline confirmed with Wheeler’s attorney, Dan Ernst, that he is preparing to add Hannity, Lahren, Fox News and Premiere Networks as defendants in an amended complaint this week.

Newsline had not received a reply to emails seeking comment sent to Fox News and Premiere Networks by the time of publication.

Reached by phone Monday, Chicago-based attorney Steven P. Mandell, who according to documents reviewed by Newsline represented Fox News and Hannity as outside counsel as recently as April, declined to comment.

The super PAC American Muckrakers, which had previously worked to unseat former Republican U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, targeted Boebert last year as she sought a second term in Congress. Wheeler and Muckrakers, citing sources close to her, published unflattering information about Boebert.

In response, Boebert accused Wheeler and Muckrakers of publishing “false statements knowing they were completely fabricated,” characterized the statements as “defamation,” and said she was “moving forward with a lawsuit.”

She never followed through with her threat to sue Wheeler and Muckrakers, who now essentially claim that Boebert defamed Wheeler by falsely accusing him of defaming her.

Wheeler previously brought a similar lawsuit against Boebert in a North Carolina state court last year, but the judge dismissed the case, saying that the proper venue for it was in Colorado.

Last month, Boebert asked the Colorado court to dismiss Wheeler’s case, saying he failed to state a legally sufficient claim and that statements by her that form the basis of the lawsuit are protected by the First Amendment. She also said a new Colorado law that protects people who exercise First Amendment rights from the threat of lawsuits — known as an anti-SLAPP law — calls for the case to be dismissed.

Wheeler has until Friday to file a response.

Colorado Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Colorado Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Quentin Young for questions: info@coloradonewsline.com. Follow Colorado Newsline on Facebook and Twitter.

A lawyer for plaintiffs who are suing to block former President Donald Trump from the 2024 Colorado presidential ballot persuaded a judge to enter a protective order for witnesses and other people involved in the lawsuit, largely based on Trump’s history of “inflammatory” statements around other cases in which he is a defendant.

Denver District Court Judge Sarah B. Wallace during a Friday hearing said she had concerns for the “safety for the parties, for the lawyers and frankly for myself and my staff, based on what we’ve seen in other cases.”

After special counsel Jack Smith in June filed an indictment against Trump for alleged crimes around Jan. 6, Trump responded on Truth Social, “If you go after me, I’m coming after you!” which prosecutors viewed as “inflammatory” and “intimidating.”

The plaintiffs’ lawyer who argued for the protective order, Sean Grimsley, also noted during the hearing before Wallace that Dave Williams, chair of the Colorado Republican Party, which this week joined the case as a so-called intervenor, called the filing of the Colorado lawsuit against Trump “treasonous” behavior.

“That’s code for, ‘The folks coming to court have committed a capital crime,'” Grimsley said.

The protective order bars “inflammatory” speech, based on remarks during the hearing.

The suit was filed Sept. 6 by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington on behalf of six Colorado voters, who argue Trump is disqualified under a provision of the 14th Amendment that bars certain office-seekers who have engaged in insurrection.

The plaintiffs include former Republican U.S. representative from Rhode Island Claudine (Cmarada) Schneider, who now lives in Colorado; former Colorado House and Senate Majority Leader Norma Anderson, an unaffiliated voter who recently left the Republican party; Denver Post columnist and Republican activist Krista Kafer; Michelle Priola, Kathi Wright, and Christopher Castilian.

They argue Trump, the leading GOP candidate for president in 2024, is disqualified under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which says no person who took an oath to support the Constitution then had “engaged in insurrection … or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof” can hold any office in the United States.

The suit says Trump “tried to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election” and incited and “engaged in” the Jan. 6 insurrection.

The defendants are Trump and Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat.

Most of the Friday hearing concerned procedural matters. Trump’s lawyer in the case, Scott Gessler, a former Republican Colorado secretary of state, indicated he intends to try to get the case tossed under a recent Colorado law that protects people who exercise First Amendment rights from the threat of lawsuits — known as an anti-SLAPP law. The allegations against Trump in the case are all “based on his speech,” Gessler said.

“We believe it’s a winner,” Gessler said of the pending motion under anti-SLAPP — or “strategic lawsuits against public participation.”

Gessler had objected to the proposed protective order by arguing that witness tampering and intimidation are already outlawed and that Trump critics had also engaged in objectionable speech. He noted that Griswold has said Trump tried to “steal an election” and labeled the events of Jan. 6 an “insurrection.”

“That is definitely coming from other quarters,” Gessler said of what Grimsley had called “inflammatory” speech.

A five-day trial in the case is scheduled to start Oct. 30.

The case is seen as the first major test of the 14th Amendment’s disqualification clause since the Civil War era. Other similar cases, such as one filed by Free Speech For People in Minnesota, are expected in other states.

Colorado Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Colorado Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Quentin Young for questions: info@coloradonewsline.com. Follow Colorado Newsline on Facebook and Twitter.

This article is part of U.S. Democracy Day, a nationwide collaborative on Sept. 15, the International Day of Democracy, in which news organizations cover how democracy works and the threats it faces. To learn more, visit usdemocracyday.org.

In June, the notorious conspiracy theorist and election denier David Clements appeared during a gathering in Chaffee County. The event was organized by the Chaffee County Patriots, which is open to members “willing to educate, equip and mobilize the community” on issues including “constitutional freedoms.”

Clements’ presentation to the roughly 50 attendees amounted to “a fanatical religious sermon” in which he set out “to perpetuate ‘The Big Lie’ but also to incite the audience to action,” according to the Ark Valley Voice.

“At the end of this, I want you seething mad!” Clements exhorted.

The gathering and events like it around the country, the Voice said, “suggests an ominous new era in local politics and portends a tumultuous and violent 2024 presidential election year.”

This conclusion seemed to be corroborated by events that followed the gathering. In the next several weeks, local election activists, including those affiliated with the group Honesty in Chaffee County Under Protest, or HICCUP, undertook a campaign of harassment against Chaffee County Clerk Lori Mitchell. The Voice called it “a mission devoted to lobbying or wearing down an election process and planting distrust in our election staff and processes.”

Mitchell also sees a correlation between the Clements meeting and an increase in disruptive local activity around election administration, such as HICCUP members making disparaging remarks about her before county commissioners.

“I know of people that were at that meeting, and they were seriously alarmed at the talk and how it’s painted as almost a religious thing,” Mitchell said. “It’s ‘us versus them’ and ‘good versus evil.’ And I feel that that drives people to do things that they don’t normally do.”

Mitchell is not alone in her concerns about the potential outcome of incendiary political rhetoric. In the run-up to the 2020 presidential election, experts warned that inciting language from former President Donald Trump and his supporters made political violence probable. The Jan. 6 insurrection proved the prediction correct.

Now, more than a year before the next presidential election, threatening political speech is again a toxic component of the democratic process, in which election officials are at risk and violence increasingly occurs.

Violent rhetoric emanates most notably from Trump himself, including in his 2016 campaign, his presidency and his “stop the steal” attempt to remain in power after he lost the 2020 election. Most recently he has used inflammatory language in response to being investigated and indicted.

But his MAGA allies and supporters are responsible for some of the most extreme rhetoric. Former University of Colorado Boulder visiting scholar John Eastman, now indicted for his alleged role in trying to overturn the 2020 election, cited the Declaration of Independence in an interview published just last month in suggesting that it might be time for people to “fight” in response to the “stolen election” and “abolish the existing government.” Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona tweeted “We have now reached a war phase” in response to the federal grand jury indictment against Trump in June.

Violent acts — not just rhetoric — are on the rise. Reuters reported last month that there is “growing evidence that America is grappling with the biggest and most sustained increase in political violence since the 1970s,” and whereas previous political violence targeted property, now it targets people. Most of the violence comes from the right.

Several influential MAGA activists in Colorado regularly turn to inflammatory language. Shawn Smith, who participated in the insurrection and leads an “election integrity” organization launched by the conspiracist MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, repeatedly suggests on social media that Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser and other officials “deserve due process” — apparent code for “execution.”

In July, speaking before a crowd in Monte Vista, podcaster and election denier Joe Oltmann, who has called for mass executions of political opponents, urged listeners “to recognize what sacrifices are going to be necessary in order to save our nation. Evil never crawled back into a hole without force being applied to it.”

Such rhetoric creates a combustible political atmosphere that’s expected to grow more volatile in 2024.

Security improvements

Matt Crane, a Republican who is executive director of the Colorado County Clerks Association, said threats against Colorado election officials have generally subsided since the 2022 election. But he doesn’t expect that to last as the presidential primary approaches.

“You hear more and more people and see when more and more people talking about civil war,” he said. “I definitely think there are forces that are trying to push it … It’s a tinderbox right now, and with all the lies that people are spewing — I mean, provably false, like the sky-is-purple kind of garbage — it’s like they’re trying to push people in that direction.”

A watchdog group recently filed a lawsuit in Colorado to block Trump from the presidential ballot. If the suit succeeds, the threat of violence would be a “huge concern,” Crane said.

“At that point, would I be surprised to see something happen? No, unfortunately. So it’s just something we have to keep an eye on,” he said.

A glass partition seen at the Chaffee County clerk’s office, installed during the pandemic to mitigate the spread of the COVID virus, has been replaced with bulletproof glass to protect staff. (Mike Sweeney for Colorado Newsline)

A top focus of election officials around the country is improving physical security of election offices, Crane said.

Officials in Arapahoe County just south of Denver, for example, recently installed security upgrades that include key card-controlled access to all areas of the elections office, replacing glass doors and windows with steel hardware, and adding bollards outside at the office entrance.

“We still receive threatening messages, and we are always working to make our facilities as safe as possible for our voters and employees,” Arapahoe Clerk Clerk Joan Lopez said in an email. “However, as events in Colorado have shown over the past couple of years, we also need to be diligent about creating accountability to preserve transparency and prevent any potential inside threats as well.”

Security improvements are emblematic of election workers’ determination, in the face of harassment, disinformation and threats, to remain honest stewards of the election process and ensure the gears of democracy keep turning.

Last year, the Colorado County Clerks Association lobbied for a successful election security bill meant to protect against “insider threats,” such as Tina Peters, the former MAGA clerk of Mesa County who is facing felony charges for her role in tampering with own election equipment. Among the bill’s many provisions was a requirement for clerks and certain other local election workers to complete a certification program to ensure they properly understand their responsibilities. It also created a grant program to support security upgrades, such as bulletproof glass and video monitoring.

“We’re the ones who pushed the Legislature to get us to grant funding so that we can be able to pay for this stuff,” the association’s Crane said. “In terms of trying to inoculate our own folks, we have about a third of our clerks (who) are new. And to make sure that none of our folks fall into the same trap that Tina did, we pushed for getting certified before you run your first election so that you can know your job, you can understand the laws around our elections, the systems, the whole nine yards.”

Crane said the association is planning to promote greater awareness of the election process next year, and he invites voters to engage with election officials and expand their understanding of what election workers do.

“It’s going to be more about voters taking an active role in their own election security,” Crane said.

This could mean taking a tour of local election facilities. It could mean visiting Go Vote Colorado to verify your address is up to date and check important dates. Or signing up on BallotTrax to track your mail-in ballot.

“Most importantly, if you have a question, don’t go to the pillow salesman who’s selling you a grift. Go to the person that knows, which is your clerk and recorder. We love questions. We love to talk about what we do. We’re happy to talk about what we do.”

Chaffee County Clerk Lori Mitchell poses in Salida on Sept. 13, 2023. (Mike Sweeney for Colorado Newsline)

‘I am in fear’

On two occasions last year, Chaffee County election workers became alarmed enough by the behavior of a local election watcher that they contacted law enforcement and produced internal incident reports. In June at the local elections office the watcher became so loudly disruptive that election staff had to stop their work.

“It really did frighten the judges,” Mitchell said. “She did have a concealed carry on her, too, and we all knew it.”

In November, the watcher appeared with her brother at the Chaffee County Fairgrounds Election Office and appeared to be “casing the facility” and “checking out” the vehicles of election judges and watchers, according to an internal report.

“ln my opinion, she is doing real damage to our community and to our political party,” wrote the report’s author. “At first, we tried to ignore it hoping it would go away, but it has not, and now I feel that she is spiraling out of control, and I am in fear that she or her brother might do something. She knows where I live.”

Few election officials in Colorado have endured more abuse than Mitchell. Late last month, she responded to the harassment in an op-ed published in The Mountain Mail.

“It is difficult not to take recent accusations against me personally. I admit, some days it gets me down. My employees don’t deserve the harassment, nor do my family and friends. But mostly I worry that the crazy talk will inspire someone who doesn’t understand the process to harm someone or worse. That’s not who we are,” Mitchell wrote. “But most importantly, I want the citizens of Chaffee County to know that they can have confidence that when they cast their ballots, they are counted fairly and accurately by my office. And let the best candidate or issue win.”

Colorado Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Colorado Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Quentin Young for questions: info@coloradonewsline.com. Follow Colorado Newsline on Facebook and Twitter.

A lawsuit filed in Colorado seeks to bar former President Donald Trump from appearing as a 2024 presidential candidate on ballots in the state.

The suit was filed by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington on behalf of six Colorado voters, who argue Trump is disqualified under a provision of the 14th Amendment that bars certain office-seekers who have engaged in insurrection.

“Donald Trump tried to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election,” the lawsuit says. “His efforts culminated on January 6, 2021, when he incited, exacerbated, and otherwise engaged in a violent insurrection at the United States Capitol by a mob who believed they were following his orders, and refused to protect the Capitol or call off the mob for nearly three hours as the attack unfolded.”

The lawsuit was filed Monday in Denver District Court. The plaintiffs include former Republican U.S. representative from Rhode Island Claudine (Cmarada) Schneider, who now lives in Colorado; former Colorado House and Senate Majority Leader Norma Anderson, an unaffiliated voter who recently left the Republican party; Denver Post columnist and Republican activist Krista Kafer; Michelle Priola, Kathi Wright, and Christopher Castilian.

The defendants are Trump and Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat.

Trump is the leading Republican candidate for president in next year’s race.

Though the lawsuit was filed earlier than many expected, it is not a surprise. In July, CREW’s executive vice president and chief counsel, Donald K. Sherman, told Newsline the organization planned to bring 14th Amendment-based lawsuits against Trump’s candidacy but declined at the time to say in which states those suits would be filed, though he added that there were “attractive factors with respect to Colorado.”

A CREW press release Monday said, “Colorado is a good venue to bring this first case, but it will not be the last.”

On Monday, Michigan resident Robert Davis filed a 14th Amendment challenge to Trump’s candidacy in Michigan, and a lawyer last month filed a similar lawsuit seeking to bar Trump’s candidacy in Florida.

Many pro-democracy advocates say the insurrection disqualification clause in Section 3 of the 14 Amendment disqualifies Trump from holding public office. The passage, adopted after the Civil War, says no person who took an oath to support the Constitution then “engaged in insurrection” can hold any office in the United States.

Newsline had not received a response by the time of publication to an email seeking comment sent to the Trump campaign.

Griswold, an outspoken critic of election deniers and Trump’s “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen from him, said issues raised by the lawsuit are important for a court to decide.

“There are real questions about Colorado law. There are real questions about the United States Constitution. And I’m hopeful that this case will provide guidance to the state of Colorado but also election officials across the nation on Trump’s eligibility to run for office,” Griswold told Newsline on Monday.

She said those questions include whether the 14th Amendment’s disqualification clause prohibits a candidate from running for office or being seated in office. There is also a question about who has the authority to decide whether a candidate is disqualified under the amendment, Griswold said.

“And in Colorado, we don’t have a law or a case that tells us whether a disqualified candidate is permitted to be placed on the ballot in the first place,” she added. “So those are all open legal and constitutional questions, and that’s why it’s so important for a court to resolve this crucial question for us here in Colorado and across the nation.”

Griswold declined to say how she would respond if courts rule in a way that grants her the authority to bar Trump from the Colorado ballot. But she made clear her view of Trump’s actions around the 2020 election, including that Trump did “incite an insurrection and attack our democracy.”

“Look, Donald Trump tried to steal the 2020 election, it was a blatant attack on the United States and the American people. It’s a blatant attack on the fundamental right to vote,” Griswold said.

She referred to recent criminal indictments against Trump and his supporters for their efforts to reverse the 2020 election results, and she said “the criminal charges are about holding him personally accountable for his actions. The other question is that the country also needs to be protected, electorally, from continued attacks on democracy, and Americans will have various opportunities to protect the country, including at the ballot box, several times in the upcoming election next year.”

The question of whether Trump is disqualified under the 14th Amendment has recently gained wide attention, particularly after several conservative legal commentators wrote that the amendment indeed bars Trump from office.

No presidential candidates have yet qualified for the Colorado ballot. Candidates have until Dec. 11 to submit ballot qualification documents to Griswold’s office. The deadline for Griswold to certify names for the 2024 Colorado presidential primary ballot is Jan. 5.

Colorado Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Colorado Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Quentin Young for questions: info@coloradonewsline.com. Follow Colorado Newsline on Facebook and Twitter.

A key component of the election subversion indictment that was unsealed Monday in Georgia is a security breach of election equipment in the Coffee County elections office — an alleged criminal episode that bears striking resemblance to a security breach that occurred in the election offices of Mesa County, Colorado.

In both cases, extreme supporters of former President Donald Trump are alleged to have accessed election equipment to obtain sensitive data in pursuit of false claims that the 2020 election was rigged. In both cases the breach was facilitated by a top county election official. Both counties used election equipment from Denver-based Dominion Voting Systems.

And the alleged perpetrators in both counties are facing felony charges.

The similarity of events in Mesa County and Coffee County were of particular interest to Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who has been vocal about the need for vigilance against “insider threats” to election systems. In response to the Georgia indictment, Griswold said such threats, as the nation heads into a new election year in which Trump is the leading GOP candidate for president, remain active.

“I strongly believe Coloradans and Americans deserve and need to know ongoing attempts to steal elections,” Griswold told Colorado Newsline.

The Georgia indictment, which came from a Fulton County grand jury, charged Trump and 18 members of his inner circle on 41 counts. Two defendants with Colorado ties are named in the indictment — Trump attorneys John Eastman, who at the time of the alleged criminal activity was a visiting scholar at the University of Colorado Boulder and currently represents the Colorado Republican Party in a lawsuit against Griswold, and Jenna Ellis, who until recently lived in Colorado and, though she was censured this year over election falsehoods, remains licensed to practice law in the state.

The indictment, which charges each of the defendants with racketeering, among other counts, says that after Trump lost the election the defendants “refused to accept that Trump lost, and they knowingly and willfully joined a conspiracy to unlawfully change the outcome of the election in favor of Trump.”

Part of that alleged conspiracy involved Misty Hampton, who in 2020 was the Coffee County elections supervisor. Starting on Jan. 7, 2021 — the day after the Jan. 6 insurrection — Hampton, Trump lawyer Sidney Powell and other co-conspirators broke into the county’s Dominion machines and improperly accessed voter data, according to the indictment. Hampton “allowed” co-conspirators into private areas of the elections office.

About four months later, then-Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters committed an almost identical criminal act, according to prosecutors. The Republican clerk allegedly allowed digital copies of the Mesa County election system server’s software and other sensitive information to be made and disseminated. The case against Peters began with an investigation by Griswold’s office.

Though different people are thought to have been involved in the Colorado and Georgia security breaches, the sweeping indictment out of Fulton County speaks of a wide-ranging conspiracy that involved alleged criminal acts “in other states” and 30 unindicted unnamed co-conspirators. Griswold noted that the breaches occurred as part of national election-denial efforts by figures such as MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, both of whom have ties to Peters. Byrne in a video appeared to acknowledge his own involvement in the Mesa County case.

“Make no mistake, there was a national conspiracy to breach Mesa County’s voting equipment. That has always been very clear. Patrick Byrne admitted his complicity on a video and posted it to Twitter,” Griswold said.

Asked if the Fulton County indictment had any bearing on the Peters case, which does not involve the kind of far-ranging racketeering charges brought in Georgia, Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubinstein, whose office is prosecuting the case against Peters, wrote in a text, “We will not be amending our charges, as we want to avoid any further delays and are eager to get our case before a jury.”

Peters did not respond to a text seeking comment.

The parties are due in early September to establish a trial date.

Elbert County was also the site of an election system security breach facilitated by the county’s own top election official. In that case, Colorado election denier Shawn Smith, who was part of the Trump mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and works on “election integrity” efforts for the Lindell-funded Cause of America, helped then-Clerk Dalls Schroeder, a Republican, copy sensitive voter information.

Similar security breaches also occurred in three Michigan counties.

Griswold, a Democrat, said such breaches don’t alter election outcomes. But they serve other purposes, such as spreading disinformation.

“I’m absolutely concerned,” Griswold said. “The purpose of the ‘big lie’ is to create chaos, and chaos is definitely part of local election administrators trying to undermine the election process from within. I am increasingly concerned all across the nation about insider threats.”

Colorado has taken steps, such as passage of Griswold-backed protections against “insider threats,” that put the state in a better position to maintain election security, she said.

Colorado Newsline is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Colorado Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Quentin Young for questions: info@coloradonewsline.com. Follow Colorado Newsline on Facebook and Twitter.