Welcome to yet another chapter in Colorado’s epic history of, “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up,” as it crashes broadside right into the epic history of “You Can’t Make This Stuff Up” about Donald Trump.
This episode features Denver court jester Scott Gessler.
Who?
Gessler, the former Republican Colorado secretary of state, who, among other things during his illustrious career, got caught ripping off the state about $2,000 in travel money in 2012. Then he ran up a massive state-paid legal bill trying to cover up being busted by a state independent ethics panel.
Oh, yeah. That Scott Gessler.
No longer just another weird footnote in state history, Gessler is one of the lawyers representing Donald Trump in an effort by local Democrats to keep Trump from getting on the 2024 Colorado ballot.
He’s the same Gessler in court downtown right now trying to persuade a Denver judge that Trump had no responsibility whatsoever for the Jan. 6 insurrection, which he repeatedly called for and then participated in.
Inconveniently for Trump, the nation’s second-gen forefathers, which he and all his Trumpions reverely quote almost daily, created the Constitution’s 14th Amendment. That clause prevents anyone who participates in an insurrection from running for any public office.
Being rather clever, sometimes, the folks in charge of the country during the Civil War realized how dangerous it would be to have someone like Trump in charge of stuff after the War. So if you wanted to play Jan. 6 games, like Trump did, you couldn’t be elected dog catcher, let alone commander in chief.
A House special committee — led by one of the most staunch conservative Republicans of recent history, Rep. Liz Cheney, daughter of former GOP veep Dick Cheney — painstakingly proved in 2022 to Americans and the world that Trump was responsible for, participated in and was gleeful about the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Gessler, however, is pretending in a Denver court, that was all fake news.
Despite Trump spending hundreds of millions of dollars on brilliant legal minds like Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell and Kenneth Chesebro, who are now taking plea deals in previous attempts to swindle U.S. courts — he can’t muster more brilliance like Rudy Giuliani (indicted).
Trump was able, however, to snag Gessler, who appeared to be available.
Gessler is an old pro at being a top MAGA mind, even before there was such a thing.
GOP Congressperson Lauren “MeeMaw Gropert” Boebert was still getting arrested for kid-stuff in Rifle, and Colorado’s infamous and indicted Tin Foiless Tina Peters was just weird when Gessler was Driving His Crazy across Colorado headlines.
Gessler is an old hand at alleging that elections were being stolen by armies of dead people, or immigrants, taking advantage of Colorado’s make-it-easy-to-vote election system.
Trump was still busy in 2012 sexually accosting strangers and cheating New Yorkers out of taxes when Gessler was shrilly insisting that, as secretary of state, he was positive that thousands of people were voting illegally in Colorado.
“Gessler’s search for non-citizen voters began with a pool of 3,903 people he sent letters to challenging their status,” the Sentinel reported in 2013. Of the 3,903, Gessler accused — mostly Democrats — he later whittled down the list of fraudulent voters to 141.
Whatever.
Of those, a few dozen were handed over to the former GOP Arapahoe County District Attorney George Brauchler. Brauchler took receipt of 41 suspected fraudulent voters impugned by Gessler and spent 300-tax-paid hours supplied by six DA staffers to determine that more than half were actually legally registered.
Oops.
From that, Brauchler finally found that two voters maybe could be charged with a misdemeanor.
Two.
The two Aurora charges — the only ones made statewide — were against a 72-year-old Ethiopian immigrant and a 47-year-old Polish immigrant — both accused of misdemeanor charges of procuring false registration.
Three years later, after a mountain of conspiracy theorizing and false information and allegations, the Polish immigrant was convicted.
“Vitaliy B. Grabchenko, 49, pleaded guilty to procuring false registration, a misdemeanor,” the Sentinel reported. ”Arapahoe County Judge Addison Adams gave Grabchenko a two-year deferred sentence and ordered him to complete 48 hours of community service. He will also be on supervised probation for two years.”
The thousands of voter fraudsters accused by Gessler morphed into one guy out of millions of Colorado voters.
Unfazed, Gessler said at the time that the system must be strong to resist fraudsters who don’t respect that the burden of proof must be in favor of the sanctity of the system and not an individual.
So imagine my surprise — not — this week when that same Gessler told the court this while defending Trump and the mountain of damning evidence that he did indeed participate in the Jan. 6 insurrection:
“Gessler said there is an informal principle in election law known as ‘the rule of democracy,’ which essentially means to ‘err on the side of letting people vote’ whenever there is an ambiguity,” the Associated Press wrote this week.
That principle would be reserved for white, rich, sexually molesting, tax-cheating, insurrecting, classified-document-thieving, big-lying, election-frauding, corrupt former presidents, not people of color and immigrants in Colorado.
Regardless, the trial goes on with Gessler driving one of the Team Trump circus cars around the Denver courtroom, honk, honk. You can’t make this stuff up.
Follow @EditorDavePerry on BlueSky, Threads, Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@SentinelColorado.com
The only problem with the above article is that the Plaintiffs are FOUR REPUBLICANS AND TWO INDEPENDENTS. No Democrats are challenging him in this particular suit.
And George Brauchler is just one plumb bubble away from him.
“Honk, Honk”. I suspect you have just lost Scott as a new shareholder in the Sentinel Blog. Along with any and all his influential friends. The beating of lawyers with your editorial stick can’t be all bad, though, just misdirected in this case.
I did see that your Green Bay Packer stock like sale has brought in over $20,000 in the past month. How many days does that keep the Blog open. Great plan. Hope you enjoyed your vacation in Green Bay. That may be the high light in your fund raiser. Not for long now, Dave.
Highlight is one word.
Cofefe!
Sorry. I spaced it out.
Out of the country on January 6, were we?
But, Dick, if the Sentinel goes down, where will you vent your spleen?
GeneD, I must admit that I have no idea what “vent your spleen” means. I googled it and now I’m a bit smarter. Thanks. The answer to your question is, “I have no idea but I will be a lot less angry and happy for our community that has lost a socialist blog.”
ha ha – good one Gene! I agree!
Newsmax is up to 4 viewers.
Room for 3 more, before their 1 power strip gets overloaded and trips, knocking global warming from fantasy to reality.
Ok, lets face it, I’m too intelligent to even make up something they’d conjure up. Thank God.
Bravo DAVE PERRY Bravo! Thanks for the Monday laugh! 🙂
I hope other states follow Colorado and Minnesota in barring Trump from the ballot. Lets hope if both states are successful the SCOTUS stays out of it and denies Trump any filing of grievance to hear his whining.