BY MEGAN SCHRADER
MSCHRADER@DENVERPOST.COM / @MEGANSCHRADER

The crazy winter of 2021 has come to a close with Mike Lindell losing a civil lawsuit filed against him for defamation based on the unhinged claims he made in defense of President Donald Trump. I thought it'd be fun to just write a quick review of how messy things got in Colorado a few short years ago now that the election fraud nonsense might finally be over.

It all started with Donald Trump accusing Dominion Voting Systems — a Denver-based election hardware and software company — of rigging the 2020 election. The accusations got wilder and wilder as the months progressed. First Dominion had ties to Venezuela, and a secret algorithm had made up votes out of thin air for Joe Biden. Then, once it became clear that audits showed every vote cast could be tied to a registered voter, Trump accused Democrats of registering fake voters and then using mail ballots to cast fake votes for Biden. When voter registration rolls were scanned to prove that voters were actual people with real addresses, names, and phone numbers, Trump switched gears. On Jan. 6, 2021, the story became that Dominion used fake ballots hidden inside the Dominion machines to cast ballots for real voters who didn't vote. Of course, there's been no evidence of any of that, either.

Lindell, of course, was the most prolific peddler of these conspiracy theories outside of the Trump administration. He said Eric Coomer, a Dominion employee, was "treasonous." Now Lindell will pay $2.3 million for his lies. With Tina Peters in jail, Lindell hopefully chastened, and the president hoping people will stop talking about his outrageous behavior in 2020 and 2021, maybe we can finally move past all that nonsense.

But probably not, as Denver Post columnist Krista Kafer astutely points out that Lindell is simply moving on to his next grift, "like an ’80s televangelist."

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Joe Heller, hellertoons.com

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