Tea Party Official Gets Locked Inside of Empty Courthouse – on Election Night with All the Ballots

Straight from the “this isn’t suspicious at all” file, a Tea Party official with very close times toChris McDaniel somehow wound up in a locked and empty Mississippi courthouse after the election results had come in.

Janis Lane is the president of the Central Mississippi Tea Party; at 2:00 am she had to call Hinds County Republican executive chairman Pete Perry because she’d somehow wound up locked in the same building where the circuit clerk, election commission offices, and primary election ballots are at. Perry told TPM that the incident mystified him. Before the intrusion, the ballots had been secured, according to local authorities. Perry said that:

I don’t know. I know I wouldn’t walk into a courthouse at 2 o’clock in the morning by myself or with somebody else and just walk around inside the building. I’m not going to go into a public building just because somehow or another I happened to find a door that was unlocked.

Especially if it’s going down to where a bunch of election materials were and I’d been deeply involved in a campaign. I am 64. I was involved in politics when I was real young, and I remember people breaking into a hotel in the middle of the night.

Thad Cochran’s sister-in-law, Connie Cochran, was the last person to leave the courthouse. An election commissioner, Connie Cochran left the building at 11:30, more than two hours before Perry received the call from Lane. Lane said that she and a friend wanted to see the election process first hand, and were escorted to an unlocked door by a police officer. It’s not clear how much time they spent in the building or when they entered, but somehow, the door locked behind them.

Perry, a supporter of Thad Cochran, is suspicious of her story.

“It just didn’t make sense. It didn’t compute,” Perry said. “Now what she was doing, I have no idea. I couldn’t say. But I am skeptical.” Perry said that Lane had called him earlier in the night to ask about the election results, and he said that she appeared to either be at a campaign for McDaniel or the headquarters.

Connie Cochran told authorities that, to her knowledge, no materials were disturbed or removed from the building. The Central Mississippi Tea Party has endorsed McDaniel in his fight to unseat Cochran, which is going to lead to a June 24 run-off election for both candidates. The group has been in hot water before after one of its members, Mark Mayfield, was arrested following evidence that connected him to the May break-in of the nursing home where Thad Cochran’s wife is currently living.

Perry contacted the sheriff, and by 3:30 in the morning, they’d let Lane free. The police to not have an ongoing investigation into the matter.