A Minnesota woman who was jailed after she defied COVID lockdown orders in the early days of the pandemic fears what will happen if Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz becomes the vice president.
"I know what Walz is capable of," Lisa Hanson, the owner of the former Interchange Wine and Coffee Bistro in Albert Lea, Minnesota, told Newsmax's "Wake Up America."
Walz "takes advantage" of the "destruction that he can orchestrate, the control, [and] the tyranny."
The media has painted an incorrect picture of Walz, according to Hanson.
"Nobody likes Tim Walz," she said of Minnesotans. "Some of the news media is [saying] he's cuddly, and he's warm, he's friendly, he's coach-like. Not at all. He is a tyrant of tyrants."
If Walz and Vice President Kamala Harris – who she labeled as an "evil dictator" — win the election, "can we imagine what would happen with our great United States?" Hanson asked.
"We don't want to go there," she said.
Hanson found herself in legal trouble after she refused to shut down her business despite COVID closure orders from the state.
"In the beginning, none of us knew what was going on," Hanson, the grandmother of 18 children, said. "We all consented to this shutdown and at the same time, we knew that a governor does not have the right or authority to, by law, to shut businesses down and to control people's lives."
But when a second shutdown came in November 2020, Hanson said she knew her business would not reopen if it had to close again.
"I had two choices: Either to close my business completely and walk away; or to open up fully and, hopefully, be able to survive the train wreck that happened because of Gov. Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison," she said. "So we did the latter of the two. We opened up fully."
Hanson was sentenced to 90 days in jail, to be served concurrently, for each of six misdemeanor counts after her conviction in December 2021 of violating an emergency executive order, The Albert Lea Tribune reported.
The counts were tied to the dates she kept her business open in December 2020. The city eventually dismissed a second set of similar cases.
Hanson eventually spent 60 days in jail — a "scary" experience, she told Newsmax.
"The first few days were very, very frightening," she said. "I will say that I was treated fairly, unlike some other, you know, inmates in other places, for other situations.
"To have all your rights stripped from you is like nothing else."
A "rogue" Walz went "beyond his powers" and judges were "in lockstep" with Walz and Ellison, she warned.
"I was denied due process all through the litigation process and the trial," Hanson said. "I was not even allowed to present my defense in a court of law to the jury members."
She further called what happened to her "completely unconstitutional," and concluded those who went all this do not want Walz as vice president.
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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