DENVER (AP) — Former Colorado election official Tina Peters became the first local election official to be charged with a security breach after the 2020 election amid unfounded conspiracy theories. On Monday, a jury found her guilty on most of the charges.
Peters, once a hero of the election deniers, was accused of using another person’s security badge to give an expert close to My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell access to the Mesa County election system and deceiving other officials about that person’s identity.
Lindell is a prominent supporter of false claims that voting machines had been manipulated to steal Choice by Donald Trump. His online broadcasting site streamed a live stream of Peters’ trial and sent out daily email updates, sometimes asking for prayers for Peters and sometimes hearing statements from her.
Prosecutors said Peters was fame-seeking and “fixated” on election issues after associating with those who questioned the accuracy of the 2020 presidential election results.
Peters was accused of hyping up fears of possible insider threats, saying that fraudulent election officials who were comfortable with partisan lies could use her access and knowledge to launch an attack from within.
Peters was found guilty of three counts of attempted interference with a government official, one count of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, first-degree abuse of office, dereliction of duty, and failure to comply with orders of the Secretary of State.
She was found not guilty of identity theft, one count of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation and one count of criminal impersonation. She denied that Peters used the identity of the security pass’s owner, a local man named Gerald Wood, without his permission in those cases.
Peters stood at the defense table next to one of her lawyers as the verdict was read in a quiet courtroom. Judge Matthew Barrett had warned those in the courtroom that he would not tolerate any outbursts of anger.
Her verdict will be announced on October 3.
In a post on social media platform X following the ruling, Peters accused Colorado-based Dominion Voting Systems, which manufactured her district’s voting system, and lawyers for state election officials of vote theft.
“I will keep fighting until the truth comes out that was not allowed to come out in this process. This is a sad day for our nation and the world. But in the end, we WILL win,” she said.
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, whose office initiated the investigation into Peters, said she will now face consequences for compromising her own election equipment in an “attempt to prove Trump’s big lie.”
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said the ruling sends a message.
“Today’s ruling is a warning to others that they will face serious consequences if they attempt to illegally manipulate our electoral processes or voting systems. I want to be clear: Our elections are secure and fair,” he said in a statement.
The verdict came just hours after prosecutors asked jurors to convict Peters, who was accused of misleading government officials to work with outsiders close to Lindell.
Finally Attempt District Attorney Janet Drake argued in her argument that the former clerk allowed a man posing as a county employee to take pictures of the voting system’s hard drive before and after a software upgrade in May 2021.
Drake said Peters watched the update so she could become a “hero” and perform at Lindell’s 2020 presidential election symposium a few months later.
“The defendant was like a fox guarding the henhouse. It was her job to protect the election equipment, and she went against that and abused her power for her own benefit,” said Drake, an attorney with the Colorado Attorney General’s Office.
Drake worked with the district attorney of Mesa County, a predominantly Republican county near the Utah border, to prosecute the case.
Before jurors began deliberating on Monday, the defense told them that Peters had committed no crime and was simply trying to preserve the election records after the county refused to allow her to have one of its technology experts present during the software update.
Defense attorney John Case said Peters was required to keep records of access to the voting system, for example to find out whether someone from “China or Canada” accessed the machine during vote counting.
“And thank God she did. Otherwise we really wouldn’t know what happened,” he said.
Peters allowed a former California surfer associated with Lindell, Conan Hayes, to observe the software update and use Wood’s security badge to make copies of the hard drive. Peters told officers that Hayes, posing as Wood, was working for her. However, while prosecutors said Peters committed identity theft by taking Wood’s security badge and giving it to Hayes to conceal his identity, the defense said Wood was in on the plot, so Peters did not commit a crime.
Wood denied this when he testified during the trial.
Political activist Sherronna Bishop, who introduced Peters to people working with Lindell, testified that Wood knew his identity would be used because of a Signal chat between her, Wood and Peters. No agreement was made in the chat.
The day after the first image of the hard drive was taken, Bishop testified that she posted a voice recording in the chat. The contents of that recording were not included in the screenshots of the chat presented by the defense. The person identified as Wood responded to that unknown message by saying, “I was happy to help. I really hope the effort proved fruitful,” according to the screenshots.
Prosecutor Robert Shapiro told jurors that Bishop was not credible.
