GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. (CN) — After just four hours of deliberation, a Colorado jury on Monday unanimously found former Mesa County clerk-recorder Tina Peters guilty of four felonies and three misdemeanors out of 10 charges related to a 2021 leak of voting machine data.
Peters had faced three felony counts of attempting to influence a public servant, four felony counts related to impersonation and identity theft and three misdemeanor counts of official misconduct, violation of duties and failure to comply with the secretary of state’s requirements.
“This case is simply about crimes committed by her in concert with others that were designed to be a cover-up,” special deputy district attorney Robert Shapiro told the jury in closing. “This case is not about computers, it’s not about election documents, it’s about using deceit to trick public servants.”
The jury largely agreed, clearing Peters on only two of the felony impersonation counts and one of the felony identity theft charges. Peters faces up to seven years in prison depending on whether she's sentenced consecutively or concurrently.
Prosecutors called half a dozen state and county elections staffers, as well as a man whose identity was misused, to piece together the timeline of events from April 2021 through August 2021. That's when investigators say Peters brought Conan Hayes, an unauthorized third party, into the county tabulation room during a sensitive voting machine update done in person since the machines aren’t allowed to connect to the internet.
In August 2021, Ron Watkins, a key figure in the QAnon conspiracy movement posted forensic images of Mesa County’s voting machines along with video of the update and partially blurred passwords, prompting local and federal investigations.
In civil court, Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold successfully sued to remove Peters from fulfilling election duties, fueling Peters' narrative of state persecution.
The jury heard little about QAnon and wider theories of election fraud, per pretrial orders from 21st Judicial District Judge Matthew Barrett. An appointee of Democratic Governor Jared Polis, Barrett rejected evidence and testimony he saw as irrelevant or prejudicial, and directed the parties to focus on the specific charges before them.
Peters’ third and final defense team includes attorney John Case of Littleton, Colorado, along with former Summit County, Ohio, Judge Amy Jones and Michigan-based Dan Hartman, who has represented his state's Republican Party in court.
Rumors of election fraud didn’t circulate Mesa County in full force right after the 2020 presidential election. Instead concerns of election integrity took the rural Western Slope community by storm following the 2021 Grand Junction municipal election, when the most conservative candidates lost bids for City Council.
Members of Stand for the Constitution, a local conservative group, had taken to canvasing neighborhoods to verify voter rolls. Here, Peters met Sherronna Bishop, a prominent right-wing activist.
Bishop brought Peters a list of grassroots-gathered voter roll inconsistencies along with Dr. Douglas Frank, an Ohio math teacher who traveled the country after the 2020 election with a since-debunked algorithm he claimed detected so-called phantom votes.
An associate of My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, Frank promised to bring Peters a tech consultant who could back up voting machine files that were set to be deleted in the May 2021 trusted build.
The county’s Republican district attorney, Daniel Rubinstein, investigated Peters' claims of election fraud. Rather than concerted efforts to change election results, Rubinstein discovered several instances of human error.
In April 2021, Peters initially asked Dominion Voting Systems if she could bring members of the public in to observe the trusted build as she did with pre- and post-election procedures. Word came through the Colorado Secretary of State's office that Covid-19 policies prohibited any outsiders from attending the update.
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