GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. (CN) — On the witness stand Monday, a Mesa County elections administrator emotionally recalled the day that she learned her office was under investigation for leaking voting machine data in a scheme propagated by her supervisor, former clerk and recorder Tina Peters.
“It was heartbreaking when we found out our passwords were leaked,” recalled Mesa County elections administrator Stephanie Wenholz through tears. “At that point, you’re like ‘what are we going to do? What is going to happen? How are we going to administer the upcoming election?’”
Prosecutors called Wenholz as a witness in their case against Peters, the county’s former clerk and recorder now on trial for charges related to recording voting machine data that was posted online in August 2021.
Prosecutors contend that in May 2021, Peters instructed her deputy clerk to turn off security cameras and arranged for an unauthorized associate to observe and photograph the voting machine trusted build, an update process conducted in person since the machines can’t connect to the Internet.
The voting machine data and passwords were sent to a Florida-based company for analysis and posted on the social media site Telegram by Ron Watkins, a key player in the QAnon conspiracy movement.
For her role in the leak, Peters faces three felony counts of attempting to influence a public servant, four felony counts related to impersonation and identity theft and three misdemeanor counts for official misconduct, violating her duties and failing to comply with the secretary of state’s requirements.
Wenholz secretly recorded a meeting on April 23, 2021, in Peters’ office ahead of the trusted build. Peters was discussing how to access voting machine data needed to prove or dispel claims made by Douglas Frank, an Ohio-based mathematician who said his algorithm had detected election fraud in the western Colorado community. Frank was traveling the country looking for evidence of voter fraud on behalf of Mike Lindell, a prominent supporter of the Stop the Steal movement.
Wenholz, however, said Frank's math didn't add up.
“To be honest, he could not explain his whole entire theory,” Wenholz said.
During cross-examination, defense attorney John Case, of Littleton, expanded on Frank’s theory of “phantom voters.”
“There were more names in the voter registration list than there were people who should actually be able to vote. And he called the people who shouldn’t be on the list ‘phantom voters,’” Case explained. He then asked Wenholz if a ballot delivered to the wrong address could be turned in by a bad actor. Wenholz explained how the county’s signature verification process would catch the malfeasance.
Following testimony from several more witnesses for the county, defense attorney John Hartman asked 21st Judicial District Judge Matthew Barrett to reconsider evidence Peters' defense team has argued is key to understanding her motivation.
Barrett, an appointee of Democratic Governor Jared Polis, has maintained a strict policy of keeping evidence of broader election fraud conspiracies out of the trial, since Peters hasn't been charged with committing election fraud.
“Ms. Peters has no stake as to whether or not the claims are true,” Hartman argued. “When we’re talking about the motive and intent of Clerk Peters. As this case proceeds, it will show Clerk Peters’ intent was to preserve records.”
Hartman attempted to draw lines connecting a software bug in Dominion voting machines to MyPillow CEO Lindell gathering evidence for his own defamation defense, and Peters promising to conceal the identity of her trusted build observer, Conan Hayes, because he had told her he was a government informant.
Special Deputy District Attorney Janet Drake offered a succinct response, calling Hartman’s 40-minute “tirade” disappointing and irrelevant.
“This case isn’t about defamation, or Serbians, or adjudication logs, and we’ve taken extensive time pre-litigation to try to resolve these issues,” Drake said. “It’s confusing. It’s prejudicial to the jury.”
After a break, Barrett agreed.
“The problem is and has been the ends do not justify the means. There is no law that allows anyone to commit crimes in order to expose one," Barrett concluded. “’I was right’ is not a defense."
The trial which started on July 31 is scheduled to run through Aug. 12.
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