Programmer impersonated in Mesa County election data leak tells jury he feared he was set up by the government

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. (CN) — Jerry Wood, a software engineer from Mesa County, Colorado was attending Mike Lindell’s Cyber Symposium in August 2021, when he started seeing his name on the news. Someone had filmed and leaked images from a voting machine update and Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold was telling media he did it.

Prosecutors called Wood as a witness on Friday in their case against Tina Peters, Mesa County’s former clerk and recorder now on trial for charges related to using Wood’s identity to capture and leak voting machine data in 2021.

Prosecutors contend that in May 2021, Peters instructed her deputy clerk to turn off security cameras and arranged for an associate to use Wood’s keycard to observe and photograph the voting machine trusted build, an update process conducted in person since the machines can’t connect to the Internet.

Peters had issued the badge to Wood after he agreed to work as a consultant, although she never called him to work and the county’s human resources manager never formally hired him.

Wood said he figured law enforcement “discovered my badge in a desk drawer and they jumped to a conclusion. It felt like it was a setup.”

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.

Wood told a jury at the Mesa County Justice Center in Grand Junction on Friday that when investigators linked him to the leak, he thought the government was setting him up. He was active in his church and spent the spring of 2020 canvassing neighborhoods to verify voter rolls with the conservative group Stand for the Constitution.

Wood was also in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, at the Cyber Symposium, hoping to analyze Lindell’s data for proof of voter fraud. Wood and others ended up debunking the data provided within minutes.

 “Secretary of State Jena Griswold talking about the horrible things that were happening in Mesa County, and mentioned my name, and made my name become national news, and was basically saying ‘he did it, he broke into the clerk's office and stole the information,'” Wood recalled.

Wood eventually cleared his name by providing emails and photos that proved he had been hosting a graduation party and working on the days when his Mesa County badge had been used to access secure voting machine rooms.

On cross-examination, defense attorney John Case angled to poke holes in Wood's credibility, asking Wood why he waited for a declaration of limited immunity from prosecutors before agreeing to testify before a grand jury.

“Clerk Peters said she wanted someone trustworthy, but before the grand jury you betrayed Clerk Peters to get immunity for yourself,” Case said. Wood made no reply to the comment, as prosecutors quickly raised an objection.

Case showed Wood a photo of Conan Hayes, the individual prosecutors say used Wood’s ID to observe the trusted build. Wood said he never met Hayes and thought he was looking at a picture of the "Breaking Bad" actor Aaron Paul.

The trial is scheduled to run through Aug. 12 with 21st Judicial District Judge Matthew Barrett, appointed by Democratic Governor Jared Polis, presiding.

Follow @bright_lamp

Subscribe to Closing Arguments

Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.

Email *

Submit