Former Mesa County clerk convicted on 7 charges

You can read our past coverage of Peters’ trial here.

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Updated at 8:16 p.m. on Aug. 12, 2024.

Twelve Mesa County jurors found Tina Peters guilty of four felonies on Monday after a lengthy criminal trial, marking yet another conviction tied to post-2020 election conspiracy theories. 

Peters faced a total of 10 criminal charges related to her role in helping a man gain unauthorized access to voting equipment during a secure software update in May 2021. The county’s voting machine’s passwords and copies of its hard drive were later posted online by people trying to undermine the validity of the election system.

The jury deliberated for around four and a half hours Monday afternoon before reaching their decision, which was read out to a packed courtroom just after 5 p.m.

Peters was found guilty of three counts of attempting to influence a public servant and one count of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation. She was also convicted of first-degree official misconduct, violation of duty and failure to comply with an order from the Secretary of State, all misdemeanors.

The jury acquitted Peters on three counts — criminal impersonation, conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation and identity theft.

How did we get here?

The investigation into Peters’ actions began almost exactly three years ago when images taken during a secure update — including of machine passwords — surfaced online. At the same time, a copy of Mesa County’s hard drive was displayed and discussed at a “cyber symposium” hosted by Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO who has been at the center of false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. 

Investigations by the 21st Judicial District in Mesa County as well as the Colorado Secretary of State’s office found that Peters began meeting with people concerned about election integrity in April of 2021, prompted both by the outcome of the 2020 presidential election and the results of the spring 2021 Grand Junction municipal election. Peters has said the victory of a number of more moderate candidates made her believe something was amiss with the county’s Dominion Voting Systems machines.  

Some of the facts in the case have never been disputed. Peters admits that in May 2021, she used the identity of a Fruita man named Gerald Wood to give a different man — Conan Hayes, a self-described data expert from California — access to county voting equipment, both to copy its hard drive and a few days later to attend a secure update of the machine’s software. Hayes is a retired surfer with ties to Lindell and his campaign of spreading falsehoods about the country’s election system. 

Courtesy of Larry Robinson/The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel

“This case was a simple case centered around the use of deceit to commit a fraud,” prosecutor Robert Shapiro told the jury during his closing arguments on Monday. 

“It’s not about computers, it’s not about election records, it’s about using deceit to trick and manipulate others, specifically public servants who were simply trying to do their job.” 

He said the update of the voting machine software is a very sensitive, secured and confidential process that Peters violated. 

What did the prosecution and the defense argue in the Tina Peters trial?

The prosecution also spent substantial time trying to show that Peters knew she’d done something wrong, based on her reaction when the security breach started to come to light. Two former staffers recalled Peters telling them, “I’m f—d.” One added that Peters told her she was “going to jail.” Peters also allegedly told staff involved with the plan to get burner phones and not say anything. 

“The defendant was a fox guarding the henhouse. It was her job to protect the election equipment and she turned on it and used her power for her own advantage,” said prosecutor Janet Drake. 

Peters’ defense team has painted her as a clerk who broke no rules by copying her equipment’s hard drives. They say everything she did was within her authority to preserve election records. 

“There’s also no dispute about what was going to happen when the state got in there to do the trusted build. They were going to erase all the records,” said Defense attorney John Case during his closing remarks. 

Hart Van Denburg/CPR News

The Secretary of State’s office and Dominion Voting Systems dispute the idea that the files updated during the secure update constitute ‘election records’ under Colorado law. They also say there are other ways to work with the state to preserve any information on the machines prior to the update.

The nine-day trial was rife with discussions of relevance and admissibility, often leading to lengthy delays as attorneys argued outside the presence of the jury whether or not the trial could wade into national conspiracies around Dominion Voting Systems and election results. The defense team also raised the claim, with no evidence, that Hayes was somehow a government informant, or that Peters believed he was an informant whose identity needed to be protected. In closing, Case again brushed up against those lines, drawing numerous objections from prosecutors. 

He mused to jurors about why the jury was not shown the video that was leaked online and why Hayes wasn’t subpoenaed for the trial. 

“Well, why didn’t they produce him? He’s the key to the whole case, but they didn’t have the guts to call him as a witness,” Case said. “They knew what he would say.”

Throughout the trial, the defense spent considerable time trying to show that Wood was in on the plan to let Hayes use his ID badge and name. They emphasized messages the defense said came from chats on the encrypted app Signal, in which Wood communicated with Peters and a local conservative activist Sherronna Bishop, who helped organize the plan to copy the hard drives. 

“He knew all along,” said Case of Wood in his closing statements. “That’s why he’s in this text chat. Now what happened when he was on the stand? I walked up, I showed and he looked like he’d been hit with a four-by-four.” 

Wood said he couldn’t recall being part of the text message chat labeled “tech team” but did concede it included his cell phone number and user name. 

Courtesy of Larry Robinson/The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel

Prosecutors urged the jury not to trust Bishop’s testimony, noting the authenticity of the text chain hadn’t been corroborated by anyone else and investigators never found it on any of the devices seized from her, Peters or Wood.  

“If you believe Sherronna Bishop, then we submit that you’ll probably find Jerry Wood consented,” Shapiro acknowledged to the jury.

The trial was closely watched because of its ties to broader election conspiracies. Brad Barker lives in Mesa County and regularly serves as a volunteer election judge. He’s closely followed the case and said he was surprised she wasn’t found guilty on all counts, but he was pleased nonetheless. 

“The jury did a good job going through the counts and I’m satisfied with the verdict,” Barker said, adding that he’s a little more confident helping out at the polls this November.

“Hopefully both sides of this will be able to accept the verdict and not stir up too much trouble. As an election judge, that could make it difficult if it continues to be a problem here in Mesa County and I just don’t want that,” Barker said in the hallway after the verdict. 

The group that represents Colorado’s clerks expressed satisfaction with the verdict.

“Clerks across the state are pleased to see justice done today.  We take seriously our role as guardians of the best election process in the nation and are grateful to see the justice system hold those who would harm our elections accountable,” said the association’s executive director Matt Crane in a statement.

Sentencing in the case is set for Oct. 3.