Tina Peters found guilty in plot to breach Colorado’s election system to prove voter fraud

The jury debated clashing portraits of former Mesa County clerk, weighing image of conspiracy monger against that of dedicated public servant worried about voter fraud

By Nancy Lofholm5:04 PM MDT on Aug 12, 2024

from The Colorado Sun

Photo: Former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters departs the Mesa County Justice Center courtroom with her supporters, Monday, Aug. 12, 2024, in Grand Junction. (Hugh Carey, The Colorado Sun)

GRAND JUNCTION — A jury has found Tina Peters guilty of seven of 10 counts related to a 2021 breach of the Mesa County election system.

Twenty-first Judicial District Judge Matthew Barrett read the verdicts at 5:15 p.m. Monday, after the jury had deliberated for roughly four hours. At least four Mesa County sheriff’s deputies were inside the courtroom to maintain order, and another four were in the hallway.

Peters, 68, was convicted of three counts of attempting to influence a public official; conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation; official misconduct; violation of duty; and failure to comply with an order of the Secretary of State. The jury acquitted Peters of three counts: conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, criminal impersonation and identity theft.

Her sentencing is set for Oct. 3 at 9:30 a.m. She is eligible for probation but could face a lengthy prison sentence. She faces up to six years in prison on each of her top three felony convictions, and up to 18 months for conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation. Each of her three misdemeanor convictions carries up to 6 months in jail.

Peters, who had no visible reaction to the verdict, was not taken into custody Monday. Instead, the judge directed her to report to the county probation office by noon Tuesday. She left the courtroom flanked by grim-faced supporters, who pushed their way through a crowd as they made their exit.

The verdict capped a trial that started July 30 with jury selection and spanned eight days of testimony. Attorneys for Peters argued she was only following her duties as clerk. Her defense made frequent references to unproven election conspiracies that drove Peters and her accomplices.

The allegations turned Peters into an icon among election conspiracy theorists, embraced by national figures including MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who told The Colorado Sun in April 2022 that he contributed up to $800,000 of his personal wealth toward her legal defense.

Jurors were forced to choose between clashing portraits of Peters, with prosecutors portraying her as a conniving, law-breaking, publicity-seeking conspiracy monger who jeopardized Colorado’s voting system. To the defense, she was a dedicated public servant who was only trying to protect sensitive election information for her constituents — until she was steamrolled by a vindictive big government juggernaut.

Trial was not about election fraud, judge’s rulings insisted

Peters’ trial was a display of contentious disagreements, loaded with objections and filled with judicial admonishments — most of them directed at Peters’ team of four attorneys.

For a trial that was not about election fraud, that topic continually came up, most blatantly in the closing argument presented by defense attorney John Case.

Case began his summation with a large photo of Peters projected on a screen. Beside her, was a photo of her Navy Seal son who died in a parachuting accident during an air show in 2017.

Case described Peters as a mother who was “forced to find a new purpose in life” after her son died. That purpose, he said, was to become the clerk and recorder for her county.

He said Peters has been targeted because of her selfless attempt to help her constituents and in the process, to protect a purported cyber expert she brought in through subterfuge to access her system. 

“The government has charged Tina Peters for 10 crimes. Wow! Why?” Case pointedly asked the jurors after defending her secretive actions and outlining what the defense views as lies from those who testified against Peters.

Robert Shapiro, an attorney for the Colorado Attorney General’s office, who assisted the 21st Judicial District Attorney’s Office in the prosecution of Peters, described the former clerk as a lawbreaker who devised a scheme to breach her county’s election system with “layer upon layer of deceit.”

He, too, had a photo of Peters from 2021 projected on the screen, but it was a vastly different image from the carefully coiffed and heavily made-up defendant in the courtroom.

Shapiro said Peters’ defense that she was trying to look into voting irregularities and to preserve confidential information from her voting equipment is not defensible.

“She is not conducting an investigation,” he said about her actions surrounding the breach of Mesa County’s equipment in the spring of 2021. “She is opening up her system to outsiders.”

The vision of innocent whistleblower versus criminal conspiracist, clashed most starkly on the prosecution’s detailing of Peters’ actions related to bringing in an outside person in to secretly access the system.

“She was not protecting the election integrity,” said Janet Drake, another attorney from the Colorado Attorney General’s Office in her rebuttal of the defense’s closing arguments. “The defendant was the fox guarding the henhouse. She used her power for her own advantage.”

The prosecution briefly projected a picture of a snarling fox to illustrate that view of Peters.

LKY: The back-up copy of the Mesa County Election machines that Tina had made before Dominion's "trusted build" provided the basis for the Mesa County Election Reports 1,2 and 3. These provide evidence of election fraud. You can view these reports at TinaPeters.us.

Tina Peters is a HERO.