DENVER – A former Colorado official Tina PetersThe first local election official to be charged with a security breach after the 2020 election was found guilty on most charges by a jury Monday, as unsubstantiated conspiracy theories swirled.
Peters, a one-time hero of election deniers, was accused of using someone else’s security badge to give an expert linked to My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell access to the Mesa County election system and misleading other officials about that person’s identity.
Lindell is a well-known promoter false claims that voting machines were tampered with to steal election From Donald Trump. His online streaming site features a live stream of Peters’ trial and sends out daily email updates, sometimes asking for prayers for Peters and including testimony from him.
Prosecutors said Peters sought fame and was “fixated” on voting problems after associating with those who questioned the accuracy of the 2020 presidential election results.
The corrupt Peters was accused of orchestrating growing concerns about potential insider threats, when rogue election workers sympathetic to partisan lies could use their reach and knowledge to mount an attack from within.
Peters was charged with attempting to influence a public servant, one count of conspiracy to commit a felony, first-degree misconduct, dereliction of duty and failure to obey the secretary of state.
He has pleaded not guilty to identity theft, conspiracy to commit a crime and one count of criminal impersonation, in which he denies using the identity of Peters’ security badge holder, Gerald Wood, a local man, without his permission. .
Peters stood next to one of his attorneys at the defense table as the verdict was read in a quiet courtroom. Judge Matthew Barrett warned those in the courtroom that he would not tolerate any outbursts.
He will be sentenced on October 3.
In a post on social media platform X after the verdict, Peters accused Colorado-based Dominion Voting Systems, which fixed his county’s election system, as well as attorneys for state election officials, of stealing votes.
“I will continue my fight until the Truth is revealed, which is not allowed to be brought during this trial. This is a sad day for our nation and the world. But we will win in the end,” he said.
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, whose office helped launch the investigation into Peters, said she will now face consequences for tampering with her election equipment “trying to prove Trump’s big lie.”
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said the sentence sends a message.
“Today’s sentence is a warning to others that they will face serious consequences if they attempt to illegally interfere with our voting processes or election systems. I want to be clear – our elections are safe and fair,” he said in a statement.
The verdict came hours after prosecutors urged jurors to convict Peters, saying he tricked state employees into working with outsiders connected to Lindell.
While closing court In arguments, prosecutor Janet Drake alleged that the former official allowed a man posing as a county employee to take pictures of the election system’s hard drive before and after a software upgrade in May 2021.
Drake said he was eyeing the update so Peters could be “a hero” and appear at Lindell’s symposium on the 2020 presidential election in a few months.
“The defendant was a fox guarding the henhouse. It was his job to protect election equipment, and he turned it on and used his power to his advantage,” said Drake, a lawyer with the Colorado Attorney General’s Office.
Drake worked for the district attorney in Mesa County, a heavily Republican county near the Utah border, to prosecute the case.
Before jurors began deliberating Monday, the defense told them that Peters had committed no crimes and only wanted to protect his election records after the county refused to allow one of its technology experts to participate in a software update.
Defense attorney John Case said Peters should have kept the records to access the voting system, to find out if anyone “from China or Canada” entered the machine when the ballots were being counted.
“And thank God he made it. Otherwise, we wouldn’t know what really happened,” he said.
Peters allowed a former surfer from California, Conan Hayes, who was connected to Lindell, to observe the software update and make copies of the hard drive using Wood’s security badge. Peters told visiting officers that Hayes, who identified himself as Wood, worked for him. But while prosecutors say Peters committed identity theft by taking Wood’s security badge and giving it to Hayes to hide his identity, the defense said Wood was in on the scheme, so Peters didn’t commit a crime by doing it.
Wood denied this during the trial.
Sherronna Bishop, a political activist who helped introduce Peters to people working with Lindell, testified that Wood knew her identity would be used based on a Signal conversation between Wood and Peters. There is no agreement in the conversation.
A day after the first image of the hard drive was taken, Bishop said he posted the audio recording in the chat. The content of that post was not included in the screenshots of the conversation presented by the defense. The person, identified only as Wood, replied to the unknown message, “I’m happy to help. I hope that the efforts paid off”, – according to screenshots.
Prosecutor Robert Shapiro told the jury that Bishop was not credible.