August 07, 2024 10:40 AM UTC

Former Deputy Clerk Gives Damning Testimony In Tina Peters Case

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• by: Colorado Pols

The trial of former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters on multiple felony counts stemming from the illegal access and theft of data from Dominion Voting Machines equipment in her care back in 2021 heard testimony yesterday from Peters’ former chief deputy clerk Belinda Knisley, who accepted a plea agreement almost two years ago in this long-delayed case in exchange for telling the truth about the actors of her former boss. As the Grand Junction Sentinel’s Charles Ashby reports, Knisley’s testimony described the reaction from Peters when she realized that the voting system data she had allowed to be copied and distributed to election conspiracy theorists was now publicly available online–a reaction that makes it painfully clear that Peters knew what she had done was a crime:

Belinda Knisely, who had been Peters’ chief deputy during that time, testified at the former clerk’s criminal trial Tuesday that Peters knew she had done something wrong when she helped to make copies of election computers and sent them via mail to the election denier she had used to make those copies, Conan Hayes.

“I’m [f—-d], I’m going to jail. It’s on the internet; it’s not supposed to be,” Knisley said Peters told her just before she boarded a private jet to an election denier symposium the same day her office was being searched by law enforcement.

“She told me she was going to go to jail in just about every conversation,” Knisley added. “She said it to me many times, ‘I’m going to go to jail over this.’”

Zeroing in on the identity theft and criminal impersonation charges against Peters, Knisley described the process by which Gerald Wood, a Fruita-based “computer consultant,” was issued a county identity card to access the secure area where voting machines were stored–a card that was immediately taken back from Wood and later given to another person, election conspiracy theorist Conan Hayes:

“I was told she was going to bring someone else in instead of Gerald Wood,” Knisley said. “I did question it when I was told. I was told by Peters that no one is going to look at the badge that close. [Pols emphasis] She did not give me any information about the individual other than it was somebody that knew computers and software.”

Knisley also testified that Peters’ close friend and far-right political activist Sherronna Bishop “ordered” Knisley to remove an affected computer before the cops could get it, which Knisley wisely refused to do in part because Sherronna Bishop was never at any point her boss. Knisley says that Peters even told her to buy a “burner” cell phone to ensure her conversations weren’t using official subpoenable channels. In Knisley’s sworn affidavit accompanying her testimony, she says Peters asked her to lie to Mesa County human resources about Wood’s ID card. Knisley’s testimony further underscores that from misusing Wood’s access card to allowing outside actors to copy the voting system data, Peters fully understood what she was doing was wrong. This was not the proper way for a public official to “investigate” any reasonable suspicion of impropriety. This testimony effectively shatters the contention by the defense that Peters believed she was acting in good faith in accordance with her official responsibilities.

Before Knisley’s testimony, it might have been possible for jurors to form the opinion that Peters was duped by irresponsible actors like Mike “MyPillow Guy” Lindell and former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, not to mention Donald Trump himself, into believing she was committing an act of superseding patriotism that would prove the 2020 presidential election had been stolen–thus vindicating any “minor” criminal transgressions that might have occurred along the way. But with Knisley’s side of the story, it’s clear now that Peters was very much the lucid conspirator in this plot that (once again) failed to produce any redemptive evidence of election fraud.

It’s the testimony we’ve been waiting for ever since Knisley copped a plea all the way back in August of 2022, and it’s as devastating as we’ve predicted through all these years of delay and denial it would be. It’s harder than ever to see how this ends well for Peters, who had every opportunity instead of employing every trick in the book to delay justice to make a plea agreement to reduced charges of her own: in exchange for the simple admission that what she did was wrong.

But that would have spelled the end of Peters’ MAGA election conspiracy circuit stardom. Instead, Peters invites the full weight of punishment by the court in the hope that her criminally bad judgment will be remembered as heroic.

This will not be the first career that Donald Trump’s “Big Lie” has ruined, but Peters also made choices that brought her to this moment.