August 12, 2024 03:27 PM UTC

Ex-Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters GUILTY On 7 of 10 Counts

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• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE 5:20: The counts and verdicts from 9NEWS’ Marshall Zelinger:

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UPDATE 5:15PM: Former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters GUILTY on influencing public servant charges, not guilty on some impersonation charges. Guilty on 7 out of 10 total counts. Stand by for summary.

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UPDATE 5:10PM: Jury has reached a verdict. Jury returning to the courtroom.

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That’s the word from 9NEWS’ Marshall Zelinger, after closing arguments this morning the jury has retired to begin deliberating the charges against former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who faces the possibility of the rest of her natural life in prison for helping election conspiracy theorists steal Dominion Voting Systems data in a failed attempt to produce evidence that the 2020 presidential election was stolen:

As Colorado Public Radio’s Bente Birkeland reports, Peters’ defense rested Friday after Peters went publicly back and forth on the question of whether to take the stand, ultimately deciding not to testify after stating that what she described as her legal defense would not be permitted:

Peters did not take the stand herself, but there was some suspense about whether she would. She attempted to get the judge to agree to conditions ahead of her testimony, including limiting the scope of cross examination by prosecutors. Barrett rebuffed those requests.

“I can’t give legal advice and it’s highly unusual in the circumstance that we’re in right now — defendants asking me questions and looking for answers — I just can’t do that,” said Barrett.

Peters said she wanted to be able to talk about her claim that at the time she believed Hayes was working with the federal government and that his identity needed shielding. [Pols emphasis] However Barrett ruled that line of defense inadmissible at the start of the trial. Peters ultimately said that was why she didn’t take the stand, telling the judge she felt like she was prevented from offering a defense.

This is very important. After three years of erecting grandiose conspiracy theories to justify what appears to be a clear and fairly egregious case of official misconduct, all of which were debunked by prosecutors before the trial began and as a result ruled inadmissible, Tina Peters was going to hang her defense on a belief that the surfer conspiracy theorist she provided fake credentials to in order to access voting equipment was some kind of government agent.

Further exploring the defense’s strategy in this case, the Grand Junction Sentinel’s Charles Ashby discusses how Peters’ actions completely refute the contention that she was acting as a good-faith whistleblower, again explaining why these “defenses” were nonstarters in court:

Peters took few administrative or legal steps to address any concerns she may have had with election computers before taking the actions she did that lead to be charged with seven felonies and three misdemeanors.

For example, although Peters did go to the county’s information technology department to request computer aid in a pending software update of election computers, who turned her down because the vendor of that system, Dominion Voting Systems, was responsible for that, she never went to DA Chief Investigator James Cannon nor any other law enforcement officer about any concerns…

She also never went to the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office or the Colorado Attorney General prior to that update, known as a trusted build, raising any concerns.

Instead, she turned to Sherronna Bishop and other election deniers who were trying to get evidence that the 2020 presidential election was somehow stolen from former President Donald Trump. They were focused on several aspects of the election, primarily Dominion machines.

Ashby reports that it was far-right activist and unindicted co-conspirator Sherronna Bishop who introduced Peters to Conan Hayes, the former surfer-turned election conspiracy theorist who Peters apparently intended to claim she was led to believe was a government agent. But Bishop didn’t claim that Hayes was an agent in her own testimony, in which she asserted Gerald Wood was not a victim of identity theft but rather a willing participant in generating fake credentials for Hayes. Wood denies this, but it also doesn’t really matter since nobody disputes that Wood’s identity was misused to allow Hayes access to the voting machines. Other than the hope of injecting conspiracy theories that were ruled inadmissible at the beginning of the trial into jurors’ heads, it’s difficult to understand how any of this testimony helped Peters.

The trial of Tina Peters has generally borne out the prediction that the case would not be difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. Peters has long freely admitted to the basic facts of the case, and outside the court her “defense” was buoyed was the unquestioned common belief that the 2020 presidential election was stolen–making any attempt to confirm that bias heroic in the eyes of the majority of Republicans who still believe the “Big Lie.” Inside the court, however, these years-debunked falsehoods simply carried no weight. Peters chose to conspire with unserious people instead of going through the official channels she had access to.

They never proved election fraud, but by posting the data with unmistakable fingerprints leading back to the Mesa County Clerk’s office, the conspiracy theorists who used Peters to steal that data proved above all that they didn’t care what happened to Tina Peters. This could explain why big-name election deniers like Patrick Byrne defend Peters with such ferocity. Beneath the bravado, they know she’s going to jail for something they put her up to.

As the sworn official at the heart of the case, Peters is the one who takes the hardest fall. But if the accountability ends with Peters, that’s justice interrupted.