Colorado clerk who pushed election fraud theory found guilty

Former Colorado clerk Tina Peters has been convicted of several charges related to her efforts to reveal voting problems in connection to the 2020 election. A jury found her not guilty of identity fraud, as well as on counts of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation and of criminal impersonation.

Peters was accused of using someone else’s security badge to give an expert affiliated with My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell access to the Mesa County election system and deceiving other officials about that person’s identity.

Lindell pushed conspiracy theories about the 2020 election’s result, and his website monitored Peters’s trial while sending out daily email updates that included statements from her and daily prayer requests.

Prosecutors said Peters was seeking fame and became “fixated” on voting problems after becoming involved with those who had questioned the accuracy of the 2020 presidential election results.

Peters was convicted of three counts of attempting to influence a public servant, one count of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, first-degree official misconduct, violation of duty, and failing to comply with the secretary of state.

She dodged some of the charges because the court rejected that, in those instances, Peters had used the identity of the security badge’s owner, a local man named Gerald Wood, without his permission.

In a post on X after the verdict, Peters accused Colorado-based Dominion Voting Systems, which made her county’s election system, as well as lawyers for state election officials, of stealing votes.

“I will continue to fight until the Truth is revealed that was 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,” she said.

In closing trial arguments, prosecutor Janet Drake argued that Peters allowed a man posing as a county employee to take images of the election system’s hard drive before and after a software upgrade in May 2021.

Drake said Peters observed the update so she could become the “hero” and appear at Lindell’s symposium on the 2020 presidential election a few months later.

“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 Drake, a lawyer from the Colorado Attorney General’s Office.

Defense lawyer John Case said Peters had to preserve records to access the voting system to find out things like whether anyone from “China or Canada” had accessed the machine while ballots were being counted.

“And thank God she did. Otherwise, we really wouldn’t know what happened,” he said.

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said the verdict sent a message: “Today’s verdict is a warning to others that they will face serious consequences if they attempt to illegally tamper with our voting processes or election systems. I want to be clear — our elections are safe and fair,” he said in a statement.

Peters will be sentenced on Oct. 3.