Tina Peters Trial Day 1 — Attorneys deliver contrasting narratives of former Mesa County Clerk’s handling of election equipment

Attorneys in the trial of a former Mesa County clerk agree that Tina Peters attempted to allow a non-county employee to access election equipment, they just differ on whether that constitutes a crime.

That was the message at the end of the first full day of trial in a long-awaited case. Peters faces ten counts related to facilitating unauthorized access to voting equipment, including charges of influencing a public servant, identity theft and official misconduct. 

“This is a case about a series of crimes that were designed to be a cover-up,” Robert Shapiro, first assistant attorney general for special prosecutions at the Colorado Attorney General’s Office, told the jury Wednesday. 

Shapiro’s opening remarks laid out a timeline for Peters that began in 2021 with meetings with election conspiracy theorists and led all the way up to a plan to help someone who was purportedly investigating voter fraud copy the hard drives of Mesa County’s vote tabulating equipment. This happened around the time of a so-called “trusted build” for the Dominion Voting Systems machines’ software, which Shapiro described as a standard post-election update. 

But that’s not how Peters’ defense told the jury they should see it. 

“(Shapiro) refers to it as a ‘trusted build’ but what the truth will reveal is they were going to erase that data,” Amy Jones, a member of Peters’ defense team said. 

Peters has claimed in public statements that copying the drives fell under her duty as clerk to preserve election records, an interpretation rejected by the Secretary of State and numerous other clerks.

The opening statements capped a lengthy day at the Mesa County Justice Center that began with several hours of jury selection. 

A mathematician, a surfer and America’s Mom

Shapiro, speaking for the prosecution, described an April 2021 meeting that Peters was a part of as the “beginning of the conspiracy.” At that meeting, Shapiro said, Peters met with Douglas Frank — a former mathematician whose claims that he mathematically proved voter fraud in the 2020 election have been debunked — and Sherronna Bishop, one-time campaign manager for Lauren Boebert who goes by the moniker “America’s Mom.” 

Shapiro said it was at that meeting Peters and others began to develop a plan to access voting systems with the idea the software might hold a smoking gun to widespread election subversion by Dominion. To pull it off, Shapiro alleged Peters used the identity of a Mesa County man to create a security badge that would later be used by a retired surfer named Conan James Hayes, who has also been linked to a similar breach of voting equipment security in Coffee County, Georgia. 

Hayes is said to have accessed Mesa County voting equipment before the 2021 trusted build and attended the secure software update using the fraudulent employee badge, in violation of direction from the Secretary of State’s office. 

Shapiro said the plan involved deceiving multiple government officials and eventually resulted in sensitive information being posted online in August of 2021, which kickstarted the investigation into Peters. 

‘It was not a crime’

Jones did not dispute that Peters granted Hayes access to equipment during the defense’s opening, but said the charges associated with doing so don’t fit with the facts of the case. 

“The facts and the evidence don’t support their version of what happened,” she said. 

After alerting the jurors to Peters’ status as a mother of a deceased veteran — her son, a Navy Seal, died as a result of a parachute malfunction during a demonstration — Jones noted that Peters got into government to help her community and to reduce wait times at the DMV, which is one of the departments under the Clerk and Recorder. 

“She wanted to improve the local government system,” Jones said. 

And when it came to the elections, Jones said Peters was concerned about data possibly being deleted during the trusted build software update, which is why she brought in Hayes. 

“Every time Conan Hayes was onsite, he was supervised by an employee with access,” Jones said, adding that at the time “it was not a crime to make an image,” Jones said. 

Since Peters’ actions, lawmakers have barred county clerks from copying their hard drives without permission from the Secretary of State.

15 Jurors

Before opening statements, the legal teams winnowed the pool of jurors down to 15, using a series of questions about media consumption habits, trust in government and associations with people or groups around the county. 

Janet Drake, deputy attorney general, asked if prospective jurors had attended so-called election integrity meetings, were attendees at Mesa County Stand for the Constitution events or had seen the film “Selection Code,” which was produced by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell. 

One juror was dismissed after they said they could not be impartial in evaluating the testimony of a Dominion Voting Services employee. 

On the defense side, attorney Michael Edminister probed jurors for their media habits and if they could recognize the difference between evidence in court and what’s in the media. 

“They don’t care about whether they’re biased or not, they’re trying to get your attention,” Edminister said of journalists. 

Media coverage is likely to factor heavily into the case, with the defense having already entered several copies of The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel into the court record because of its pre-trial coverage. 

Ahead of jury selection Wednesday, as a group of Peters’ supporters gathered outside the courtroom hoping to watch the trial, at least one person repeatedly hissing at a member of the press. 

Day two of the trial is expected to begin at 10 a.m. Thursday.