Mesa County (Colo)

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    Tina Peters, Former Colorado County Clerk, Is Sentenced in Obstruction Case

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    Ms. Peters, who is awaiting trial in a voting equipment tampering case, was given four months of home detention and community service after her conviction on an obstruction charge.Tina Peters, a Trump loyalist who was barred from overseeing elections in a Colorado county after her indictment on charges related to tampering with voting equipment, was sentenced on Monday to home detention after she was convicted in a separate obstruction case.Ms. Peters, the former clerk in Mesa County, was given four months of house arrest and 120 hours of community service in connection with her February 2022 arrest in Grand Junction, Colo., on a misdemeanor obstruction charge, according to court records.A jury convicted Ms. Peters last month of stonewalling investigators from the district attorney’s office in Mesa County when they tried to seize an iPad from her that she had used to record a court proceeding.According to an affidavit, police officers responded to a local bagel shop where they said that Ms. Peters, a Republican, resisted while she was being searched and was taken into custody.Ms. Peters was found guilty of obstructing government operations, but was acquitted of obstructing a peace officer. She was also fined $750 and ordered to wear an ankle monitor.Harvey A. Steinberg, a lawyer for Ms. Peters, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday, but told NBC News that he and his client were relieved that Ms. Peters avoided jail time, as had been requested by the district attorney.A stay was issued in the case, pending an appeal that is expected from Ms. Peters, according to the sentencing order.Daniel P. Rubinstein, the district attorney of Mesa County, who is also a Republican, said in an interview on Tuesday that Ms. Peters had been seeking to provoke a confrontation with law enforcement officers as a “badge of honor” with her followers — and that as a public office holder at the time, she should be held accountable.Ms. Peters, a leading election denier in Colorado who promoted former President Donald J. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election had been stolen, ran unsuccessfully last year for secretary of state. She lost the Republican primary to Pam Anderson, who was defeated in the general election by Jena Griswold, the incumbent Democrat.A Colorado judge sided with Ms. Griswold in a lawsuit against Ms. Peters last May, blocking Ms. Peters from overseeing elections in Mesa County after she was indicted in March 2022 on charges related to a scheme to copy sensitive voting data after the 2020 election. At the time, Ms. Peters accused Democrats of using the grand jury “to formalize politically motivated accusations” against her.She is awaiting trial in that case, which is separate from a contempt charge that the district attorney is also bringing against her.Kirsten Noyes More

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      Judge Issues Arrest Warrant for Tina Peters in Colorado

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      A judge in Colorado issued an arrest warrant on Thursday for Tina Peters, the Mesa County clerk who is under indictment in relation to a breach of election equipment after the 2020 presidential contest, for violating conditions of her bond that prevented her from traveling without court approval.The judge, Matthew D. Barrett of Colorado’s 21st Judicial District, also revoked her $25,000 cash bond and called for her to be held in jail pending a hearing.Ms. Peters traveled to Las Vegas this week to speak at an event hosted by the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, a conservative group of county sheriffs and their allies. According to court documents, she did not obtain permission from the judge to travel outside Colorado.Ms. Peters had been deemed a flight risk and was ordered to remain in the state after she was indicted in March on criminal charges, including seven felonies, that stemmed from a scheme to copy sensitive election software from county voting machines in an effort to prove that the 2020 presidential election was tainted by fraud.But because she was running for the Republican nomination for Colorado secretary of state, Ms. Peters was given permission to travel outside the state for political purposes, as long as she notified the court of her plans.She lost her primary bid last month, and on Monday, Judge Barrett ruled that she would again need the court’s approval before traveling out of state. Ms. Peters has continued to claim, without evidence, that her election loss was the result of fraud. In a sign that Ms. Peters had not yet left for Las Vegas when the Monday order arrived, Daniel P. Rubinstein, the Mesa County district attorney, said in a court filing that Ms. Peters was at the Mesa County Detention Facility that day, “nearly five hours after the court restricted any out-of-state travel.”On Thursday afternoon, Harvey A. Steinberg, a lawyer representing Ms. Peters, filed a motion to quash the arrest warrant, arguing that she had told his office of her intent to travel and that his office had not filed the necessary notice with the court, meaning that Ms. Peters did not know the court was unaware of her travel. “Ms. Peters has not knowingly violated bond conditions,” Mr. Steinberg wrote.Ms. Peters did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It was not clear if she was still in Las Vegas.During her speech in Las Vegas, Ms. Peters claimed that Representative Lauren Boebert, a Republican who is also from western Colorado, had dinner with multiple people who helped carry out the plot to copy election data.Benjamin Stout, the communications director for Ms. Boebert, said on Thursday that Ms. Peters’s “claims are untrue.”Ms. Peters had previously told The New York Times that Ms. Boebert “encouraged” her to carry through with the operation. Ms. Boebert’s campaign denied those allegations.One of Ms. Peters’s top aides, Sandra Brown, turned herself in on Monday after being indicted over her role in the alleged scheme to extract data from county election machines. Ms. Brown, who was the county’s election manager, faces several felony charges, including conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation and attempting to influence a public servant. Her arrest was earlier reported by The Daily Sentinel.Court records suggest that Ms. Brown was involved in the alleged plot from the very beginning. On April 23, Ms. Peters, Ms. Brown, another aide and Sherronna Bishop, a former campaign manager for Ms. Boebert, met with Douglas Frank, a high school math and science teacher in Ohio whose debunked theories have been influential among election conspiracists, according to records.Court documents cite a recorded conversation in which Ms. Peters asked Mr. Frank if he could open the machines, but he said it was against the law based on county contracts. Ms. Bishop then suggested using a routine software procedure known as a “trusted build” to get inside the machines, according to the documents.Ms. Bishop has not been charged with any wrongdoing. She did not immediately respond to a request for comment.In all, three officials in Ms. Peters’s office face criminal charges related to the scheme; Belinda Knisley, Ms. Peters’s deputy, was indicted in March on six charges. More

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      Tina Peters Loses the G.O.P. Primary for Colorado Secretary of State

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      Tina Peters, a county clerk who has been charged with seven felonies related to a scheme to surreptitiously copy sensitive voting data, lost her bid for the Republican nomination for Colorado secretary of state on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press.She was defeated by Pam Anderson, a longtime local election official who served as a clerk and recorder for Jefferson County and as president of the statewide county clerks’ association. Late Tuesday, Ms. Peters was also trailing Mike O’Donnell, a former nonprofit executive who has promoted numerous falsehoods about the 2020 presidential contest. Ms. Peters is part of a movement of Trump-inspired Republicans who deny the 2020 election’s legitimacy and are running to be the top election official in their states, including Jim Marchant in Nevada, Audrey Trujillo in New Mexico and Kristina Karamo in Michigan.Ms. Anderson, by contrast, has vocally opposed misinformation about the 2020 election and has a page on her campaign website dedicated to debunking conspiracy theories about voting machines and the role of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, in funding elections.She has, however, pushed to expand auditing processes performed by local election officials in Colorado.In Colorado, a former swing state that has leaned toward Democrats in recent years, Ms. Anderson faces what is likely to be an uphill battle against Jena Griswold, the current secretary of state and a Democrat.Ms. Peters’s arraignment on 10 criminal charges, including seven felonies, is set for early August. She has pleaded not guilty.A former flight attendant who ran a construction company with her ex-husband, Ms. Peters was elected in 2018 as the clerk and recorder in Mesa County, a Republican stronghold amid the red-rocked canyons of western Colorado.After the 2020 presidential election, Ms. Peters grew suspicious of the national results, and attended a local event where a presentation was delivered by a high school teacher from Ohio known for spreading false election conspiracy theories.By May 2021, according to court documents, Ms. Peters was helping orchestrate an operation to copy voting machine data before and after a software update process known as a trusted build, in an attempt to prove that the machines were faulty.After her office ordered security cameras shut off in a secured area holding voting machines, court records say, Ms. Peters helped Conan Hayes, a former professional surfer who had worked with Mr. Trump’s legal team as it challenged the 2020 results, sneak into the trusted build process under a false identity.In early August, passwords to the Mesa County election equipment appeared on a QAnon figure’s Telegram channel and then on a right-wing website, leading to an investigation by the Colorado secretary of state that quickly garnered national attention.Ms. Peters’s newfound celebrity on the right soon led to appearances across the conservative media ecosystem, including on the former Trump aide Stephen K. Bannon’s podcast.This February, Ms. Peters announced her bid for secretary of state.In March, she was indicted on 10 criminal counts related to the effort to copy voting equipment software, including attempting to influence a public servant, criminal impersonation, conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, identity theft and first-degree official misconduct. More

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      County Clerk Tina Peters Indicted in Colorado Voting Investigation

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      The Mesa County clerk, Tina Peters, is charged with 10 counts related to tampering with voting equipment. A Republican running for secretary of state, she has promoted false claims of fraud in the 2020 election.Tina Peters, a county clerk running as a Republican for secretary of state of Colorado, was indicted Tuesday evening on 10 criminal counts related to allegations that she tampered with election equipment after the 2020 election.The indictment, which the district attorney of Mesa County, Colo., announced on Wednesday, is connected to Ms. Peters’s work as the top county election administrator, a role in which she promoted former President Donald J. Trump’s false claims that the election had been stolen. Because of Ms. Peters’s unusual scheme to interfere with voting machines, state officials “could not establish confidence in the integrity or security” of elections equipment, the indictment said.Ms. Peters’s case is a prominent example of how false theories about election fraud and Republican-led calls for “audits” of the 2020 vote count have created election-security threats involving the integrity of voting machines, software and other election equipment. And in running for secretary of state, Ms. Peters is among a group of brazenly partisan candidates who claim that Mr. Trump may have won the election and who are transforming races around the country for such once little-known offices.A grand jury indicted Ms. Peters on both felony and misdemeanor charges, including counts of attempting to influence a public servant, criminal impersonation, conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, identity theft, first-degree official misconduct, violation of duty and failing to comply with the secretary of state.In a statement, Ms. Peters accused Democrats of using the grand jury “to formalize politically motivated accusations” against her.“Using legal muscle to indict political opponents during an election isn’t new strategy, but it’s easier to execute when you have a district attorney who despises President Trump and any constitutional conservative like myself who continues to demand all election evidence be made available to the public,” she said.The grand jury also indicted Belinda Knisley, Ms. Peters’s deputy, on six counts. A lawyer for Ms. Knisley did not respond to a request for comment.The Mesa County Sheriff’s Office said Wednesday that Ms. Knisley and Ms. Peters were both in custody.The indictment focused on how passwords used to update voting machine software had been leaked online in August 2021.Beginning in April, Ms. Peters and Ms. Knisley “devised and executed a deceptive scheme which was designed to influence public servants, breach security protocols, exceed permissible access to voting equipment, and set in motion the eventual distribution of confidential information to unauthorized people,” according to the indictment, which linked their actions to the release of the passwords and other confidential information.Jessi Romero, the voting systems manager at the Colorado secretary of state’s office, told the grand jury that the Mesa County elections office — which Ms. Peters led as county clerk and recorder — had contacted him in April to request that members of the public be allowed to observe a software update process in person. Mr. Romero responded that this was not allowed.On May 13, according to the indictment, Ms. Knisley requested an access badge and an official email address for a “temp employee” who would represent the county on site during the software update. But that person was not an employee and had no right to be on site under state regulations, the indictment said.“Relying on the misrepresentations” of Ms. Knisley — who later said she had been acting on Ms. Peters’s instructions — Mesa County granted the person an access badge for the election building. He later returned the badge to Ms. Knisley, the indictment said.But, according to the indictment, county records show that someone used that badge to enter secure areas of the election offices on May 23, two days before the scheduled software update.A few days earlier, according to the indictment, the security cameras in the election office had been turned off at Ms. Knisley’s request.Prosecutors have previously said they believe that Ms. Peters entered a secure area of a warehouse where voting machines were stored and copied hard drives and election-management software from the machines.The indictment does not explain why prosecutors believe Ms. Peters or Ms. Knisley wanted the material.In early August, the conservative website Gateway Pundit posted passwords for the county’s election machines. Shortly afterward, the Mesa County machines’ software showed up on large monitors at a South Dakota election symposium organized by the conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell and attended by Ms. Peters.A Colorado judge stripped Ms. Peters of her duties overseeing last year’s election after a lawsuit was filed by Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat. Ms. Peters announced last month that she would run for secretary of state against Ms. Griswold.“Officials who carry out elections do so in public trust and must be held accountable when they abuse their power or position,” Ms. Griswold said in a statement on Wednesday.The indictment was announced by the Mesa County district attorney, Daniel P. Rubinstein, and the Colorado attorney general, Phil Weiser.“The grand jury, randomly selected from the same pool of citizens that elected Clerk Tina Peters and chosen months before any of these alleged offenses occurred, concluded there is probable cause that Clerk Peters and Deputy Clerk Knisley committed crimes,” Mr. Rubinstein and Mr. Weiser said in a statement in which they added that their offices would provide no further comment “to maintain the investigation’s impartiality.”Reid J. Epstein More

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      2020 Election Denier Will Run for Top Elections Position in Colorado

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      Tina Peters, the Mesa County clerk, has been stripped of her county election oversight but is seeking to oversee her state’s elections as secretary of state.A Republican county clerk in Colorado who was stripped of her responsibility of overseeing county elections is joining a growing movement of people throughout the country who spread false claims about fraud in the 2020 presidential election and want to oversee the next one.Tina Peters, the Mesa County clerk, who is facing accusations that she breached the security of voting machines, announced on Monday that she would run to be the top elections official in Colorado.At least three Republican challengers are already running to unseat the current Colorado secretary of state, Jena Griswold, a Democrat.Colorado is a purple state that President Biden won with 55 percent of the vote in 2020. The state’s primary is on June 28, and Colorado is one of 27 states whose top elections official will be on the ballot this year.In 2020, when former President Donald J. Trump and his allies sought to undo the results of the election, they focused their pressure campaign on these relatively little-known officeholders.“I am the wall between your vote and nationalized elections,” Ms. Peters said during an appearance Monday on a podcast hosted by Stephen K. Bannon, the embattled former top aide to Mr. Trump. “They are coming after me because I am standing in their way — of truth, transparency and elections held closest to the people.”Ms. Griswold, who is also the head of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, said in a statement on Monday that Ms. Peters was “unfit to be secretary of state and a danger to Colorado elections,” citing Ms. Peters’s attempts to discredit the results of the 2020 presidential election.Ms. Peters did not immediately respond to telephone and email messages on Monday seeking comment.Elected in 2018, Ms. Peters took office as clerk and recorder of Mesa County, in far western Colorado, in 2019. By late 2021 a Mesa County Court judge had upheld Ms. Griswold’s removing Ms. Peters from overseeing elections in the county and replacing her with an appointee.In May of last year, Ms. Peters and two other people entered a secure area of a warehouse in Mesa County where crucial election information was stored. They copied hard drives and election-management software from voting machines, the authorities said.In early August, the conservative website Gateway Pundit posted passwords for the county’s election machines. In October Ms. Peters spoke at a gathering in South Dakota of people determined to show that the 2020 election had been stolen from Mr. Trump.The gathering also featured a large screen that, at one point, showed the software from the election machines in Mesa County.Ms. Griswold said her office had concluded that the passwords leaked out when Ms. Peters enlisted a staff member to accompany her to surreptitiously record a routine voting-machine maintenance procedure. State and county officials announced last month that a grand jury was looking into allegations of tampering with Mesa County election equipment and “official misconduct.”More recently, Ms. Peters was briefly detained by the police when she obstructed efforts by officials with the local district attorney to serve a search warrant for her iPad. Ms. Peters may have used the iPad to record a court proceeding related to one of her deputies, according to Stephanie Reecy, a spokeswoman for the county.In video of the Feb. 8 encounter, taken by a bystander and posted on Twitter, Ms. Peters can be heard repeatedly saying, “Let go of me,” as officers seek to detain her. “It hurts. Let go of me,” she says, before bending her leg and raising her foot toward the officer standing behind her.An officer responds, “Do not kick,” according to body camera video posted by KJCT News 8, a local station. “Do you understand?”Ms. Peters was charged with obstructing a peace officer and obstructing government operations, according to the Mesa County Sheriff’s Office. She turned herself in to the authorities on Thursday, posted $500 bond and was released, according to county officials.“I still have the bruises on my arm where they manhandled me,” Ms. Peters told Mr. Bannon on Monday. Later she said: “I just want to say I love the people. That’s why I’m doing this.”Mr. Bannon said Ms. Peters had been targeted because of her fight against “this globalist apparatus.”“Thank you,” Ms. Peters told the host. “I’ll work hard for you guys.” More