DENVER — DENVER (AP) —
An employee of a former Colorado clerk Tina Peters Peters, who says she was there when her boss gave an outsider posing as a county employee access to her voting system computer, testified Wednesday that Peters was shocked when images from the computer surfaced online.
In the summer of 2021, former elections manager Sandra Brown said Peters called her after seeing the photos and videos she had taken from Dominion Voting Systems’ hard drive and said, “I don’t know what to do,” using an obscene word to express her dismay at the potential consequences. Shortly afterward, as authorities began investigating what had happened, Peters and her attorney advised Brown and another employee to buy disposable phones, known as burner phones, so their conversations with her and attorneys couldn’t be discovered by investigators and urged them not to talk to police, Brown said.
After Brown was accused and turned himself inPeters came to visit her in prison that same day, she said.
“She came in and said, ‘I love you, you’ve got support, and don’t say anything,'” said Brown, who said Peters also gave her the number of an attorney who could represent her in court for her bail hearing. Brown eventually got a different attorney and pleaded guilty under a plea agreement that required her to testify against Peters.
Peters’ attorneys argue that she only wanted to preserve election data before the system received a software update and did not want that information shared with the world. They say she was acting under her authority as clerk and did not violate any laws.
Meanwhile, prosecutors have portrayed Peters as someone who became “fixated” on voting issues after she became involved with activists who questioned the accuracy of the 2020 presidential election results, including Douglas Frank, an Ohio math teacher who worked for MyPillow founder Mike Lindell. The defense says she was a responsive public servant who wanted to be able to answer questions about the election in her community in western Colorado’s Mesa County, a Republican stronghold that voted for Donald Trump in the election.
Prosecutors allege the plan to image the voting system’s hard drive was hatched during an April 2021 meeting with Frank, Peters and others in her office while he was in town to give a presentation on voter fraud. In a secret recording made by another election worker, Frank told Peters that discovering corruption in her voting system and cleaning it up would be “a feather in your cap.” Peters invited Frank to return the following month to update the software for the county’s voting machines. Frank said he could instead send in a team that was “the best in the country.”
Prosecutors say Frank sent a retired California surfer and colleague of Lindell’s, Conan Hayes, to take an image of the hard drive before and after the software update. Peters is accused of impersonating Hayes as a poll worker using another person’s badge, a person she allegedly hired solely so she could use the badge to get Hayes in to observe the update as well. The Colorado Secretary of State’s office, which facilitated the update with Dominion, had denied Peters’ requests to have an outside computer expert in the room.
Hayes has not been charged with a crime. He did not respond to messages left at phone numbers listed for him and to an email seeking comment on the allegations.
The defense claims that Peters believed Hayes was working as a government informant and that he only agreed to help her if his identity remained secret. Judge Matthew Barrett has barred the defense from discussing that claim before the jury. Prosecutors say there is no evidence to support Hayes being an informant. Barrett has also ruled that even if Peters believed he was, it does not excuse what she is accused of doing.
After defense attorney Amy Jones, a former Ohio judge, suggested during opening statements that Peters believed Hayes was an informant, Barrett told jurors to “put that out of your mind.” After the jury left, he chided the defense for bringing it up despite his earlier orders not to.
Peters is charged with three counts of attempted influence over a public servant, criminal identity fraud, two counts of conspiracy to commit criminal identity fraud, one count of identity fraud, misconduct of a public servant in the first degree, neglect of duty and failure to comply with the directives of the Secretary of State.
The trial is expected to last until early next week.