Tina Peters (politician)

Tina Peters (born 1955/1956) is a former County Clerk of Mesa County, Colorado. She was covered in regional, national, and international news since 2020 relating to her views on the conspiracy theory of election fraud in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, and with respect to an instance in which subsequent access to Mesa County voting machines was given. She was "one of at least twenty-two election deniers vying [in 2022] to take charge of elections in eighteen states." She was the first elections official in the U.S. to face criminal charges related to stolen election conspiracy theories surrounding the 2020 United States presidential election.

Chronology
Her position as county clerk with Mesa County was her first elected office held, when she was elected in 2018. She campaigned with a platform that called for improvement in service from Colorado state's Division of Motor Vehicles' offices.

In February 2020, employees in Peters' office admitted to discovering 574 uncounted ballots cast for the November 2019 election in a parking lot ballot box in front of the Mesa County election headquarters in Grand Junction, Colorado. Workers had failed to empty the ballot box and the ballots remained there for months before being discovered, which Peters attributed to "human error". Given the margin of victory in all elections, this late finding did not change the outcome of any races. This incident and other issues led to a voter recall attempt for Peters from April to August 2020. The recall effort failed to gather the minimum required number of 12,129 signatures by about 1,200 signatures for the issue to appear on the ballot in the November 3, 2020 general election.

On November 19, 2020, Peters signed off on the results of a risk-limiting audit in Mesa County, Colorado stating there were no issues or discrepancies with the results. After the election, Peters permitted access to voting machines to an outsider. On May 17, 2021, Peters allegedly shut the office cameras off according to an email request sent from Mesa County Deputy Clerk Belinda Knisley that the Secretary of State's Office later cited in its lawsuit. The email request mentioned that the office would turn the cameras back on August 1, 2021. Secretary of State Griswold's investigators found that Peters had ordered her staff to turn off the video surveillance meant to monitor the voting machines a week before the breach.

On May 22, 2021, Conan Hayes (RVCA co-founder, who would later impersonate an IT staffer Gerald Wood) traveled to Grand Junction according to phone and cell phone records. Sherronna Bishop, then-campaign manager for United States Representative Lauren Boebert, paid for his hotel room. On May 23, 2021, Peters allegedly allowed an unauthorized person, "Gerald Wood" (who later was discovered to be Conan Hayes using Wood's pilfered access badge) to attend a software update for the county’s Dominion Voting Systems election equipment. Griswold claimed Peters had misled her staff by saying "Wood" had been background-checked and that he was an employee.

Just before the update and breach, Deputy Clerk and Recorder Belinda Knisley also requested that the office's security cameras were turned off. Peters later claimed no law or election rule required security cameras that monitor election equipment to operate continuously; at minimum, they must be on 60 days before an election and 30 days afterwards. Mesa County Commissioner Janet Rowland stated that Peters had never before turned off the cameras after any of the eight previous elections that Peters had overseen since 2018, indicating unusual behavior and indicative of an intent to breach. On May 24, 2021, Peters stated that she, Bishop, Hayes, a county commissioner candidate, and Congresswoman Boebert had dinner together.

Griswold later reportedly came to believe that, on May 25 and May 26, 2021, the videos, confidential passwords, and images that Ron Watkins/codemonkeyz posted on Telegram, and The Gateway Pundit had also published, came from the Mesa County voting system. Griswold claimed the passwords came from either Woods, Brown or Peters. On May 26, Hayes left Grand Junction, Colorado according to phone and cell phone records cited in an affidavit.

On August 1, 2021, Deputy Clerk Knisley wanted the cameras turned back on, and, the following day, Griswold learned that the confidential passwords had been disseminated, prompting her office to launch an investigation into Mesa County and Tina Peters. On August 9, 2021, Griswold ordered an inspection of Mesa County voting equipment to take place the following day, and prohibited anyone from touching the equipment without Griswold’s written permission, citing Election Order 2021-01 (EO-01). The order stated: "The posted images depict the BIOS passwords specific to the individual hardware stations of Mesa County's voting system. These passwords can only be used physically at a voting system at the Mesa County Clerk's Office." The order stated that "destruction of documents or evidence related to this incident may constitute a criminal act." Failure to comply with the order, Griswold wrote, "will, at a minimum, result in the decertification of Mesa County's voting systems." Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubinstein assigned an investigator to look into the security breach, which would lead to criminal charges.

On August 10, 2021, Colorado Department of State staff accessed the county components and some of the records at the Mesa County Clerk and Recorder’s office. The staff were investigating how Ron Watkins obtained images from the Mesa County voting system. They found security vulnerabilities in the servers and boot settings. Peters described Griswold's search as a "raid" and said that the county's chief deputy clerk was not allowed to observe. "After several hours, they allowed my chief deputy to come in and they go 'Oh, Look at this. Look! Look! See we found this, this, this!' ... I don’t know what they did, but I can tell you I don't trust them", Peters said.

On August 12, 2021, Griswold issued Election Order 2021-02 (EO-02), which announced the decertification of the county’s voting equipment, which would have to be replaced before the November election unless Mesa County chose to conduct a hand count of ballots. Additionally, Griswold announced that Peters could no longer oversee the 2021 election.

On August 16, 2021, Peters had the first of three ethics complaints filed against her, which alleged that she accepted plane rides and other gifts in excess of the state gift limit of $65 from MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.

On August 17, 2021, the FBI investigated the alleged Mesa County election equipment breach, alongside the Colorado Department of State's office and County Treasurer’s offices. When officials went to meet Peters and inspect the equipment, Peters was not present. Griswold issued a third Election Order 2021-03 (EO-03) stating that Peters was in hiding and not complying, and as such allowed Sheila Reiner to take control of the Mesa County elections as Election Supervisor. Griswold appointed former Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams as the Designated Election Official. The U.S. Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) looked into the alleged breach and determined that the incident did not risk the integrity of elections in either the state or the country, according to the secretary of state’s office.

On August 19, 2021, Lindell stated that Peters, was "holed up" in a safe house for her own safety in an interview with Vice News. A disgruntled member of Lindell's own security team would leak Peters' location as somewhere in Texas and so she was moved to another unknown location.

On August 21, 2021, there was a support rally for Peters in Mesa County, in which her supporters said there had been a security breach. On August 23, 2021, Mesa County Human Resources Director Brenda Moore suspended Deputy Clerk Belinda Knisley with pay due to accusations of unprofessional behavior and hostile work environment.

On August 24, 2021, Peters was out of the public eye as the all-Republican commission voted unanimously to replace 41 compromised pieces of equipment, based on what appeared to be a purely financial decision. Nevertheless, 34 Mesa County residents spoke to the commission before the vote and all opposed the Dominion contract. The Mesa County commissioners extended the service agreement for eight years (to 2029) and purchased a "Dominion Ballot Audit Review" at a cost of $3,300 per election at a total cost of $825,281. Mesa County's deal with Dominion Voting Systems for new election equipment included a promise that the company would not file a civil lawsuit against the county over defamatory remarks allegedly made by Peters.

On August 25, 2021, Mesa County Deputy Clerk Belinda Knisley entered the Clerk and Recorder's office and tried to use Peters' credentials to print documents despite having been suspended from her job two days earlier and barred from returning to the office. She was released on a personal recognizance bond. Knisley, along with Mesa County Elections Manager Sandra Brown (would later turn herself in July 2022 for arrest) had both been placed on administrative leave due to having allegedly assisted Peters in breaching the elections equipment.

On August 30, 2021, Griswold filed a lawsuit to prevent Peters from overseeing the 2021 election as she did not have authority to terminate Peters, but rather the courts had to make such a ruling. Mesa County commissioners voted to reject previously appointed Sheila Reiner from the role and appoint former Secretary of State Wayne Williams to oversee Mesa County elections.

On September 1, 2021, Knisley surrendered to be charged with felony burglary and misdemeanor cybercrimes. Knisley signed the Mandatory Protection Order Pursuant to §18-1-1001, C.R.S., and Order Imposing Additional Bond Conditions Pursuant to §16-4-105, C.R.S., which banned Knisley from entering the "Mesa County Clerk and Recorders Office, 200 S. Spruce Street, Grand Junction" and from any "direct or indirect contact or communication [with] all employees of the Clerk and Recorders Office, Mesa County, Colorado." Knisley would later be indicted in March 2022 alongside Peters. Knisley was indicted on six counts - attempt to influence a public servant, conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, violation of duty, and failure to comply with the requirements of the Secretary of State - whereas Peters received ten counts at the time. Seven of these were felony charges including attempting to influence a public servant, identity theft, criminal impersonation and conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, and three misdemeanors including first degree official misconduct, violation of duty and failure to comply with the requirements of the Secretary of State.

On September 17, 2021, Peters gave an 83-page report titled "Forensic Examination and Analysis" prepared by cyber forensic expert Doug Gould to county commissioners. The report had images of server hard drives and attempted to show that some files were deleted or replaced with other files. The report claimed that the 'trusted build' deleted a total of 28,989 logfiles. The report did not clarify what those deleted files were intended to do, and whether they were supposed to be replaced with new files as part of an upgrade of the computer software. The report concluded by stating, “Further investigation is required to determine the full scope of non-compliance with legal mandates for voting systems and election records, and whether the non-compliance is deliberate or simply negligent.” Griswold's office responded, "Prior to the routine upgrade to voting equipment called the 'trusted build', counties are directed to save to external media all data necessary to completely audit and verify a prior election. This data may be restored to the EMS after the trusted build. No court has ever held that voting system event logs are election records within the meaning of 52 U.S.C. § 20701."

On September 18, 2021, Peters, in response to a court filing to remove her from overseeing the election said there was an unauthorized person and non-employee present at the annual system upgrade, but that she [Peters] had been within her legal right to allow that person to be present there on that occasion.

On October 13, 2021, Mesa County District Court Judge Valerie Robinson ruled that Peters and Knisley had allowed a breach in the county's election system during a major software update and therefore are barred from supervising the November election. Peters stated she would appeal. However, on October 21, the Colorado Supreme Court declined to take up her appeal.

A week after the election, on November 8, 2021, Secretary Griswold filed a lawsuit against Peters over her fundraising efforts and failure to report contributions and expenses for nearly three years. The following day, on November 9, 2021, Mesa County Election Director Brandi Bantz fired Sandra Brown, who said she would file a lawsuit against Mesa County for improper termination.

On the evening of November 16, 2021, law enforcement authorities executed search warrants on the homes of Peters, Sherronna Bishop, and two others as part of the criminal investigation. Peters claimed on TV that the agents had broken down the door of one residence with a battering ram, but they denied this. No arrests were made.

On January 13, 2022, Peters formally filed as a candidate running for reelection for Mesa County Clerk and Recorder.

On February 7, 2022, during a hearing for Knisley involving felony burglary and misdemeanor cybercrimes charges, Peters was seen video recording the proceedings on her iPad. This would lead to a contempt of court charge levied against Peters. The next day, February 8, 2022, when investigators tried to execute a search warrant to seize her iPad with the video footage at the Main Street Bagels cafe, Peters tried to hide the iPad and repeatedly had told investigators that the iPad did not belong to her and that she could not provide the password because it belonged to someone else named "Tammy Bailey." This would lead to two charges levied against Peters: obstructing government operations and obstructing a peace officer.

On February 14, 2022 Peters dropped out of her re-election bid as Mesa County Clerk and Recorder to run (and ultimately lose) as a candidate for Secretary of State in the Colorado Republican primary.

Peters was indicted on March 9, 2022 "on charges that she allowed someone to improperly access and download data from election machines as she sought to prove that widespread fraud had occurred in the state’s 2020 presidential election." She was "the first elections official to face criminal charges related to conspiracy theories surrounding the 2020 election, experts said. She is accused not of fixing the election but of breaking the law as she sought to investigate whether someone else did." Peters was charged with 13 counts: three counts of attempting to influence a public servant (class 4 felonies); two counts of conspiracy to commit attempting to influence a public servant (class 5 felonies); first-degree official misconduct (a class 2 misdemeanor); violation of duty (a misdemeanor); and failing to comply with the secretary of state (a misdemeanor); obstruction and contempt-of-court charges; criminal impersonation and identity theft of Gerald Wood. She claimed Gerald Wood had perjured himself on the stand when he denied being at the unauthorized breach by stating that he was present when she copied the information. Despite Peters having acknowledged there was a non-employee present in earlier court statements, Wood disputed her claim. Conan Hayes admitted to using Wood's badge as well as Patrick M. Byrne, who told The New York Times that Hayes was on his payroll and had used FaceTime with him from inside Mesa County election offices saying a government official invited him to make backup copies of machines. Byrne told the Times he could see Hayes was wearing “someone else’s” identification badge. She was barred from supervising local elections in 2022 as well.

In April 2022, at an appearance together, Lindell disclosed having personally donated an amount in the range from $200,000 to $800,000 to Peter's legal defense fund and campaign. As this was in apparent violation of Colorado state law limiting donations of that type to $65, the state's ethics commission approved another ethics complaint made earlier in January 2022 and investigated the elections fund after the complaint described a lack of donor transparency. This was the second ethics complaint filed against Peters. Tina Peters denied prior knowledge, despite previously directing supporters to Lindell's legal defense fund.

A third ethics complaint against Peters filed on May 9, 2022 was determined to be non-frivolous by the state's ethics commission on May 17 based on the same comments made by Lindell at an "Election Truth Rally" and citing that Peters knew of these payments as evidenced by recorded comments she made at the rally.

She was a 2022 candidate for Colorado Secretary of State in Republican primary election which concluded Tuesday, June 28. She lost the primary election. She finished second of three candidates and, immediately following the release of result, suggested election fraud and did not accept the result. National and international news, before and after June 28, featured Peters in coverage of U.S. election deniers running for positions of management or influence in conduct of future elections.

In July 2022, a warrant for her arrest was issued, for her having travelled out of state without court permission as required, when she appeared at another Lindell event, in Las Vegas. Peters claimed not to know of the restriction, her three attorneys claimed not to have told her, and the arrest order was cancelled.

Also in July 2022, a second warrant for her arrest was issued, and Peters turned herself in. She was arrested due to her having emailed multiple county clerk's offices, letting them know she was seeking a recount with hand counting, in violation of her bond conditions of her arrest for election machine tampering. After turning herself in, she was allowed to repost bond and was again released. Likewise, Mesa County’s Elections Manager Sandra Brown turned herself in for arrest on July 11, 2022 based on an arrest affidavit named her in a conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation and attempt to influence a public servant. She was the third arrest after Tina Peters and Belinda Knisley. After posting a personal recognizance bond, Brown was released from custody.

In late July 2022, Peters paid the $256,000 required for the state to conduct a manual recount of the voting for the Colorado Secretary of State race in the Republican primary election in which she ran. The recount barely changed the totals, with Peters gaining 13 votes, and still having vote share of 29 percent. Peters claimed in a July 29 press release that El Paso County’s logic and accuracy test (LAT) failed "in a spectacular fashion, with over a 50% error rate out of the 4,000+ ballots tested." The release also claimed that "Griswold did not provide reasonable advance notice of the LAT to the Tina Peters Campaign, thereby denying them their right to have an [sic] appointed watchers present during the test," however, The Gazette (Colorado Springs) showed representatives for Peters' campaign present at the test. Peters filed suit challenging methods used in the recount, and on August 6, 2022, that suit was dismissed.

On August 7, 2022, Peters pled not guilty to all charges related to the alleged election machine tampering, and a trial was set for March 2023. On August 20, 2022, Peters and Sherronna Bishop appeared in a documentary released by Mike Lindell titled "[S]election Code".

On August 25, 2022, Knisely pled guilty to three misdemeanor counts of trespass, official misconduct and violation of duty, having cut a plea deal with prosecutors to keep her out of prison in exchange for testifying against Peters and others in the case. If Knisley fails to testify against Peters, then all charges could be reinstated, and her plea deal would be vacated. Court documents say Knisely admitted she knew about and participated in a “scheme with Tina Peters and other identified people to deceive public servants from both the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office and Mesa County." The document continues to state, “This scheme, which was significantly directed by Tina Peters, ultimately permitted an unauthorized individual to gain access to secure areas inside the Mesa County Clerk and Recorder’s Office so that this person — fraudulently held out to be improperly titled as Gerald Wood, but who was later identified to actually be Conan Hayes — could participate in Mesa County’s trusted build with Tina Peters and Sandra Brown.”

On November 30, 2022, Sandra Brown pled guilty to attempting to influence a public servant, a felony, and official misconduct, a misdemeanor, as part of a plea agreement that required her to testify against Tina Peters and her performance on the witness stand would play a factor in her eventual sentencing. Brown’s deal, which Judge Matthew Barrett did not decide whether to accept until sentencing, would allow her to serve up to 30 days in jail for the misdemeanor and would allow the felony conviction to be erased after two years if she complied with conditions he sets, such as requiring community service, for those two years. The judge agreed to those terms, as during her plea Brown stated “There were things going on that I should have questioned and I didn’t,” Brown told Judge Barrett.

On March 3, 2023, Peters received a Mesa County jury trial for charges related to her video recording court proceedings of Brenda Knisley with an iPad on February 7, 2022, and her obstructing investigators who tried to execute a search warrant to seize her iPad with the video footage at the Main Street Bagels cafe the next day on February 8. During the trial, testimony and statements from Peters’ attorney revealed that Tammy Bailey was an alias that Peters had created for herself; during the time of the search warrant, Peters repeatedly had told investigators that the iPad did not belong to her and that she could not provide the password because it belonged to someone else named Tammy Bailey. The jury ultimately convicted her on a misdemeanor charge for obstruction of government operations, but acquitted her on the charge that she obstructed a peace officer.

On April 10, 2023, the court sentenced Peters to four months of house arrest in which she was ordered to wear an ankle monitor, fined $786.35, and ordered to perform 120 hours of community service, which she planned to appeal.

On April 28, 2023, Sandra Brown began her 30 day sentence for pleading guilty to a misdemeanor of official misconduct. Brown’s deal would allow her felony conviction of attempting to influence a public servant to be expunged after two years if she complies with the conditions set by Judge Matthew Barrett.

On May 5, 2023, Peters was held in contempt of court for lying to district court Judge Matthew Barrett about recording court proceedings involving Belinda Knisley using her iPad on February 7, 2022. Eagle County District Judge Paul Dunkelman gave Peters a fine of $1,500. On September 6, 2023, Peters pled not guilty to 3 counts of attempting to influence a public servant (Felony), conspiracy to commit attempting to influence a public servant (Felony), Criminal impersonation (Felony), 2 counts of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation (Felony), identity theft (Felony), first-degree official misconduct (Misdemeanor), Violation of duty (Misdemeanor), failing to comply with the secretary of state (Misdemeanor). Her trial was pushed back to February 9, 2024, with the jury selection process to take place on the two preceding days.

On July 19, 2023, Tina Peters fired her attorney Harvey Steinberg and hired new attorneys, Douglas Richards and Madalia Maalik. They requested to push the trial to October 18-30, 2023.

On October 4, 2023, the Colorado Office of Administrative Courts fined Peters $15,400 for violating the Fair Campaign Practice Act by failing to register as a candidate and by failing to file accurate campaign donations and expenditures while running for reelection for Mesa County Clerk and Recorder. Although she formally filed on January 13, 2022, the violations occurred between September 2021 to February 2022, before she dropped out of the race on February 14, 2023 to run and lose as a candidate for Secretary of State in the Colorado Republican primary.

On November 13, 2023, Peters filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Denver, Colorado against the United States, US Attorney General Merrick Garland, 21st Judicial District Court Attorney Daniel Rubinstein, and Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold. The suit alleged that these government officials violated her constitutional rights by retaliating with investigations and charges against her for her alleged misconduct as an election official when she raised election integrity concerns in the 2020 General Election.

On February 9, 2024 Peters was scheduled to go to court for her criminal case, but had fired her attorneys yet again, this time claiming to have COVID-19. Attorney Michael Edminister took over the case from Douglas Richards and other attorneys in the Richards Carrington law firm, making him the fifth attorney of record, and the fourth time her case has been postponed. It has since been pushed back to July 19 through August 12, 2024.

On May 20, 2024, US District Court Judge Nina Y. Wang dismissed Peters' motion to dismiss the criminal investigation citing a failure to state a claim, a lack of standing, and a lack of jurisdiction to dismiss the case.

On June 21, 2024, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals denied her appeal of that decision, with a unanimous 3-0 ruling affirming the lower court's decision. Her court date is set for July 31.

Personal
Peters lives in Grand Junction, Colorado. Peters' son, Remmington J. Peters, a combat veteran serving in the US military as a Navy SEAL, died in 2017 at age 27 in a parachute accident performing at an air show in New York City. Notices at the time indicated surviving him were father, mother, and a sister.

She legally separated from her husband, Thomas Peters, in June 2017 and later filed a decree of legal separation in January 2018. At the time, Tina Peters had power of attorney over Thomas' affairs due to his health issues. On October 2, 2021, Peters filed her revoked power-of-attorney and the other was a quit-claim deed for a home that Thomas Peters purchased separately eight months after the couple separated. The couple officially divorced in November 2021. In a civil complaint filed by Thomas Peters, which later included his sister, Katherine Egan, they alleged that Tina Peters filed that quit-claim deed "through deceit and deception." Cayce Peters, daughter of Thomas Peters, joined Katherine Egan as a plaintiff in a civil suit against Tina Peters on behalf of the estate of her father as his personal representative. They allege that Peters filed a quit claim deed turning a $395,000 home into her own name the same day her power of attorney over Thomas Peters was rescinded, when Tina Peters was still in office.