DENVER– DENVER (AP) —
An aide to former Colorado Clerk Tina Peters testified Wednesday that she was there when her boss allowed an outsider disguised as a county clerk to hack into her election system’s computer. She said Peters was shocked when images from the computer appeared on the Internet.
In the summer of 2021, former elections director Sandra Brown said, Peters called her after seeing the photos and videos she had taken of the Dominion Voting System hard drive and said, “I don’t know what to do,” using an obscenity to express her dismay at the potential consequences. Shortly afterward, as authorities began investigating, Peters and her attorney advised Brown and another associate to purchase disposable cell phones, known as burner phones, so their conversations with her and her attorneys would not be discovered by investigators, and urged them not to speak to law enforcement, Brown said.
After Brown was charged and turned herself in, Peters came to visit her in prison that same day, she said.
“She came in and said, ‘I love you, you have support and don’t say anything,'” said Brown, who said Peters also gave her the number of a lawyer who could represent her at her bail hearing in court. Brown eventually got another lawyer and pleaded guilty as part of a deal that required her to testify against Peters.
Peters’ lawyers argue she was simply backing up election data before the system received a software update and she did not want that information shared with the world. They say she acted within her authority as a clerk and did not break any laws.
Prosecutors, meanwhile, have portrayed Peters as someone who became “fixated” on election issues after becoming 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 official who wanted 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 take an image of the voting system’s hard drive originated during an April 2021 meeting with Frank, Peters and others at their office when he was in town to give a lecture on voter fraud. On a secret recording made by another election worker, Frank told Peters that it would be “a credit to you to expose and eliminate corruption in your election system.” Peters invited Frank to come back the next month to update the county’s voting machine software. Frank said he could send a team that was “the best in the country” instead.
According to prosecutors, Frank sent a retired California surfer and colleague of Lindell, Conan Hayes, to take a picture of the hard drive before and after the software update. Peters is accused of posing as an election department employee to Hayes using the ID of another person, a person she allegedly hired just to let Hayes in with the ID so she could also observe the update. The Colorado Secretary of State’s office, which facilitated the update with Dominion, had denied Peters’ request to bring an outside computer expert into the room.
Hayes has not been charged with any crime. He did not respond to messages sent to phone numbers listed for him or to an email seeking comment on the allegations.
The defense claims Peters believed Hayes was working as an informant for the government and would only help it if his identity was kept secret. Judge Matthew Barrett has barred the defense from discussing that claim before the jury. The prosecution says there is no evidence that Hayes was an informant. Barrett has also ruled that even if Peters believed that, it is no excuse for what she is accused of.
After attorney Amy Jones, a former Ohio judge, suggested in her opening arguments that Peters believed Hayes was an informant, Barrett told jurors to “put that out of your mind.” After the jury left the case, he chided the defense for raising the issue despite his previous instructions not to address it.
Peters is charged with three counts of attempted interference with a public official, identity fraud, two counts of conspiracy to commit identity fraud, identity theft, first-degree abuse of office, dereliction of duty and failure to cooperate with the Secretary of State.
The trial is expected to last until early next week.
