Former Colorado clerk was shocked after computer images were shared online, employee testifies

DENVER (AP) —

An employee of former Colorado clerk Tina Peters who says she was present when her boss allowed an outsider posing as a county employee to breach her voting system’s computer testified Wednesday that Peters was shocked when images from the computer appeared online.

In the summer of 2021, former elections manager Sandra Brown said Peters called her after seeing the photos and videos she took of the Dominion Voting Systems’ hard drive and said, “I don’t know what to do,” using an obscenity her distress over the possible consequences. Soon after that, as authorities began investigating what had happened, Peters and her attorney advised Brown and another employee to buy disposable cellphones known as burner phones so their conversations with her and lawyers could not be discovered by investigators and urged them not to talk to law enforcement, Brown said.

After Brown was indicted and turned herself in, Peters came to visit her at jail the same day, she said.

“She came in and she said, ‘I love you, you have 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 another attorney and pleaded guilty under a plea deal that required her to testify against Peters.

Peters’ attorneys argue she only wanted to preserve election data before the system got 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 break any laws.

Prosecutors, meanwhile, have portrayed Peters as someone who had become “fixated” on voting problems after becoming involved with activists who had 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 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 take an image of the voting system’s hard drive was hatched during an April 2021 meeting with Frank, Peters and others in her office when he was in town to give a presentation on voting fraud. On a secret recording made by another elections employee, Frank told Peters that uncovering corruption in her voting system and cleaning it up would be “a feather in your cap.” Peters invited Frank to come back the following month for the software update for the county’s voting machines. Frank said he could instead send a team that’s “the best in the country.”

According to prosecutors, Frank sent a retired surfer from California and fellow Lindell associate, Conan Hayes, to take an image of the hard drive before and after the software update. Peters is accused of passing Hayes off as an elections employee using another person’s badge, a person she allegedly pretended to hire only so she could use the badge to get Hayes in to also observe the update. The Colorado Secretary of State’s office, which facilitated the update being done with Dominion, had denied Peters’ requests to have an outside computer expert to be in the room.

Hayes has not been charged with a crime. He did not respond messages left at telephone numbers listed for him and to an email seeking comment about the allegations.

The defense claims that Peters thought Hayes was working as a government informant and that he only agreed to help her if his identity was concealed. Judge Matthew Barrett has barred the defense from discussing that claim in front of jurors. Prosecutors say there’s no evidence to support that Hayes was an informant. Barrett has also ruled that, even if Peters believed he was, it is not an excuse for what she is accused of doing.

After lawyer Amy Jones, a former Ohio judge, suggested that Peters believed Hayes was an informant during opening statements, Barrett told jurors to “put that out of your minds.” After the jury left, he scolded the defense for bringing it up despite his prior order not to introduce it.

Peters is charged with three counts of attempting to influence a public servant, criminal impersonation, two counts of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, one count of identity theft, first-degree official misconduct, violation of duty and failing to comply with the secretary of state.

The trial is expected to continue through early next week.