Tina Peters declines to testify as the former Mesa County clerk’s defense concludes case

Former Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters declined to testify in her own defense Friday before defense attorneys concluded their case after eight days of testimony from prosecution and defense witnesses.

In 2022, a Mesa County grand jury brought charges against Peters, a Republican, including seven felonies and three misdemeanors for her alleged role in a 2021 security breach of the county’s election department, which she oversaw at the time.

Before the trial kicked off Friday, Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubinstein asked District Court Judge Matthew Barrett to consider a contempt of court charge against the defense for continuously broaching topics previously determined by the court to be inadmissible.

“If the prosecution was doing this there would have been a mistrial days ago,” Rubinstein said.

Barrett expressed frustration that defense lawyers have continuously attempted to bring up topics already decided to be off limits, knowing that the prosecution will object.

Peters’ friend Sherronna Bishop, an unindicted co-conspirator, testified for the defense Thursday and Friday. Bishop is a prominent election denier who believes the 2020 U.S. presidential election was stolen from former President Donald Trump, a conspiracy theory that has repeatedly been debunked.

According to testimony, Bishop figures prominently in a plan involving Peters to allow an unauthorized person to enter Mesa County’s elections department to make copies of election system software and capture images of passwords and other sensitive data in May 2021, during the time of an election equipment software update, also known as a trusted build. Images of sensitive data later turned up on a conspiracy theory website, which prompted local, state and federal investigations in August 2021.

Bishop testified that she invited Ohio mathematician Douglas Frank — who is on the payroll of My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, a staunch supporter of Donald Trump — to help with the scheme to try and prove that Mesa County’s Dominion Voting Systems equipment is somehow faulty.

Robert Shapiro, first assistant Colorado attorney general for special prosecutions, during cross examination clarified that Bishop lived in Garfield County when this planning around Mesa County’s trusted build was taking place, and had never been an election worker, or an employee of Mesa County. Nor had Bishop ever received elections training from the Colorado secretary of state. She had never been given key card access to Mesa County’s secured elections office.

Shapiro asked Bishop about a call she purportedly made while attending a “cyber security” symposium in August 2021 in South Dakota led by Lindell. Peters’ former chief deputy, Belinda Knisley, testified earlier that Bishop called her from the symposium, asking her to go to the elections office in Grand Junction and remove a computer server. By that point, a secretary of state investigation into the alleged security breach was underway and Bishop and Peters believed the state would seize the equipment. Knisley testified earlier that she refused Bishops’ directive because she didn’t work for Bishop.

“You were not a supervisor of Belinda Knisley,” Shapiro said during his cross examination of Bishop, which Bishop confirmed was correct. She testified she didn’t recall making the phone call to Knisley.

A juror asked a question about why Bishop attended meetings held at the Mesa County elections office when she didn’t work for Mesa County.

Bishop responded that she was very concerned about elections and that she works for campaigns — she was a campaign manager for U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert — and that when the 2020 Presidential election was over “it didn’t seem right.”

Bishop and her family moved to Texas after the Mesa County district attorney’s office executed a search warrant at her Garfield County home in November 2021. She testified that her family now spends time in both Colorado and Texas.

Among the charges Peters faces is one that alleges she stole the identity of Fruita resident Gerald Wood, who she hired as a temporary tech consultant. Wood was required to pass a background check before receiving a security badge to allow access to Mesa County’s election machines. That security clearance was then given to a man named Conan Hayes — a former professional surfer aligned with Donald Trump — who came into the elections’ tabulation room to copy data from equipment before and during the trusted build.

Shapiro stated that by April 30, a plan was in place to bring in Hayes, not Wood, to collect data during the trusted build, to which Bishop responded, “I don’t know.”

Prosecutors established that Frank attended an April 23 planning meeting in Peters office, which was also attended by various election staff. Wood was not present for that meeting. Bishop reached out to Wood after Frank came to Grand Junction.

As a witness for the prosecution, Wood testified earlier in the week that his identity was stolen and that he never gave permission for it to be used by a third party.

Defense attorneys have sought various times to cast doubt on Wood’s account of his role in the elections breach. Defense attorney John Case asked Bishop if Wood was OK with allowing Hayes to use his identity, so that Hayes could remain anonymous — a condition of his involvement.

“We were very much aligned, and he was happy to be a part of it,” Bishop testified, contradicting Wood’s prior testimony.

The trial resumes Monday with closing statements from both sides.