Opinion: Peters’ guilty verdict in Mesa Co. requires similar result for America’s ultimate ‘Big Liar’ Trump

Former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters enters the courtroom during her trial in Grand Junction this week, where she was found guilty of seven criminal accounts (four felonies) in a 2020 election security breach (Sharon Sullivan for Colorado Newsline).

More than three years after Tina Peters took part in a scheme to prove a false theory of fraud in her own elections office, the former Mesa County clerk has been held to account.

As of this week, Peters is a felon. She gave a California man access to some of the most sensitive data on her county’s election machines and deceived state public officials about his identity. A Grand Junction jury found that the 68-year-old Republican election denier’s actions constituted serious crimes and pronounced her guilty on seven counts.

Peters is Colorado’s most notorious “big lie” believer, and her place in the firmament of MAGA bandits was cemented by national press attention and her association with prominent election conspiracists like MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell. This week’s verdict advances the country’s reckoning with the harm that came from misinformation around the 2020 election and former President Donald Trump’s false claims that he won. It joins the suspension in May of former Trump attorney Jenna Ellis’ law license in Colorado, as well as the criminal prosecution of those accused of interfering in the election on Trump’s behalf around the country, in reassuring Americans that their institutions, in some cases, are still capable of impartial feats of democracy and justice.

And there is reason to believe more criminal charges could come Peters’ way.

What happened in Mesa County has been the subject of a yearslong federal investigation on top of the local district attorney’s investigation that brought Peters to trial in recent weeks. Federal authorities have communicated very little about the case, but we know the federal probe persisted to this year from other sources. 

It started in 2021, when FBI agents executed search warrants at Peters’ home and the homes of several of her associates, including conspiracist Sherronna Bishop, who during the trial was portrayed as a Peters go-between for national election-denying operators. In September 2022, FBI agents in Minnesota working on the Mesa County investigation seized Lindell’s phone. As late as January, Peters’ lawyers in a document filed with the U.S. appellate court in Denver said, “The Department of Justice, including the FBI, has continued its investigation to determine if any federal crime had been committed by Peters.”

An FBI spokesperson this week declined to comment on the case, as did a spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office in Denver. 

There appear to be several potential criminal charges of interest to federal authorities, as well as several possible targets. The state case against Peters, brought by Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubinstein, largely focused on her dishonesty, such as when she presented to state election officials the California man, conspiracist Conan Hayes, as Gerald Wood, a Fruita resident who had been approved to enter secure elections areas in Peters’ office. 

Peters allowed Hayes, who used Wood’s access badge, into the secure area in May 2021. A substantial amount of sensitive data from election system computers then made it into the hands of unauthorized people, and some of it was posted on the internet.

The Mesa County grand jury indictment that led to Peters’ conviction implies that prosecutors thought computer crimes had occurred.

“The public dissemination of this sensitive information constituted an unauthorized data breach,” the indictment said. “The compromised sensitive data included images depicting a proprietary hard drive with unlawfully downloaded/imaged software from Mesa County’s election management server’s hard drive.”

But while the state prosecution avoided potential culpability related to computer activity in the charges it brought, it can’t be ruled out as the basis for possible federal allegations.

We have clues about how federal authorities view the matter. The FBI’s search warrants for Bishop and Lindell both pointed to parts of federal law related to intentional damage to a protected computer and conspiracy to cause intentional damage to a protected computer. The warrants also variously cite identity theft, conspiracy to commit identity theft, wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and the Lindell search warrant mentions as “co-conspirators” Peters, Bishop, Hayes, Lindell and others.

Dan Hartman, an attorney for Peters, told Newsline this week that he does not expect federal charges to emerge for his client.

But even if Peters or others who were involved in the Mesa County election security breach face federal charges, no degree of accountability in the case can satisfy the nation’s need for justice so long as the person ultimately responsible goes unpunished. 

What occurred in Peters’ election office can be traced directly back to the early morning hours after Election Day 2020 at the White House, when Trump said, “This is a fraud on the American public … Frankly, we did win this election.”

The “big lie” was born at that moment, leading to incalculable legal and political wreckage, including the Jan. 6 insurrection, that will only deepen as the next presidential election approaches. 

America’s institutions might have proved effective in checking some of Trump’s followers, but they have crumbled before Trump himself.

The verdict achieved in Mesa County this week is a triumph for the community. But Peters played only a small part in a much larger offense for which accountability has proved elusive.

Editor’s note: This opinion column first appeared on Colorado Newsline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Colorado Newsline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Quentin Young for questions: info@coloradonewsline.com. Follow Colorado Newsline on Facebook and X.