DENVER — Former Colorado county clerk Tina Peters, a hero to election conspiracy theorists who is accused of orchestrating a breach of election security equipment, was trying to prevent voting information from being erased, her lawyer said at the start of her trial Wednesday.
Under the laws in place in 2021, when Peters allowed a man who prosecutors say was working with MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell to make a copy of a Dominion Voting Systems computer's hard drive, she was allowed to hire a ''consultant'' to make such a copy, defense attorney Amy Jones said during opening statements.
''She believed she needed to save that data,'' said Jones, who did not deny that a copy was made.
But prosecutor Robert Shapiro portrayed the man as a ''cyber mercenary'' who Peters brought in without conducting a background check and committed identity theft by passing him off as another person who had obtained clearance to work for her office. He said Peters contacted the man, who has not been charged, after she met with Douglas Frank, another person working with Lindell, one of the nation's most prominent election conspiracy theorists. Frank, an Ohio math teacher, had been traveling around the country looking for evidence of voter fraud when he met with Peters and she hatched the plan, he said.
Despite that, Shapiro told jurors the case against Peters was not about election fraud or conspiracy theories.
''It's a simple case of deceit and fraud,'' he said.
Colorado state election officials became aware of the alleged security breach in Mesa County a few months later when a photo and video of confidential voting system passwords were posted on social media and a conservative website after Peters joined Lindell onstage at a ''cybersymposium'' and promised to reveal proof of election rigging.
Peters, who pleaded not guilty to the charges, has argued she had a duty to preserve the results of the election before the voting system was upgraded and that she should not be prosecuted for carrying out her job.