Former Mesa County, Colorado, clerk and prominent Donald Trump supporter Tina Peters was found guilty on Monday, Aug. 12, of seven charges related to a security breach of Colorado’s election system after the 2020 presidential election. Prosecutors said Peters used another employee’s security badge to give a man affiliated with MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell access to Colorado’s election system.
Lindell was spreading falsehoods of Dominion voting machines being manipulated to steal the election from former President Donald Trump.
Peters allowed the man that was posing as a county employee to snap pictures of the voting machine’s hard drive before and after a software upgrade in 2021.
The prosecution said that Peters became “fixated” on voting problems after involvement with election deniers. The case is the first conviction of an election official over a security breach.
The case gained national attention after Peters attended Lindell’s “cyber symposium.” At the event, guests said that a copy of the Mesa Country voting system’s hard drive was given out and posted online.
The high-profile case has heightened fears over potential insider threats, in which rogue election officials could use their access to launch an attack from within.
Peter’s sentencing is scheduled for Oct. 3, and she faces a maximum sentence of up to 20 years in prison.
Former President Trump won Mesa County with around 63% of the vote in the 2020 election.