https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/trumpy-colorado-county-clerk-tina-peters-arrested-after-resisting-search-warrant-reports/ar-AATCNNS?ocid=msedgntp
Tina Peters, the clerk of Mesa County, Colorado who’s long been suspected of involvement in a leak of county election machine data last year, was arrested Tuesday morning.
Local outlets reported the arrest soon after. A video from Kyle Clark, a journalist with local NBC affiliate 9 News, appeared to show the arrest occurring:
UPDATE: Republican Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters appeared to attempt to kick a law enforcement officer while struggling with police during her arrest. This is video from a witness. pic.twitter.com/TILJ1198BV
— Kyle Clark (@KyleClark) February 8, 2022
Another clip that appeared to show the arrest was broadcast on Steve Bannon’s podcast, War Room.
War Room had a longer clip of Tina Peters being detained, and there’s this magical moment towards the end:
after the police ask whoever’s filming to step back, Peter’s says “I want you to do something for me” and motions for them to come closer so she can whisper to them pic.twitter.com/zdJsdZg64K
— trapezoid of discovery (@get_innocuous) February 8, 2022
Peters is a celebrated figure among believers that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. The Colorado Secretary of State’s office successfully sued to have Peters and a deputy, Belinda Knisley, removed from election duties last year after sensitive digital information from Mesa County’s voting machines was shared online by a prominent QAnon influencer, and in-person at Mike Lindell’s “Cyber Symposium” in Sioux Falls in August.
Peters’ arrest Tuesday was unrelated to the ongoing investigation into the leak, local outlets reported.
Colorado Politics, citing law enforcement sources, reported that the arrest Tuesday morning occurred after Peters resisted authorities’ attempts to seize an iPad pursuant to a search warrant. The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel reported, referring to Peters, that an arrest warrant was “to be issued charging her with obstruction of justice.”
Colorado Public Radio reported that the iPad in question may have been used by Peters to film part of a court hearing Monday involving Knisley, who has been on paid leave and is facing criminal charges due to her returning to work at the clerk’s office despite an order requiring her to stay away.
“As the hearing developed, Paralegal Haley Gonzalez and (Deputy District Attorney) D.D.A. Jonathan Mosher noticed a female known to them to be Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters using an Apple iPad to apparently record the proceeding,” the affidavit form investigator Michael Struwe said, according to CPR.
After Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubenstein informed the judge of the situation, the judge, Matthew Barrett, warned the crowd in the courtroom that he would take “appropriate legal action” if he learned of any recording, CPR reported of the affidavit. Peters denied recording the hearing.
Officers were serving a warrant to seize Clerk Peters' iPad on which she is suspected of improperly recording a court hearing involving her deputy clerk Belinda Knisley after a judge prohibited recording in the courtroom. It's the white iPad in the courtroom image below. pic.twitter.com/RuX2fv4rul
— Kyle Clark (@KyleClark) February 8, 2022
“Mosher reported that when the court addressed the audience about recordings being prohibited, Clerk Peters rotated the iPad, affording him a view of the screen,” the Sentinel quoted from the same affidavit. “He advised the iPad screen had the iPad ‘camera’ application running. DDA Mosher saw that the view in the camera application screen was a live view of Judge Barrett’s courtroom from the iPad’s vantage point.”
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s office removed both Peters and Knisley from election duties following the data leak last year. Peters’ office had allegedly arranged for an unauthorized person to have access to the county’s election machines around the time when the machines were due for a “trusted build,” or an in-person software update. The leaked information subsequently surfaced at Lindell’s Cyber Symposium, which Peters attended alongside several associates.
Peters and Knisley have denied all wrongdoing — but the FBI raided Peters’ and others’ homes in November. Last month, Peters announced a reelection bid as both Rubenstein and Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser announced that a Mesa County grand jury was investigating her.
Neither an attorney who has represented Peters in the past, nor a spokesperson for her legal defense fund, immediately responded to TPM’s request for comment Tuesday.