Former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, whose efforts to uncover evidence of election fraud on her office’s election equipment have led to ten criminal charges, will not be going on trial this month.
Jury selection was scheduled to start on Friday. But at a pretrial hearing Tuesday, Peters told the judge she was firing her legal team and hiring new representation. In order to give those new attorneys time to get up to speed, Mesa County District Court Judge Matthew Barrett delayed the start of the trial to late July.
It’s the most recent delay in a case that first came to light almost two and a half years ago, when blurry pictures of the security passwords for Mesa County’s election equipment began circulating on election conspiracy websites.
Peters is accused of committing identity theft and several other crimes in order to allow an unauthorized person to attend a secure election software update, as well as to make before-and-after copies of the machines’ hard drives. She was looking for evidence that the company which makes Colorado’s election equipment, Dominion Voting Systems, was fraudulently changing votes. No evidence of such fraud has ever been uncovered.
Peters has defended her actions, arguing that they were all within the scope of her authority as clerk.
Her new trial is set to run from July 29 through Aug. 12.
