Tina Peters Trial Day 7 — Defense starts with Sherronna Bishop on the stand

CPR is covering each day of the Peters' trial. You can read our explainer of the case here, and catch up on past days here.

Prosecutors rested their case against former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters Thursday afternoon, setting the stage for her defense to argue she did nothing wrong when she helped an outside person access her office’s election equipment and brought him to a secure software update.

The first witness called by the defense was Sherronna Bishop, a prominent conservative activist who lived in the area during the time in question. 

While Bishop has not been charged with any crimes, earlier in the trial 21st Judicial District Judge Matthew Barrett described her as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case. Before she testified, and before the jury entered the courtroom, Barrett advised Bishop that she has the right to remain silent because her words could be used against her in any future state or federal criminal case.

Bishop said she still wanted to testify and would answer the questions truthfully. 

The first part of her testimony centered on the allegation that Peters stole the identity of Gerald Wood, a Fruita resident who works in IT,  in order to let a different person — a California resident named Conan Hayes — access the county's voting machines and attend a secure software update in May, 2021. 

Over the first seven days of the trial, prosecution witnesses placed Bishop at the center of the effort to make clandestine copies of the election machine hard drives.

A secret recording revealed that she was present when Peters and members of her staff met with Douglas Frank, a former high school teacher who travels the country spreading theories of election fraud. It was at that meeting, prosecutors argue, that the plot was first hatched.  

Wood testified that Bishop was the one who connected him with Peters about potential consulting work for the clerk’s office. And after the copying effort came under investigation months later, she also reportedly encouraged two of Peters’ former staffers to get burner phones, and allegedly urged one of them to remove the voting machine’s server from the elections office.

Wood previously testified that prior to the security update he met with Peters in her office about potential IT work and then never heard anything more about the election machines, his ID badge or anything else connected to a consulting job. Wood said he was unaware at the time that Hayes had used his name, and a security badge issued to Wood, to attend the software update. Peters is facing identity theft charges for her role in that effort.

But Bishop testified that Wood was fully in on the plan to use his identity. She said that she initially asked him to take the image of the hard drives, and that while he didn’t have the technical expertise for the job, he was willing to help if someone else was coming in to do it.  

As evidence, defense attorney John Case used screenshots of text messages Bishop said she exchanged with Peters and Wood in a group chat titled Tech Team on the encrypted messaging app, Signal. 

“Tina, this is our guy,” Bishop wrote. 

“That, I am,” Wood responded. 

On May 14, 2021, Wood texted, “I have my Mesa County Employee badge now.”

A day after Hayes copied the hard drives, Wood sent a message to the group that said in part, “I was glad to help out. I do hope the effort proved fruitful.” 

Bishop responded a day later, “Things are looking good.”  

Bishop testified that she was referring to the image Hayes had captured. 

“Awesome!” Wood wrote back. 

Bishop told the defense that she, Wood and Peters were all very much in alignment with what was going on. 

“He was excited to be a part of it,” testified Bishop. “And he's checking in and he's letting me know that he was happy to be a part of it.” 

Bishop will continue her testimony Friday.

More details on the days after the breach came to light

Earlier on Thursday, the lead investigator for the Mesa County District Attorney’s office, James Cannon, returned to the stand as prosecutors wrapped up their case. He walked through messages between Bishop and Peters that investigators found when they seized the women’s cell phones and other electronic devices. 

Cannon showed text messages between Bishop and Peters from Aug. 9, 2021, the day the state first revealed it was investigating a potential security breach in Mesa Country. 

“This is beyond urgent,” Peters wrote as she tried to get in touch with Bishop, followed by a message instructing her to look on Signal, where Peters had uploaded the state’s election order. Later that evening Bishop attempted to reassure Peters, sending her a link to a Grand Junction Daily Sentinel article about the situation and writing, “it’s not that bad.”

The text messages show that Bishop went to Peters’ house at nearly 3 a.m., returning home at 5:30 a.m. Later that day, Peters and Bishop traveled to a “cybersecurity symposium” in South Dakota hosted by the CEO of MyPillow, Mike Lindell, a leader in efforts to discord the 2020 election. Wood also attended the event.

In her testimony, Bishop recalled that during the symposium, she ended up in the same room with Hayes and Wood.

“We were in a room with lawyers and Conan (Hayes) was there. Jerry (Wood) was to my left… And after they were done speaking with Conan, I looked at Jerry and I said, ‘that's the guy.’ And he was kind of like, ‘what do you mean?’… “And I said, ‘that is the man that did the forensic image.’” 

Bishop said she felt kind of bad for Wood because he wasn’t getting any credit for his role in things, and allegedly told him, “I'm so sorry that no one is ever going to know what you did to help secure these images.”

While they were in South Dakota and the state’s investigation was just beginning, Peters and Bishop continued to message each other. Peters texted that a Mesa county commissioner had gotten in touch, asking who Gerald Wood was. 

“He’s a tech guy,” responded Bishop. “Owns his own tech company. We can address that when we get back. Avoid it for now.”