{"id":38634,"date":"2022-08-30T19:50:56","date_gmt":"2022-08-31T01:50:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/district-attorney-presses-for-earliest-trial-dates-in-tina-peters-case\/"},"modified":"2022-08-31T01:50:56","modified_gmt":"2022-08-31T01:50:56","slug":"district-attorney-presses-for-earliest-trial-dates-in-tina-peters-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/district-attorney-presses-for-earliest-trial-dates-in-tina-peters-case\/","title":{"rendered":"District attorney presses for earliest trial dates in Tina Peters case"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Tina
Tina Peters speaks to supporters at her election watch party in Sedalia on June 28. An arrest warrant was issued Thursday for Peters, a Mesa County clerk indicted on charges of tampering with voting equipment, after she allegedly traveled out of state despite a court order not to do so, according to court documents. (Thomas Peipert\/Associated Press file)<\/span>Thomas Peipert<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The Colorado Attorney General\u2019s Office and the 21st Judicial District Attorney\u2019s Office have completed their core investigation into the 2021 events that led to a security breach in the Mesa County elections office, District Attorney Dan Rubinstein announced Tuesday.<\/p>\n

That investigation, which resulted in state charges against Clerk Tina Peters and two other election workers, ran parallel to investigations with federal authorities. Rubinstein, a Republican, said he asked the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office to continue its investigation into \u201call potential perpetrators of federal crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

The events under scrutiny occurred during a software update in 2021 in the Mesa County elections office. Peters, a Republican who promotes election conspiracy theories, and her deputy, Belinda Knisley, conspired to have an unauthorized person in the room during the update. Copies of the election system hard drive were made, and sensitive information from the system became public.<\/p>\n

Peters and Knisley were indicted by a grand jury<\/a> in March on felony and misdemeanor charges.<\/p>\n

Last week, Knisley accepted a plea deal<\/a> to testify against Peters, former elections manager Sandra Brown and any other co-defendants in the case, in order to avoid jail time. Knisley still faces probation and a fine.<\/p>\n

Rubinstein said he and Attorney General Phil Weiser, a Democrat, are aware of the need to move the case through the system. They will press for the \u201cearliest possibly trial dates\u201d and ask the court to set those dates when Peters next appears in court for an arraignment Sept. 7.<\/p>\n

To read more stories from Colorado Newsline, visit www.coloradonewsline.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Prosecutors say they have completed core investigation into elections office security breach<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38635,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[168,266,28,1621],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-38634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-crime","tag-election","tag-headlines","tag-voting"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38634\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38634"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=38634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}