Gessler response to SOS lawsuit: Peters acted appropriately
Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters did everything she was supposed to do, and more, to help ensure the county’s election system is secure, her attorney said in a response brief to a state lawsuit seeking to block Peters from overseeing this fall’s election.
In that brief, former Secretary of State Scott Gessler, who is representing Peters and Deputy Clerk Belinda Knisley, wrote that Peters’ actions were appropriate to help show that the county’s election systems were not secure.
“As an elected official responsible for following Colorado law, Clerk Peters suspected that the Secretary’s trusted build process wiped out election records that she is required to preserve under Colorado law,” Gessler wrote. “In response to her concerns, she retained a consultant to image the hard drive of the county’s electronic vote-tabulating equipment, and she commissioned a report which appears to validate her suspicions that the Secretary’s trusted build process deleted or destroyed records that must be kept for at least two years.”
The lawsuit filed by Secretary of State Jena Griswold earlier this month seeks to temporarily bar Peters and Knisley from overseeing elections while local, state and federal law enforcement complete investigations into possible violations of election security protocols by Peters and other members of her staff.
Those investigations could lead to criminal charges.
In the response brief, Gessler admits that the consultant, identified as Gerald Wood, was not an employee of her office.
The Secretary of State’s Office, however, said Peters had introduced him as an employee during that routine trusted build computer software procedure on May 25.
In the brief, Gessler also concedes that security cameras that are supposed to be operating at all times were turned off shortly before that trusted build session.
The brief goes on to deny that Peters intentionally leaked certain information to voter-fraud conspiracy theorists, or authorized anyone to put that information online.
Data from copies of that hard drive were displayed at a voter-fraud conspiracy theory event held by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, delivered there by Peters herself, who also spoke at the event.
Gessler also claims that Griswold overstepped her boundaries in trying to block Peters from overseeing elections. He wrote that Griswold’s office changed the rules after that trusted build by adopting a temporary rule, which later was made permanent, barring clerks from bringing in a third-party consultant to help them.
“When adopting this rule, the Secretary knew that no clerk and recorder office in the state of Colorado employed individuals with the computer and information technology expertise to understand the results of the trusted build process, or to understand how the sophisticated electronic vote-tabulating equipment worked,” Gessler wrote.
“The Secretary adopted Temporary Rule 20.5.4 with the express purpose of limiting access to the electronic vote-tabulating equipment in order to prevent analysis or examination of electronic vote-tabulating equipment software by anyone but the Secretary of State’s Office or the electronic vote-tabulating equipment vendor,” his brief adds.
Simultaneous opening briefs in this case are to be filed in Mesa County District Judge Valerie Robison’s court by Sept. 27, with a hearing set for Sept. 30.
It is unknown when Robison will rule on the matter.
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