Tina Peters speaks in one-on-one exclusive interview

DENVER ( KREX ) — Former Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters spoke with Nexstar’s KREX in Grand Junction in an exclusive interview. She was recently found guilty of seven of the 10 charges brought against her by the prosecution.

The following interview was broadcast in its entirety with no edits or cuts.

Q: What are your thoughts about the guilty verdicts?

A: It’s an interesting verdict. As we were going through the trial, we saw that the prosecution would not let us in with any of our affirmative defenses. Much excluded evidence was kept from the jury. For instance, the codemonkeyz video that they kept talking about — that was so “damning” — they never would let the jury see it. If they would have seen it, they would have seen there were no passwords in there.

Speaking to the passwords, when I took that video, it was because Conan (Hayes) was not even there at the trusted build yet. The trusted build went on for an hour and a half before he was even there. I was keeping track of what was going on to the best of my ability so that he would know what he had missed.

If there were any passwords that were taken, they were subsequently deleted during the trusted build because that’s what Dominion’s instructions instruct the Secretary of State Danny Casias to do in the instructions, which I have a copy of.

Q: The jury made their decision relatively quickly on Monday. The Friday before that, you made a decision not to testify. Can you explain why?

A: Yes, I did. I don’t know if the cameras were on during this time, but this is what I said to the judge, and this is verbatim. I said, “Good afternoon, Judge. I am going to make a decision whether to testify. There are two witnesses before me, so I am going to defer to it, and two questions that I need your answer. I have very limited things that I want to talk to the jury about. I want to be assured that the scope of prosecution cross-examination is limited to the exact areas that I testify about. My attorneys have told me that I am not allowed to tell the jury that Conan Hayes had a government security clearance and he was a government informant.”

I discussed the background with him, I gave him the affidavit — the declaration — that he had signed. None of that was presented to the jury.

Here’s what happened, Dalen. What should happen is that when I am a witness, or anyone is a witness, and you heard this multiple times during the trial when they said that is “outside the scope,” “you cannot talk about…” the prosecution should’ve been limited to only being able to ask me what I had testified to. It sounded from what the judge had said — or the lack of promise that he had made to me — that was not going to be the case for me.

Q: You’ve said you are appealing. On what grounds?

A: There’s a lot of excluded evidence that was never presented. I mentioned the codemonkeyz video that they made such a big deal about, but never would let the jury see. Also the 12 minute audio recording that Stephanie Wenholz presented, that was played over and over. But when I presented, and Sherronna Bishop was actually in the room, I had recorded the hour and seven minute audio recording, and they would not admit that, and that would have given a reference to what that whole meeting was about. But that was excluded. Also, the instructions for the trusted build was excluded.

The reports from the comparison of the two images that you can see at tinapeters.us, you can see the reports; they never would let those in. Sandra Brown, Belinda Knisley and Gerald Wood knew of Conan and assisted, and the text chats verified by experts prove this. Conan Hayes was a high level government informant with government security clearance, and he was instrumental in the takedown of international organized crime cartels, as well as other other government operations. My promise to conceal his identity for his and his family’s safety and the operations he conducted in the government. So, there’s going to be more of this about the excluded evidence.

I don’t blame the jury. They could only go on what they were given, and they were not given the exculpatory and vital evidence to prove that it was me and only me as the elected official that had the authority to bring Conan Hayes in to do an investigation.

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