Getty Images, Mesa County
- Tina Peters is the Republican elections clerk in Mesa County, Colorado.
- Peters, who has spread false claims of fraud in the 2020 election, is accused of obstructing police.
- Peters was arrested February 8 for resisting a search warrant for her iPad.
Tina Peters, the pro-Trump elections official accused of leaking sensitive voting machine data that was presented at a conspiracy conference hosted by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, turned herself in Thursday morning after police in Mesa County, Colorado, issued an arrest warrant for “obstructing a peace officer.”
Peters, who was released after posting a $500 bond, had been arrested and immediately released on Tuesday after police say she resisted a search warrant for her iPad. The Mesa County Clerk and Recorder is accused of using the tablet computer to illegally record a court hearing for one of her former aides.
The arrest was not linked to a grand jury investigation into election tampering and official misconduct.
According to an affidavit made in support of the February 9 arrest warrant — provided to Insider by the Grand Junction Police Department — Peters was at a bagel shop when investigators with the Mesa County District Attorney’s Office attempted to seize her iPad. It was then that Grand Junction police witnessed a “heated discussion,” with the iPad investigators were seeking “being passed around between patrons” who were at the establishment with Peters.
Peters, according to the affidavit, then stepped between a police officer and an unidentified person. At that point the officer took Peters “by her left bicep.” Peters, in turn, began “actively resisting” — attempting to “kick back with her right leg to strike” one of the other officers, hitting the other officer’s Taser.
“Do not kick! Do you understand!?” the officer stated, per the document, while another asked her to “please relax,” to which Peters responded, “No!”
Once police moved Peters outside and placed her in their patrol car, “she asked if I knew what I was doing and then she stated I was assisting a Merrick Garland,” the affidavit states, referring to the US Attorney General. “She continued talking about something pertaining to the election as I closed the patrol car door, but this was indiscernible as she was almost whispering once in the car.”
“The search warrant presented listed exactly one item, an iPad with a white case,” Rory McShane, a spokesman for her legal defense fund, told The Denver Post in an emailed statement on Tuesday.
“Clerk Peters complied with that, then officers began attempting to take other items of personal property, not listed in the warrant including her car keys, which is illegal,” McShane added.
Read the affidavit and arrest warrant, in full, below:
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