Police arrested Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters at a Grand Junction restaurant on Tuesday after she resisted authorities' attempts to seize an iPad under a search warrant, police said.
Peters was detained briefly and released at the scene pending charges, police said.
Video obtained by 9NEWS shows Grand Junction Police detain Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters. Officers were serving a warrant to seize her iPad.
The incident is not directly related to multiple state and federal investigations into Peters's alleged involvement last year in election data security breaches, authorities confirmed.
The police department's spokeswoman said no additional information was available.
According to a search warrant issued Tuesday morning in Mesa County Court, officers were attempting to obtain an Apple iPad tablet computer with a white keyboard case in Peters's possession. Authorities intended to review data "believed to have been created, viewed, accessed, modified, deleted, downloaded or saved" between 1 p.m. and 2:30 p.m. on Monday, when they suspect Peters recorded proceedings in a courtroom where use of electronic recording devices is forbidden.
A representative of Peters's legal defense fund told Colorado Politics that Peters complied with the warrant by producing the iPad, but then officers attempted to confiscate other property — including her cars keys — that wasn't listed on the warrant, and she objected. Her attorneys are discussing their response, the representative said.
The probable cause affidavit attached to the search warrant served on Peters Tuesday says that, after Peters told the judge she hadn't been recording proceedings during a court hearing on Monday, a deputy district attorney and paralegal said they observed Peters had the tablet computer's camera application open and that she was steadying the device with its rear-facing camera pointing toward a view of courtroom.
The hearing was in a personnel case involving Peters's former chief deputy clerk, Belinda Knisley, who was suspended last year by Mesa County based on allegations she had created a hostile work environment.
The affidavit said authorities were seeking Peters's iPad and its relevant data as evidence in a potential prosecution for attempting to influence a public servant, a class 4 felony.
Peters has been accused of helping facilitate breaches in election system security, ignoring election rules and defying orders from Secretary of State Jena Griswold. She also faces ethics and campaign finance complaints involving gifts she's allegedly accepted above legal limits.
Last month, Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubinstein and Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser announced that the Mesa County grand jury was investigating allegations of tampering with Mesa County election equipment and official misconduct.
Peters maintains her innocence, arguing that she was taking necessary steps to preserve election records.
A Mesa County District Court judge found in October that Peters and Knisley allowed the introduction of a security vulnerability into the county’s voting system equipment and ruled that she had breached her duties.
In August, Griswold ordered Mesa County to replace its voting equipment after system passwords showed up in a video posted online. Days later, exact digital copies of the county's election system hard drive were posted online after Griswold's staff discovered that 24-hour video surveillance of the election equipment had been turned off.
That same month, Peters appeared at a symposium hosted by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, a proponent of claims that the 2020 election was rigged against former president Donald Trump.
Lindell said he flew Peters in for the event on his private plane and later covered some expenses while she remained out of state for several weeks following Griswold's initial order.
The Secretary of State's Office and the state's Independent Ethics Commission are investigating complaints that Peters's acceptance of the flights on Lindell's plane and lodging he said he covered exceed the $65 cap on gifts public officials can accept in Colorado. A separate ethics complaint alleges Peters has been raising money for a legal defense fund that doesn't comply with state ethics law.
In December, Peters rejected the allegations made in the first ethics complaint but has yet to respond publicly to the second one.
“Ms. Peters firmly denies that she has in any way violated Colorado’s ethics requirements," her attorney, former Secretary of State Scott Gessler, told the commission in a formal response to the complaint related to Lindell and Peters’s travel expenses.
Editor's note: This developing story will be updated.
