The third fully live streamed day of the trial against former Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters featured testimony from a partisan election employee who sobbed for about five minutes while speaking, as well as backtracking from other witnesses when cross-examined by Peters’ attorney. Peters is being prosecuted for her role in attempting to take a video of a software update on Dominion voting machines. She was concerned that overriding the election files with the upgrade would violate both state and federal law requiring retention of files for 22-25 months.
Stephanie Wenholz, the elections manager for Mesa County, broke down in tears when asked about the day she found out that the Colorado Secretary of State’s (COSOS) office was investigating Mesa County over the incident. Although Wenholz admitted that Peters instructed employees not to speak with law enforcement, but to direct them to her and her attorneys instead, Wenholz said she contacted Detective James Cannon, the chief investigator for the Mesa County District Attorney.
Wenholz has a history of posts on X revealing that she is an election fraud denier. Last year, she posted, “This breaks my heart. I understand the difficulty of being an Election Administrator. I am proud of what I do. I will always stand up to corruption and do what is right. Hounded by baseless voter fraud allegations,” linking to an article that said concerns about election fraud in Virginia were “baseless.” The article interviewed election officials who said they quit their jobs after being confronted with concerns by Republicans about election fraud.
Also last year, Wenholz reposted a CBS News article that the station described, “A special edition of ‘Red & Blue’ focuses on our democracy and election denialism.” In 2022, she posted, “Defending Democracy” next to a post about her and another employee receiving awards despite the ongoing Peters lawfare. Later that year, she reposted an article about an employee turning on Peters.
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