The Mesa County deputy clerk facing multiple counts related to an election data security breach pleaded guilty Thursday to misdemeanor charges as part of a deal with prosecutors that requires her to testify in court against her former boss, Tina Peters, and others.

Belinda Knisley, 67, formally entered guilty pleas to misdemeanor trespassing, official misconduct and violation of duty charges in Mesa County District Court at an afternoon hearing in Grand Junction. Additional felony and misdemeanor charges against Knisley were dismissed under a plea agreement announced earlier by prosecutors.

Judge Matthew D. Barrett sentenced Knisley to two years of probation and 150 hours of community service after expressing skepticism over her avoiding incarceration under the deal, which also forbids her from ever again engaging in election work.

“Cooperation or not, these crimes are worthy of incarceration,” Barrett said before assenting to the deal.

According to the plea agreement, Knisley participated in a June 8 interview in Denver with state and federal prosecutors that District Attorney Dan Rubinstein said lasted seven hours.

In the interview, she described her role in what a series of indictments against Knisley and Peters calls “a deceptive scheme” to gain unauthorized access to voting equipment and confidential data, which was eventually made public.

The plea agreement says Knisley “participated in a scheme with Tina Peters and other identified people to deceive public servants from both the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office and Mesa County.”

The activity, Knisley said in the interview, was “significantly directed” by Peters, who was indicted by a Mesa County grand jury in March, alongside Knisley, on seven felony and three misdemeanor counts stemming from an alleged plot to copy election system software last summer in an effort to prove unfounded claims that Colorado’s elections are rigged.

“Ms. Knisley discussed other individuals who may have had various levels of criminal responsibility for the planning, preparation and/or execution of this scheme,” the plea agreement says.

Peters lost Colorado’s June Republican primary for secretary of state by about 20 percentage points, or roughly 88,000 votes. She paid more than $250,000 from campaign funds for a recount, which found no significant change in the primary election results.

Peters has maintained she did nothing illegal and calls the charges part of a politically motivated attempt by officials from both parties to muzzle supporters of former President Donald Trump. She was arraigned on the charges related to the election data breach earlier this month and faces a January trial date.

In a written statement issued after the hearing, Peters condemned what she called “intimidation tactics from the organized left.”

“For two years, the government, the media, and the organized left have made Tina Peters and her supporters’ lives a living hell, bringing them to the brink of financial ruin, denying them employment, arresting them, having federal agents kicking in their doors, assault their families — at a certain point against that kind of pressure most people will give in to have their lives back,” Peters said.

“We hold no ill will towards Chief Deputy Knisley, but Tina Peters will not back down and the truth will come out.”

Added Peters: “The level of intimidation we’ve witnessed in the last two years mimics third world dictatorships — not the United States.”

Under court orders sought by Secretary of State Jena Griswold, Peters and Knisley have been prohibited since last fall from overseeing elections in the county, after a judge found they helped unauthorized people gain access to voting equipment and software and then attempted to cover it up.