Tina Peters (photo, left), a Colorado county clerk who fought the law and lost, has been sentenced to 9 years in prison.
Peters, formerly the elected Mesa County clerk, is a vocal Trump supporter and outspoken promoter of false election conspiracy theories. She was indicted for official misconduct and other crimes (details here), held in contempt of court for defying a judge’s orders, and arrested for assaulting a police officer.
She gave up her county position in 2022 to run for Colorado secretary of state, but was defeated in the primary by over 88,000 votes. She spent $255,000 on a quixotic recount that got her 23 votes, while the winner got 24 votes, netting her a loss of 1 vote (see stories here and here), then sued to throw out the recount (see story here).
Her troubles with the law began while she was Mesa County’s chief election officer. In Colorado, elected county clerks are normally the county-level “designated election official.”
But Peters abused that position by leaking voting machine logins to QAnon and giving an associate of election denier Mike Lindell unauthorized access to the county’s voting systems, prompting a judge to ban her from the clerk’s office (see story here). After a grand jury indicted her, she violated pretrial release, and her bail was revoked (see story here).
At the trial, prosecutors portrayed Peters as a fame-seeker. During sentencing, she argued she broke the law to serve “a greater good.” The judge disagreed, and on October 2, 2024, convinced she “would do it all over again,” he sentenced her to 9 years in prison.
“You’re as defiant as any defendant this court has ever seen,” he said (read story here). It’s harsh, but maybe it’s necessary. Election crimes violate the rights of voters to choose public officials, so these are crimes against the entire public.
Peters is a crank who embraces and proselytizes the false conspiracy theories of the far right. Free speech entitles her to do that, despite its corrosive effect on our democracy. But breaking the law, defying court orders, and assaulting police takes things to another level with consequences.
What’s at stake here is that society needs rules to function, the rules apply the same to everyone, and nobody is above the law. Tina Peters attacked those bedrock principles of American freedom.
She’s part of a cabal of Trump-supporting activists who thought they could ride roughshod over the law and other citizens’ rights. Their crimes are against all of us. It’s really important for society to show they can’t.
You can watch the sentencing proceeding (abut 21 minutes) in the video below.