Tina Peters is serving a nine-year prison sentence after a jury found her guilty of facilitating access to Mesa County voting equipment to outsiders. She was the Colorado county’s clerk and recorder, a position that made her responsible for overseeing elections. She believes that the 2020 general election was stolen from Donald Trump.
And now that Trump is president again, he’s using the bully pulpit to create pressure for Peters’ release. The president posted on his Truth Social account Tuesday morning:
FREE TINA PETERS, a brave and innocent Patriot who has been tortured by Crooked Colorado politicians, including the big Mail-In Ballot supporting the governor of the State. Let Tina Peters out of jail, RIGHT NOW. She did nothing wrong, except catching the Democrats cheat in the Election. She is an old woman, and very sick. If she is not released, I am going to take harsh measures!!!
It’s not clear what harsh measures he intends to take, but Trump has had his eye on this case for the duration of this presidency. Earlier this year, he directed his Justice Department (DOJ) “to take all necessary action” to secure Peters’ release. In March, the DOJ submitted a federal court filing in support of Peters’ fight to be freed from prison while she appeals a state-court conviction.
Trump has stayed steady in his belief that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen from him, a view shared not only by him and Peters, but by an unknown yet large number of researchers and experts on the matter, as well as millions of Americans. A December 2023 Washington Post/University of Maryland survey found that 38 percent of Americans didn’t believe Joe Biden was a legitimate president. This had increased by seven percentage points since 2021. The number was always likely higher but not reflected in the polling due to the “election denier” stigma that was attached to the view.
Peters says the judge in her case is violating her free speech rights by denying her bail while she appeals her sentence, and she thinks she’s being denied bail because she cast doubt on the voting system.
On August 12, 2024, District Judge Matthew Barrett sentenced Peters to nine years in prison for three counts of attempting to influence a public official; conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation; official misconduct; violation of duty; and failure to comply with an order of the secretary of state. A jury had found her guilty of “using someone else’s security badge to give an expert affiliated with My Pillow chief executive Mike Lindell access to the Mesa County election system and deceiving other officials about that person’s identity,” Newsmax summarized.
During sentencing, Barrett called Peters a charlatan:
I am convinced you would do it all over again if you could. You’re as defiant as any defendant this court has ever seen. You are no hero. You abused your position and you’re a charlatan.
Peters gave an interview to TNA on August 16, 2024, just weeks before she was thrown in prison. (Her interview begins at about 29:00.) She said she had proof of collusion to steal votes between election-machine maker Dominion, the secretary of state, and even other counties. She said:
The secretary of state and Dominion voting systems — who now we know have been colluding … not only in Colorado but other states and other countries — have been colluding using these machines and other electronic means to steal the votes. And I mean steal the votes. We have three reports.… The images were taken of the computer system before Dominion Voting Systems and the secretary of state came into my house, my office.… We took an image before they came in, we took an image after they left — and what it showed was they had deleted 29,000 vital election records, there were 36 wireless devices in this computer system, and that there was the ability in there to flip votes in a matter of seconds.
Dominion has gone after multiple news outlets for platforming people who alleged their machines played a role in election rigging. And they have had success. In April 2023, Fox News settled with Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million. And earlier this month, Newsmax settled with Dominion for $67 million. Newsmax said it settled not because it was guilty, but because the Delaware court that hosted its case was unfair and biased.
Peters told TNA the pivotal event that put her on the path to jail was the April 6, 2021 local City Council election. “There’s no way these people won,” she thought after seeing the results. Afterward, she said, “constituents kept bringing me their concerns.” She claims to have obtained images proving election tampering.
The FBI raided her office August 2021, and her house was raided in November. A few months later, she was indicted and arrested.
Peters has posted three very detailed and technical reports to support her claims. You can read them here.
Despite support from the president of the United States, Colorado officials haven’t budged — so far. Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said earlier this year:
Tina Peters is a criminal who compromised her own voting equipment to try to prove Trump’s Big Lie. Trump is weaponizing the Department of Justice. We cannot allow him to rewrite history or use his lies to create two tiers of justice for the American people.
The push to free Peters comes as election security appears to be back on the agenda for the Trump administration. The president published a post on Monday indicating he intends to soon sign an executive order related to the issue. You can read our report on that here.