A judge excoriated a Colorado county clerk for her crimes and lies before sentencing her Thursday to nine years behind bars for a data-breach scheme spawned from the rampant false claims about voting machine fraud in the 2020 presidential race.
District Judge Matthew Barrett told former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters — after earlier sparring with her for continuing to press discredited claims about rigged voting machines — that she never took her job seriously.
“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,” Barrett told her in handing down the sentence. “You are no hero. You abused your position and you’re a charlatan.”
Jurors found Peters guilty in August for allowing a man to misuse a security card to access to the Mesa County election system and for being deceptive about that person’s identity.
The man was affiliated with My Pillow chief executive Mike Lindell, a prominent promoter of false claims that voting machines were manipulated to steal the election from former President Donald Trump.
At trial, prosecutors said Peters, a Republican, was seeking fame and became “fixated” on voting problems after becoming involved with those who had questioned the accuracy of the presidential election results.
A one-time hero to election deniers, Peters has been unapologetic about what happened.
Before being sentenced, Peters insisted that everything she did to try to unroot what she believed was fraud was for the greater good.
“I’ve never done anything with malice to break the law. I’ve only wanted to serve the people of Mesa County,” she told the court.
When Peters tried to press on with claims no legal authority has corroborated about “wireless devices” and software that changed ballot images in voting machines she drew the judge’s exasperation, who pointed out that ballot recounts showed no discrepancies.
“I’ve let you go on enough about this,” Judge Barrett said. “The votes are the votes.”
Later, the judge pointed out how Peters has kept up public appearances in broadcasts to sympathetic audiences for her own benefit.
“It’s just more lies. No objective person believes them. No, at the end of the day, you cared about the jets, the podcasts and people flying with you,” Barrett said.
Peters had the right to be defiant, he noted, but it was “certainly not helpful for her lot today.”
The breach led by Peters heightened concerns that rogue election workers sympathetic to partisan lies could use their access and knowledge to attack voting processes from within.
Peters was convicted of three counts of attempting to influence a public servant, one count of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, first-degree official misconduct, violation of duty and failing to comply with the secretary of state.
She was found not guilty of identity theft, one count of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation and one count of criminal impersonation.
In a post on the social media platform X after her conviction, Peters accused Colorado-based Dominion Voting Systems, which made her county’s election system, as well as lawyers for state election officials of stealing votes.
“I will continue to fight until the Truth is revealed that was not allowed to be brought during this trial. This is a sad day for our nation and the world. But we WILL win in the end,” she said.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser has called her conviction a warning that tampering with voting processes will bring consequences.
Mead Gruver, The Associated Press