January 08, 2024 03:01 PM UTC

Tina Peters' Last Silly Attempt To Avoid Justice Fails

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Colorado Sun’s Sandra Fish reports, a last-ditch attempt by indicted former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters to avoid prosecution on felony charges related to the breach of election system security in her office in 2021 as part of a failed attempt to produce evidence that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump has been, no nice way to say this, laughed out to court today:

Peters, who faces trial next month on 10 counts in the alleged breach, filed the lawsuit in November seeking to halt all local, state and federal criminal investigations and prosecutions against her. The suit named U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold and Mesa County District Attorney Daniel Rubinstein as defendants.

U.S. District Judge Nina Wang granted Rubinstein’s motion to dismiss the entire case, in which Peters alleged he and others were retaliating against her and curbing her free speech rights. In doing so, Wang also dismissed Peters’ request for a preliminary injunction halting her upcoming trial.

Wang ruled that Peters failed to “offer sufficient evidence to demonstrate that the prosecution was substantially motivated by a bad faith motive or was brought to harass.” Wang also criticized the evidence presented by Peters and her attorney, former Secretary of State Scott Gessler, writing “some of the documents do not even address the factual allegations for which they are cited.” [Pols emphasis]

That would be consistent with the sloppy legal arguments made by Gessler before the Colorado Supreme Court in the case Gessler just lost barring Trump from the state’s Super Tuesday ballot, and the meritless case Gessler made in Nevada after the 2020 presidential election in a baseless attempt to sow doubt in that state’s results. Most of our experience with Gessler is from his time as an elected Secretary of State, not a practicing trial lawyer–and although Gessler’s nonsensical conspiracy theories about tens of thousands of “illegal voters” swinging Colorado elections gave us every indication, we’re nonetheless surprised at just how incompetent Gessler seems to be in a court of law.

Last night, Peters sent out this despairing call to her supporters, pleading for prayers that she not be sent to the big house:

And with that, just like the criminal prosecutions successfully being carried out in Georgia, the “Big Lie” is on a collision course with the justice system in a Colorado courtroom next month. The convoluted theories and excuses for clearly demonstrable misconduct that continue to generate sympathy for Tina Peters with members of the public have a way of collapsing in a heap under actual legal scrutiny, just like they did in the case of Trump’s Colorado-based coup-plotting lawyer Jenna Ellis. Ellis was smart enough in the end to recognize that clinging to the proven falsehood that the 2020 presidential election was stolen would not save her, which led to Ellis cutting a deal and getting off with a single felony and an apology.

It’s still not to late for Peters to end this charade and make a plea deal of her own. If she does not, the obligation to hold Peters accountable in order to deter similar misconduct in the future is all that’s left. And in that event, she will deserve the sentence she gets.