Tina Peters' Last Silly Attempt To Avoid Justice Fails

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by: Colorado Pols

Tina Peters on the red carpet at Mar-a-Lago.

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.

11 thoughts on “Tina Peters’ Last Silly Attempt To Avoid Justice Fails”

davebarnes says:

January 8, 2024 at 3:40 pm

3 years to bring this to trial?

Whatever happened to "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial"?

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1. JohnInDenver says:
  
  January 8, 2024 at 5:46 pm
  
  In this case, the defendant has found several ways to delay … Colorado Newsline explained
  
  "Her trial was first scheduled for March [2023] this year and was delayed twice to August and then October.
  
  Peters recently [in late summer] changed her legal team. Her new lawyers, Douglas Richards and Madalia Maaliki, filed the motion to reschedule the trial so they could adequately prepare."
  
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  1. spaceman2021 says:
    
    January 9, 2024 at 1:35 pm
    
    Continuances are pretty common in most criminal cases, and with the change in counsel, it was unsurprising. Her defense counsel need time to prepare in order render constitutionally effective assistance of counsel. Peters' federal lawsuit, on the other hand, was an ill-conceived and desperate attempt to have a federal court intervene, which the federal court rightly rejected on Younger abstention grounds. Nice try, Tina.
    
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2. Gilpin Guy says:
  
  January 9, 2024 at 11:12 am
  
  How about 'the wheels of justice grind slowly but inexorably.'
  
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  1. MartinMark says:
    
    January 9, 2024 at 1:34 pm
    
    Seems to me it's a case of the acused is stalling and hoping from a pardon by Trump
    
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    1. bullshit! says:
      
      January 9, 2024 at 2:36 pm
      
      Trump can't pardon a state crime, but you bet your ass she's been delaying hoping for better treatment once Trump is President again. It's about all she's got left.
      
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      1. MartinMark says:
        
        January 9, 2024 at 4:03 pm
        
        State charges. Right. I kinda forgot about that.
        
        FWIW, I think she is face some of both state and federal?
        
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        JohnInDenver says:
        
        January 9, 2024 at 5:40 pm
        
        FWIW … US Attorney for Colorado and the FBI were part of the investigation.
        
        Although the FBI and the US Attorney for Colorado's office were part of the initial investigation, as best I can tell, no federal charges have been filed.
        
        So, Mesa County District Attorney Daniel Rubinstein.is prosecuting.
        
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        kwtree says:
        
        January 9, 2024 at 8:38 pm
        
        JID- there is some long, embedded graphic or code in the middle of your post, making it ridiculously long. You might want to edit that out.
        
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        JohnInDenver says:
        
        January 10, 2024 at 9:05 am
        
        Yeah, it didn't look that way when I pushed "post" … and I didn't see this comment until this morning, after edit time had expired. .
        
        Sorry about that.
        
        Key thought … "Although the FBI and the US Attorney for Colorado's office were part of the initial investigation, as best I can tell, no federal charges have been filed.
        
        So, Mesa County District Attorney Daniel Rubinstein.is prosecuting."
        
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sagebrush says:

January 19, 2024 at 11:40 am

I doubt the district attorney and judge in her case will be offering her a plea of any kind. She's so no remorse whatsoever about her actions, and she's been spending all of her time awaiting trial lying about in denigrating the district attorney and the judge in her case. She's been saying continuously in public videos that she won't give up, she won't give in, she's not depressed or suicidal, and she's fighting for her followers because they're coming after her instead of going after them.

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