April 22, 2025 01:09 PM UTC

Tina Peters Back In Court Today (Sort Of) With Trump's DOJ In Tow

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• by: Colorado Pols

AP’s Colleen Slevin via the Aurora Sentinel updates on the continuing efforts by former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters to get out of prison while she appeals her multiple felony and other misconduct-related convictions, stemming from her failed plot to hack into voting machines and uncover evidence that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” from Donald Trump. Today, attorneys from the state are fighting back in front of a federal judge against both Peters’ attorneys and representatives from the Trump-controlled Justice Department, who have been inappropriately sticking their federal noses into this state case since Inauguration Day:

There have been “reasonable concerns” raised about Peters’ prosecution, wrote acting U.S. Assistant Attorney General Yaakov M. Roth in a court filing last month.

But Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser wants Magistrate Judge Scott T. Varholak to block the Justice Department from getting involved. Lawyers from Weiser’s office said the Justice Department has not given any good reason why it should intervene and has just repeated Peters’ arguments…

Varholak denied a request to allow Peters, who is now in a state prison in Denver after serving a jail sentence, to attend Tuesday’s hearing, saying its only purpose was to hear arguments from lawyers.

As the only person still incarcerated anywhere in the country to our knowledge for any crime related to Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election, Tina Peters is a big problem for the MAGA movement’s determined campaign to rewrite the history of that election and excuse Trump’s abandonment of the democratic process when it didn’t produce the outcome he wanted.

With no power to pardon a state crime, Trump had two choices in dealing with Peters’ case: to either leave Peters to her fate based on the very significant misconduct she committed regardless of her motive, or embrace Peters as a martyr, ignoring the indefensible details of her crimes–much like Trump did in pardoning even violent January 6th insurrectionists. Even if Peters was genuine in her unfounded belief that the election equipment in her charge was suspect, there is absolutely no excuse for subverting security protocols and suborning identity theft to “investigate” that suspicion.

In the same way that pardoning even violent January 6th rioters has helped “normalize” the events of that day, letting Tina Peters off the hook to relieve Trump’s conscience would seriously compromise laws against misconduct by sworn elected officials. The Justice Department’s attempt to intimidate Gov. Jared Polis and Attorney General Phil Weiser into some kind of “quid pro quo” state pardon deal was not successful, and it’s difficult to see a federal judge siding with what is essentially a rehash of the same unfounded conspiracy theories Peters has tried and failed to defend herself with from the beginning of her case.

And so around this case will go, until either Donald Trump’s ego has been sated or there is no one left to intimidate.