A Colorado judge threw the book at a MAGA folk hero on Thursday.
Tina Peters, the infamous election-denying Colorado clerk who tried to help Donald Trump overturn 2020 election results, was sentenced to nine years in prison—a far cry from probation, as her attorneys had asked for.
Peters, 68, was found guilty last month of allowing a man associated with MyPillow’s Mike Lindell to enter the Mesa County election system after the 2020 election—a breach that gave illegal access to the very voting data it was her job to protect.
Prosecutors said the conspiracy-peddling clerk turned off security cameras, gave the man access, and then leaked voting data to her fellow conspiracy theorists. The entire conspiracy was all-the-more head-scratching since it played out in a state that wasn’t even a close loss for Trump four years ago.
USA-ELECTION/COLORADO
Tina Peters lost in a Republican primary while running to be Colorado’s secretary of state.
Kevin Mohatt/Reuters
Prosecutors argued at Peters’ trial that she sought fame in right-wing circles. She appeared to achieved that—sometimes being characterized as a martyr in Trump’s fight to prove the 2020 election was stolen from him.
That MAGA fame came at a cost, however. District Judge Matthew Barrett indicated Thursday that Peters’ lack of regret for her crimes was partially why she’d be spending nearly a decade in a state prison.
“I’m convinced you’d do it all over again if you could,” he told Peters on Thursday, CNBC reported. “You’re as defiant a defendant as this court has ever seen.”
Barrett added at the sentencing: “You are no hero. You’re a charlatan who used and is still using your prior position in office to peddle a snake oil that’s been proven to be junk time and time again.”
Peters has long been unapologetic for what she did. She smiled in her 2022 mugshot and campaigned to be Colorado’s secretary of state—a run that didn’t survive a Republican primary. True to form, Peters cried after the primary that her loss was the result of voter fraud.
Tina Peters was arrested in 2022 on charges related to her attempts to overturn results in the 2020 election.
Mesa County Sheriff’s Office
CNBC reported that Peters insisted ahead of Thursday’s sentencing that she “only wanted to serve the people of Mesa County” and that she did not do “anything with malice to break the law.”
Peters was convicted by a jury on seven criminal charges in August, which included attempt to influence a public servant, conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, and violation of duty.
Peters the only U.S. election official to be convicted of criminal charges relating to stolen election conspiracy theories in 2020, but other cases remain open elsewhere.
