Colorado fights Trump administration bid to help imprisoned loyalist
Tina Peters
[April 22, 2025]
By COLLEEN SLEVIN
DENVER (AP) — Colorado officials say President Donald Trump's
administration appears to be wielding its “political power” to give
unprecedented help to a former county election clerk who was convicted
of allowing Trump supporters to access election equipment after his 2020
defeat.
The U.S. Justice Department is trying to insert itself into the case of
former election clerk Tina Peters, who wants to be released from prison
while she appeals her conviction. A hearing is scheduled for Tuesday in
federal court in Denver.
It’s one of the latest Trump administration moves to reward allies who
violated the law on the president's behalf. Peters’ case is among those
the government has said it is reviewing for “abuses of the criminal
justice process.”
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.
“Tina Peters was not prosecuted because of any political pressure; she
was prosecuted because she broke the law. And just as they did not
prosecute her for political reasons, her prosecutors will not accede to
any political pressure to give her preferred treatment in sentencing or
terms of confinement," lawyers from Weiser's office said in a filing.
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.
The lawyers who originally submitted the Justice Department’s statement,
including Colorado’s acting U.S. Attorney J. Bishop Grewell, have since
stepped down from the case because their office helped the state
investigate Peters. They said that while they wanted to avoid any
conflict of interest, they stood by the Justice Department’s statement.
Abigail Stout, a Justice Department lawyer in Washington, is now
representing the federal government instead.
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Candidate for the Colorado Republican Party chair position Tina
Peters concludes her speech during a debate sponsored by the
Republican Women of Weld, Feb. 25, 2023, in Hudson, Colo. (AP
Photo/David Zalubowski, File)
A state judge sentenced Peters to nine years behind bars in October
after rebuking her for being defiant and continuing to press
discredited claims about rigged voting machines. She is now trying
to get a federal judge to release her while she appeals her
conviction.
Peters says Judge Matthew Barrett violated her right to free speech
by denying her bond while she appeals because of her outspoken
questioning of the voting system. She also argued she should be
released from prison while she appeals her conviction because she is
protected from being punished for trying to preserve election
records, which she says is a federal duty.
Jurors found Peters guilty in August for using someone else’s
security badge to give an expert affiliated with My Pillow chief
executive Mike Lindell access to the Mesa County election system and
deceiving other officials about that person’s identity. Lindell is a
prominent promoter of false claims that voting machines were
manipulated to steal the election from Trump.
Peters was previously found to be in contempt of court by Barrett
after District Attorney Dan Rubenstein accused her of recording a
court hearing for a person accused of being a co-conspirator, which
she denied.
That conviction was overturned for lack of evidence by the state
appeals court in January. Peters says Rubenstein, a Republican,
later admitted that he didn’t know if Peters was recording the
hearing but still used it as a reason Barrett should sentence her to
prison for the voting system breach even though a review found no
evidence of a recording.
Previously, Trump pardoned more than a thousand people convicted in
the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. He named an attorney
for some of those defendants, Ed Martin, to be acting U.S. attorney
in the District of Columbia.
The Department of Justice also moved to drop corruption charges
against New York’s Democratic mayor, Eric Adams, saying that they
were tainted by “weaponization” and that the administration needed
Adams’ cooperation in its immigration enforcement efforts.
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