DENVER (AP) — A Colorado appeals court ruled Thursday that a former county clerk convicted in a scheme that attempted to find proof of fraud in the 2020 presidential election should be resentenced.
Tina Peters is serving a nine-year prison term after being convicted of state crimes for sneaking in an outside computer expert to make a copy of her county’s election computer system during a software update in 2021. A photo and video of confidential voting system passwords were later posted on social media and a conservative website.
Judges on the Colorado Court of Appeals upheld her conviction, but said that a judge should not have considered Peters’ continued promotion of election fraud conspiracies when he sentenced her in 2024. The court sent Peters’ case back to a lower court for a judge to issue a new sentence.
Calls for Peters’ release have become a cause celebre in the election conspiracy movement. President Donald Trump has sought unsuccessfully to pardon Peters and pressured Colorado to set her free.
Peters was unapologetic when she was sentenced by Judge Matthew Barrett and insisted that she tried to unearth what she believed was fraud for the greater good. He ripped into her, calling her a “charlatan” who had used her position to “peddle snake oil.”
Peters was the former clerk in Mesa County, in the far western part of Colorado, and convicted by jurors in the Republican stronghold that has supported Trump.
Trump has threatened to take “harsh measures” against Colorado unless the state releases her. In February, Trump said Colorado was “suffering a big price” for refusing to release her.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, a Democrat, has accused the Trump administration of waging a “revenge campaign” by choking off funds and ending federal programs over the state’s refusal to free Peters.
The appeals court found that the sentence punished Peters for maintaining that there was fraud in the 2020 election.
“For these reasons, we conclude that the trial court obviously erred by imposing sentence at least partially based on Peters’ protected speech,” the court said in its ruling Thursday.
Weiser said in response to the ruling that the original sentence had been “fair and appropriate.”
“Whatever happens with her sentence, Tina Peters will always be a convicted felon who violated her duty as Mesa County clerk, put other lives at risk, and threatened our democracy. Nothing will remove that stain,” Weiser said in a statement.
Weiser, a Democrat who is running for governor, noted that the court affirmed Trump’s attempt to pardon Peters was “meaningless” since presidential pardons don’t extend to state crimes.
The Justice Department inserted itself into Peters’ bid to be released while her state appeal was considered. The federal Bureau of Prisons tried to get Peters moved to a federal prison. After both efforts failed, Trump in December announced a pardon for Peters that was considered symbolic since Colorado says it doesn’t apply to her state convictions.
But in January, Democratic Gov. Jared Polis said he was considering granting clemency for Peters, calling her sentence “unusual and harsh“ for a first-time, non-violent offender.
Peters was convicted of three counts of attempting to influence a public servant and one count each of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, first-degree official misconduct, violation of duty and failure to comply with the requirements of the secretary of state.
Peters’ lawyers didn’t deny that she used the security badge of a local man she pretended to hire to allow the an associate of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell to make a copy of the Dominion Voting Systems election computer server during an annual software update in 2021.
But they said she only wanted to preserve election data and find out whether any outside actor had accessed the system while ballots were being counted. They said she didn’t want the information made public.
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