Jail sentence for former Mesa County employee Tina Peters convicted on seven counts

CPR covered every day of Peters’ trial. You can read our explanation of the case Hereand find out about individual days Here.

Tina Peters ends up in prison.

The former Mesa County clerk was sentenced to nine years in prison, most of which he will serve in the Colorado Department of Corrections.

Her verdict was announced Thursday in a packed courtroom that included supporters of Peters, several uniformed sheriff’s deputies and local elected officials. Interested parties also gathered just outside the courtroom and streamed the proceedings on their phones from a distance.

Peters was found guilty in August by a jury of Mesa County residents on seven counts, including four felonies, after she helped provide unauthorized access to the county’s voting machines that she was supposed to protect.

During Thursday’s hearing, prosecutors argued that Peters faced the maximum sentence for each charge and said Peters should serve prison time, pointing out that she lacked remorse even after being found guilty.

“I don’t think anyone in this room would argue directly that Ms. Peters has shown any respect for the law,” said Dan Rubinstein, United States Attorney for the 21st Judicial District.

Before sentencing, Peters asked 21st Judicial District Judge Matthew Barrett for probation. She said she recognized the jury’s decision, but the jury was not allowed to hear any further evidence she wanted to present. This evidence was largely related to Dominion voting machine conspiracies that were ruled illegitimate.

In announcing the sentence, Barrett said that Peters was privileged compared to the usual defendants he sees and that she had shown no remorse. He preceded his verdict with a harsh criticism of her actions and attitude, calling her an attention-seeking charlatan who “kept selling” snake oil.

“I have no doubt you would do it again if you could,” Barrett said. “You are as defiant a defendant as this court has ever seen.”

Impact statements present conflicting views from Peters

The prosecution and defense were each given an hour to present their arguments before Barrett announced the verdict.

Mesa County Commissioner Cody Davis said the estimated cost of Peters’ actions to Mesa County taxpayers was $1.4 million. That includes Peters’ salary while she was barred from elective office, as well as numerous recounts the county paid to prove its elections were accurate.

As Davis explained efforts to convince the public that Peters’ claims were untrue, Barrett interjected, asking what the hand count and other recounts showed.

“I want to know, what was the difference?” asked Barrett.

“They were identical,” Davis said of the votes, noting that a hand count and an analysis by another voting machine company confirmed the election tallies were accurate. “No significant difference.”

“Not a significant difference at all,” Barrett repeated.

Davis also said the damage Peters did to the county went beyond budget and damaged its reputation in general.

“People across Colorado and other states have come to associate Mesa County not with our natural beauty or agriculture, but with the infamous actions of Ms. Peters. “Your behavior has made this county a national laughingstock and has overshadowed our accomplishments and values,” Davis concluded.

Former Mesa County Republican Commissioner Scott McInnis called on Peters to face the consequences of her actions; He called her a disgrace and said all her allegations of voter fraud were meaningless.

“You have never cast a fraudulent vote, your honor, not a single fraudulent vote in Mesa County. Despite all these allegations, despite all these studies,” McInnis said.

Peters’ defense presented prominent witnesses from her life, one who spoke tearfully about her as a friend and a Gold Star mother who lost her son in a military accident.

“She’s not a threat to the community, she’s not a threat to the state,” said California pastor Dave Bryan, who asked Barrett not to sentence Peters to prison but instead order her to serve probation at his church in California. “She was never a threat to another human being and (a prison sentence) could only smack of political justification.”

Dallas Schroeder, a former Republican county clerk in Elbert County, also testified in support of Peters; He pleaded with the judge not to jail her for “seeking the truth.”

“This is tyranny at its worst, when people are afraid to stand up and say what they really believe and investigate things,” Shroeder said. Schroeder was sued by the state over copies he made of the Elbert County voting machine hard drives around the same time as Peters.

Barrett asked Schroeder why Peters needed to do more than just examine and count ballots.

“Do you want to evaluate it in a clearer way than actually going back and looking at what the machine told you about the results and then counting the ballots yourself?” Barrett asked.

Schroeder said it still makes sense for employees to have the ability to see everything that’s going on in the election system.

The verdict is the culmination of several years of investigation and litigation

Peters was found guilty of three counts of attempting to influence a public official and one count of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation. She was also convicted of first-degree official misconduct, dereliction of duty and failure to obey an order of the Secretary of State, all misdemeanors.

The investigation began a little more than three years ago when images captured during a secure update to Mesa County’s voting equipment surfaced online. At the same time, a copy of the Mesa County hard drive was put on display and discussed at a “cyber symposium” hosted by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell that was at the center of false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

Over the course of a lengthy trial, prosecutors presented a timeline showing that Peters began meeting with election conspiracy theorists in early 2021 about alleged “irregularities” in the election results. In response, Peters and others hatched a plan to bring in an unauthorized person to observe a Dominion Voting Machines software update. The conspiracy involved creating security credentials for a local man named Gerald Wood and using them to give another man access to voting machines.

That man was retired surfer Conan Hayes, who secretly joined the software update and made copies of confidential information that then leaked online. The jury found Peters guilty of this deception.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly described Scott McInnis as a former Mesa County Clerk. He is a former county commissioner who was in office when the election security breach came to light.