Tina Peters, a former county clerk in Colorado, was sentenced to nine years in prison on Thursday for giving allies of Donald Trump access to voting data after the 2020 election, according to a livestream of the sentencing. Peters became a hero among Trump supporters for denying that President Joe Biden had rightfully won the election and was convicted for allowing a man to illegally access data from the Mesa County election system using a stolen keycard.
Prosecutors in the case said Peters was intent on gaining fame for her loyalty to Trump, and was “fixated” on the idea that the 2020 election was somehow “stolen” by the Democrats. There’s been no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election after dozens of court cases brought by the Trump campaign, though the former president continues to insist he actually won.
Working as the Mesa County Clerk, Peters used another worker’s security keycard and copied hard drive images from voting machines that were then presented publicly at a 2021 conference by Mike Lindell, the founder of MyPillow and a close ally of Trump. The defense argued that Peters was only trying to preserve election records, but that argument was unconvincing to a jury.
Peters was found guilty in August on seven of the 10 counts she was originally charged with, according to the local ABC TV affiliate in Denver, including conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, violation of duty, failure to comply with requirements of the Colorado Secretary of State, and attempts to influence a public servant.
Peters spoke for roughly 42 minutes in a rambling and conspiracy-laden manner during the sentencing hearing Thursday and insisted that she doesn’t deserve prison time.
“I’m not a criminal. I have lived my life with honor and with honesty,” Peters said, according to a livestream from the courtroom available on YouTube. “I don’t deserve to go into a prison where other people have committed heinous crimes.”
Peters also said that she felt bad for prosecutors who were asking for a strict sentence because “God doesn’t like people messing with his kids, and I believe I’m a child of God.” Peters insisted that she has medical conditions that can’t be treated in prison, and said she needed to sleep on a magnetic bed. Older Trump supporters have become rather notorious for their New Age medical beliefs, especially after “alternative” medical treatments became popular on the political right during the covid-19 pandemic—treatments like ivermectin, which they believe can cure the disease.
Judge Matthew Barrett told Peters at Thursday’s sentencing that he was convinced Peters would try to do it all again in the pursuit of fame. Judge Barrett mentioned the perks that Peters enjoyed by becoming a kind of mini-celebrity within the Trump media ecosystem.
“You cared about the jets, the podcasts, and the people fawning over you,” Barrett said, according to a local NBC affiliate who was in the courtroom Thursday. “You are a charlatan and you cannot help but lie as easy as you can breathe.”
“I’m convinced you would do it all over again if you could. You’re as defiant a defendant as this court has seen,” Barrett said.
Bodycam footage from Peters’ arrest in February 2022, which is available on YouTube, shows the confrontational arrest, where the former county clerk can be heard repeatedly shouting “no, let go of me” and “you’re hurting me” at the arresting officers and claiming she would have bruising from being manhandled. At one point she also says “shut up, what an asshole thing to say to me,” after an officer told her to stand up like an adult as she was being arrested. The entire exchange is rather remarkable when you remember that Trump supporters demand complete compliance with anything a police officer is saying and often blame those being arrested for “resisting” arrest.
The sentence of nine years includes two years spent in county jail and seven years in the Colorado Department of Corrections.
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