Tina Peters, the former Colorado county clerk who became a 2020-election-denying hero to conservative Christians after granting conspiracists access to voting machine data that was published online, has reached a point in her three-year legal odyssey she had worked and prayed to avoid.
On Thursday, Oct. 3, she was sentenced to nine years in prison after being found guilty of seven crimes, including four felonies, in an August trial.
Peters was unrepentant and was heard laughing during the sentencing hearing.
“It is with a heavy heart that I hear the vile accusations and the anger leveled against me for what I did to serve the people of Mesa County,” said Peters, who plans an appeal and claims she’s a “whistleblower” denied opportunities to present plentiful evidence of election fraud.
“I’m not a criminal and I don’t deserve to go into a prison where other people have committed heinous crimes,” Peters told the judge as she cried.
“You cannot help but lie as easy it is for you to breathe.”
District Judge Matthew Barrett was having none of it, unleashing a pointed rebuke as he denied her probation: “You are no hero. You abused your position and you’re a charlatan who used and is still using your prior position in office to pedal a snake oil that’s been proven to be junk time and time again in your world. It’s all about you. … You cannot help but lie as easy it is for you to breathe.”
Peters’ sentence may be the last handed down for 2020 election crimes before the 2024 election. Other election-related cases have seen delay after delay but moved forward recently:
- Last week special counsel Jack Smith updated his arguments on the case of Donald Trump’s alleged plot to overturn the 2020 election. In a recent ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court gave presidents broad legal immunity for their official acts. Smith’s detailed filing argues Trump can and should be prosecuted for numerous crimes he committed because he was acting not in his official capacity but as a candidate for reelection.
- Any day now, MyPillow founder Mike Lindell will learn his court date in the defamation suit brought by Eric Coomer, an executive with Dominion Voting Systems. The cash-strapped Lindell faces three separate defamation suits seeking a combined $1 billion in damages.
- In September, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani was disbarred from practicing law in Washington, D.C., after being disbarred in New York in July. He failed to have a $148 million defamation verdict dismissed, and then failed in his effort to declare bankruptcy. The women he defamed, Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, are seeking access to his finances.
- Salem Media apologized for and withdrew the conspiracist film 2,000 Mules following a suit by a man defamed in the Dinesh D’Souza movie, which falsely claimed human “mules” stole the election for Joe Biden with fake votes.
District Judge Matthew Barrett
In Colorado, Judge Barrett suggested the nine-year sentence for Peters could deter others who might be inspired to follow her example: “I’m convinced you would do it all over again if you could. You’re as defiant a defendant as this court has ever seen.”
Prosecutors said Peters had turned Mesa County into a national “laughingstock” and said her crimes cost the county $1.4 million, including replacing election machines she had compromised. The county also paid for hand recounts of votes, with the numbers coming out “identical” to the machine counts Peters claimed had been compromised by bad actors from Canada and China.
Peters has enjoyed the support of local churches and health-and-wealth preacher Andrew Wommack. She was featured at conferences organized by Mike Lindell and starred in a Lindell-funded pseudo-documentary, Selection Code, that was designed to “show the whole world that we can never, ever, use computers or voting machines in elections again.”
“You’re as defiant a defendant as this court has ever seen.”
Wommack’s political group, Truth and Liberty Coalition, has called Peters “courageous,” claims she’s “the epitome of the American patriot,” organized rallies for her and featured her on numerous videos (see here, here, here, and here). The group’s media representative did not respond to a request for comment about Peters’ sentencing.
In court on Thursday, a man described as Peters’ “pastor” spoke on her behalf and asked the judge to allow the 70-year-old “whistleblower” to serve probation at his church instead of going to prison.
Dave Bryan
In a phone interview Friday, Pastor Dave Bryan of California defended the motivation of Peters, who has spoken at his church and considered relocating there.
“She’s lived her life as a perfect saint and citizen,” said Bryan, who leads Church of Glad Tidings in Yuba City, Calif., a congregation that says it “has blossomed from a hippie commune gone ‘Jesus Freak’” into “a bustling congregation committed to impacting the nations of the world and fulfilling the prayer of Jesus Christ for his disciples to ’establish his kingdom here on earth!’”
Bryan has a brief cameo in Jeff Sharlet’s book on Christian nationalism, The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War. Sharlet describes Bryan as “Trump disciple, COVID truther, subscriber to the conspiracy theory that Biden stole the election, superfan of the kickass Jesus of Muscular Christianity — preaching from a pulpit made of swords, right out of Game of Thrones.”
“I know the fact is there was cheating in the Dominion machines, and they spun that seven ways from Sunday,” said Bryan, who operates a YWAM ministry and “teaches widely on spiritual warfare and deliverance ministry.”
Peters’ sentence “is not about justice,” he said. “This is about a political vendetta.”
Peters seeks to raise $1 million on GiveSendGo, a $100 million Christian crowdfunding platform that’s a haven for “J6 Patriots” and antisemites.
“Unite with Tina’s Fight to Save America,” says the campaign. “For the last two and a half years, Tina has continued to be inundated with lawfare and personal attacks costing her savings in an effort to wake people up to see the dangers of forces wanting to take our very liberties.”
Donors have given $164,734 so far, up from $97,565 in July, with donations increasing after her sentencing.
Colorado’s divided Republican Party supported Peters in 2022 and urged prayer for her.
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Mike Lindell ordered to pay man who debunked his election falsehoods
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