Frisco

Election denier, former district official sentenced to nine years in prison

Bronwen Cerys October 3, 2024

There is no shortage of local election officials who have adopted Donald Trump’s lies about his 2020 election loss, but Tina Peters is a special case in every way. As NBC News reported, the Colorado Republican is actually headed to prison.

A former Colorado county official who spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 election was sentenced Thursday to nine years in prison on charges including official misconduct related to a security breach of Mesa County’s election system. Tina Peters was convicted in August of four felonies and three misdemeanors for using another person’s security ID to gain access to someone associated with MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, a prominent election denier and ally of former President Donald Trump to obtain election equipment for the district.

As a local prosecutor explained, Peters was “a fox guarding the chicken coop,” adding, “It was her job to protect the voting equipment and she turned it on and used its power to her own advantage.”

It’s been more than two years since the Republican conspiracy theorist was first charged after she used her office to leak voting machine data to pursue a conspiracy that apparently never existed in reality.

As part of her efforts, Peters was celebrated by the likes of Steve Bannon – he argued that she was targeted because of her fight against “this globalist apparatus” – although a jury in Colorado came to a different conclusion and convicted the election denier in early August, in in which she found her guilty of three counts of attempting to influence a public official, one count of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, first-degree official misconduct, dereliction of duty and failure to obey the Secretary of State.

Before the verdict was announced, Peters showed no remorse.

As the notorious election denier begins her prison sentence, there are a few other aspects that need to be considered. The first is the campaign message this sends to other right-wing conspiracy theorists elsewhere.

“Today’s sentence is a warning to others that they will face serious consequences if they attempt to illegally manipulate our voting processes or election systems,” Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said in a statement following Peters’ sentencing.

It’s not exactly a secret that there are many conspiratorial election officials this fall who are considering provocative and legally questionable steps. Whether developments in Colorado get their attention remains to be seen.

But I’m also struck by the broader partisan circumstances: Trump lied, and Peters took those lies seriously. Nearly four years later, she’s headed to a prison cell while there’s a good chance he’s headed back to the Oval Office.

This post updates our relevant previous reporting.