A Colorado judge threw the book at a MAGA folk hero on Thursday after bizarre scenes in court that included magnetic mattresses and courtroom outbursts.
Tina Peters, the infamous election-denying Colorado clerk who tried to help Donald Trump overturn 2020 election results, was sentenced to nine years in prison—a far cry from probation, as her attorneys had asked for.
Peters, 68, was found guilty last month of allowing a man associated with MyPillow’s Mike Lindell to enter the Mesa County election system after the 2020 election—a breach that gave illegal access to the very voting data it was her job to protect.
In some of the more outlandish moments from her sentencing, she told the judge that she was “appalled” at those asking for a tough sentence and that “I feel bad for them because I know, I’ve often said, God doesn’t like people messing with his kids,’ and I believe I’m a child of God, and I believe that it was important for someone to stand up and I’ve chosen to do that.”
“I’m very taken back by how awful I’ve been depicted when I was just trying to do my job the people expected me to do.”
Prosecutors said the conspiracy-peddling clerk turned off security cameras, gave the man access, and then leaked voting data to her fellow conspiracy theorists. The entire conspiracy was all-the-more head-scratching since it played out in a state that wasn’t even a close loss for Trump four years ago.
Prosecutors argued at Peters’ trial that she sought fame in right-wing circles. She appeared to achieved that—sometimes being characterized as a martyr in Trump’s fight to prove the 2020 election was stolen from him.
That MAGA fame came at a cost, however. District Judge Matthew Barrett indicated Thursday that Peters’ lack of regret for her crimes was partially why she’d be spending nearly a decade in a state prison. He scolded Peters fpr using her “privilege” to seek power and claimed she didn’t care about her job at all.
“I’m convinced you’d do it all over again if you could,” he told Peters on Thursday. “You’re as defiant a defendant as this court has ever seen. You don’t have those histories of drug and alcohol abuse, there is no lifetime of trauma, not even close to the type of mitigating circumstances I would see from many folks who sit in that chair. No. To the contrary, Ms. Peters, you are a privileged person, you are as privileged as they come. And you use that privilege to obtain power, a following and fame, and to be sure there’s no doubt in my mind that that’s exactly what you wanted and it defies all common sense to believe that when you suggested to me moments ago that you didn’t want this attention, no, you crave it, ma’am. And there is no one in this courtroom who would consider that to be any thing other than the absolute truth.”
“But to get to the point of what it is that you did here, it’s my impression distinctly that you never took your job of clerk particularly seriously,” he said, noting she did not complete the certification and “one scandal after another followed you in your time as the clerk” and “ultimately it was a belief that the echo chamber in which you live couldn’t be wrong, among other things, that led you to do what you did here.”
He berated the “thought process that unfortunately seems to consume so many in our country, regardless of race, gender, political affiliation.”
Barrett added at the sentencing: “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 peddle a snake oil that’s been proven to be junk time and time again. In your world, it’s all about you.”
The comments came after a tense standoff between the pair, when Barrett aired out a frustrated sigh over a discussion of ballot counting.
“It’s not funny, my life is on the line here, your Honor,” Peters yelled back, causing more to-and-fro between the pair.
Peters has long been unapologetic for what she did. She smiled in her 2022 mugshot and campaigned to be Colorado’s secretary of state—a run that didn’t survive a Republican primary. True to form, Peters cried after the primary that her loss was the result of voter fraud.
At her sentencing she noted “health problems” that would not be treatable in prison; including the need for a “magnetic mattress” she has been using since 1995. She claimed she she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia–a disorder that causes widespread musculoskeletal pain as well as fatigue, sleep, memory and mood issues–after two apparent car crashes in 1984 and 2010.
“I was up all night because I was in bed all day, I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t control these symptoms until I got, believe it or not, a magnetic mattress of which I still sleep on. I will not have that at the Department of Corrections.”
CNBC reported that Peters insisted ahead of Thursday’s sentencing that she “only wanted to serve the people of Mesa County” and that she did not do “anything with malice to break the law.”
Peters was convicted by a jury on seven criminal charges in August, which included attempt to influence a public servant, conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, and violation of duty.
Peters the only U.S. election official to be convicted of criminal charges relating to stolen election conspiracy theories in 2020, but other cases remain open elsewhere.
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