Left to right: Colorado 21st District Court Judge Matthew Barrett and Tina Peters (YouTube/KUSA).
The judge overseeing the sentencing hearing of the first election official convicted of a felony over 2020 election conspiracy theories was clearly annoyed by the defendant in court on Thursday.
Tina Peters, 68, is the former county clerk of Mesa County, Colorado. In August, she was convicted on seven counts of engaging in a security breach — related to unauthorized access to voting machines.
The condemned woman opted to address the court. Exercising her right to speak, Peters, for nearly an hour, rambled on about various injustices as she saw them — and was unrepentant about the false claims advanced by her and other fellow travelers of Donald Trump.
The defendant’s fiery allocution substantially backfired. In the end, Peters was sentenced to spend a total of nine years behind bars.
Authorities claim Peters and a deputy engaged in election equipment tampering and official misconduct by allowing an unauthorized third party to make copies of voting machine hard drives before and after a “trusted build” systems upgrade — a software update — in May 2021. One alleged co-conspirator is believed to have made sure security cameras were turned off in the room where the machines were stored.
“It is with a heavy heart that I hear the vile accusations and the anger leveled against for what I did to serve the people of Mesa County,” Peters began when addressing the court on Thursday.
Before issuing the sentence, 21st District Court Judge Matthew Barrett offered some thoughts of his own. The unimpressed judge said Peters was “as defiant a defendant as this court has ever seen.”
On counts one and four, Peters was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison — to be served concurrently, or, at the same time. On count two, Peters was sentenced to an additional three-and-a-half years in prison — to be served consecutively. On count six, she was sentenced to 15 months in prison — to also be served consecutively. On count eight, she was sentenced to 120 days in county jail — which was assessed to run concurrently to six months in county jail on counts nine and 10 and consecutive to the prison sentences.
“The reason those sentences are consecutive is because those sentences are, as the prosecution stated, directly related to what it is you did here in our community,” Barrett said. “The damage you caused this community. The breach of your oath to the electorate in Mesa County.”
Peters had requested probation — saying at the outset of her speech that she had long been free, on an ankle monitor, and had never violated the conditions of her pretrial release. But the soliloquy became increasingly ill-advised the longer she stood at the dais.
“This has gotten the attention across this nation because of what we’ve discovered,” Peters said at one point — sticking to her guns over alleged improprieties with Dominion voting machines and arguing that fraudulently cast votes had, in fact, been uncovered since 2020.
“Just because you don’t acknowledge and you don’t — you’re blind to the truth, it doesn’t mean that the truth is not there,” Peters said.
The judge then interjected to bring up a hand-counted audit of ballots that verified the accuracy of the voting machines used.
“Whatever it tabulates is whatever it tabulates,” Barrett explained — his voice rising. “My hand vote — my ballot — remains the same. They counted those ballots, did they not?”
“I understand what you’re saying, your honor,” Peters replied.
The judge pressed forward and asked again: “Did they count the ballots?”
“No. The ballot images were changed and that’s what the total shows,” Peters replied — prompting the judge to perform a facepalm.
Immediately after that, the defendant assessed the situation and said she would move on. In doing so, however, she advised the judge to read one of the reports she had been citing.
The judge, umbrage present in his voice, said he had, in fact, read all of the reports in question.
“Good,” Peters retorted. “Good. Well, so you know what I’m saying is true.”
At that, Barrett scoffingly laughed.
Peters raised her own voice to say: “It’s not funny. My life is on the line here, your honor.”
Again, the judge was unmoved.
“No,” he said — speaking over the defendant. “You’re the one who is making this allegation that, one, I think it’s funny. And, two, that I ‘know it’s true.’ You’re saying that as if I believe you. And I did not say that. That is why I made the sound. Because it’s insulting to me for you to just put that in a record, in front of all these people, that I believe something to be true.”
Finally, Peters backed down.
“OK,” she said, “And I apologize for that, your honor. That wasn’t my intent. I do apologize for that. It gets a little fiery when your life is on the line and I apologize.”
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