DENVER – The Department of Justice is backing a former county election clerk in Colorado who was convicted for her role in allowing supporters of President Donald Trump to access confidential data about the 2020 election, the latest move by the administration to use its power to reward allies who violated the law on the president's behalf.
Acting U.S. Assistant Attorney General Yaakov M. Roth submitted a filing in federal court in Colorado this week supporting a request from former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who's asking a federal court to free her from jail while she appeals her state conviction for the 2021 election security breach. Roth wrote that “reasonable concerns” have been raised about Peters' prosecution and that it was among others nationally that the government was reviewing for “abuses of the criminal justice process.”
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Peters has become a celebrity in the world of those who embrace Trump's lies that he lost the 2020 election due to fraud. Her supporters have been pushing the new Republican administration to pressure Colorado's Democratic governor, Jared Polis, to pardon her.
The intervention by Trump's Justice Department in the Peters case marks a new stage in the administration's effort to use the federal government to promote the president's political interests. By getting involved in a state-level prosecution, in a case filed by an elected Republican prosecutor in Colorado, the Justice Department is taking an even more unusual step than it has in previously supporting the president's agenda.
Previously, Trump pardoned more than a thousand people convicted in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. He named an attorney for some of those defendants, Ed Martin, to be acting U.S. attorney in the District of Columbia. Martin has since threatened to investigate Democratic politicians and others who criticize the Trump administration's cost-cutting efforts. The Department of Justice also moved to drop corruption charges against New York's Democratic mayor, Eric Adams, contending that they, too, were tainted by “weaponization” and that the administration needed Adams' cooperation in its immigration enforcement efforts.
Mesa County District Attorney Daniel P. Rubinstein, a Republican who has served in that role since 2015, prosecuted Peters’ case and said nothing about it was politically motivated.
“In one of the most conservative jurisdictions in Colorado, the same voters who elected Ms. Peters, also elected the Republican District Attorney who handled the prosecution, and the all-Republican Board of County Commissioners who unanimously requested the prosecution of Ms. Peters on behalf of the citizens she victimized," Rubinstein said in a statement to The Associated Press. "Ms. Peters was indicted by a grand jury of her peers, and convicted at trial by the jury of her peers that she selected.”
The breach of election systems in Mesa County allowed sensitive information about the county’s voting system, which is used in counties across the country, to be posted online. Experts have described the breach as serious, saying it could provide a “practice environment” that would allow anyone to probe for vulnerabilities that could be exploited during a future election.
At sentencing, District Judge Matthew Barrett had harsh words for Peters: “You are no hero. You abused your position, and you’re a charlatan.”
Peters, 69, was sentenced to nine years. She has argued that she had a duty to preserve election data before the voting system was upgraded and that she should not be prosecuted for carrying out her job. Earlier this year, she filed a last-ditch appeal in federal court asking a judge to order her released on bail while her appeal is pending. Her attorneys noted she is being monitored for a recurrence of lung cancer and say she has lost weight and has experienced memory problems while she's incarcerated.
On Tuesday, Peters was still being held in Larimer County jail, 60 miles (about 95 kilometers) north of Denver. She is serving a six-month sentence for a misdemeanor before she will be transferred to a state prison to serve a sentence of more than eight years in the voting machine case, according to the federal court filing.
An attorney for Peters, John Case, had no immediate comment on Tuesday.
In the federal government's filing in the case, made Monday, Roth said Peters had received an “exceptionally lengthy sentence imposed relative to the conduct at issue” and urged the federal judge to consider Peters’ request to be released pending her court appeals.
In explaining why the Justice Department was reviewing Peters’ case, Roth said the agency planned to evaluate whether the state prosecution was “oriented more toward inflicting political pain than toward pursuing actual justice or legitimate governmental objectives.”
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat who is the state’s top election official, criticized the Justice Department's actions related to the Peters' case as a way to "normalize fake election conspiracies.
“Shame on them for weaponizing the legal system to push their election lies,” she said.
Among those advocating on Peters’ behalf is MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, a Trump ally who has called for voting machines to be banned and who visited the White House recently. Lindell has long supported Peters, and in recent weeks has been sending emails calling for her release, saying she is a victim of the “election fraud Uniparty.”
Lawrence Norden, an election security expert at the Brennan Center for Justice, said the case against Peters was “an open and shut case of official misconduct.”
“The statements from the Department of Justice, coming after the administration has dismantled a number of federal guardrails to protect the integrity of our elections, sends a terrible message to election officials and the broader community about where the administration stands on election security,” Norden said.
Trump's administration has taken several steps to weaken election security since the president returned to power. In recent weeks, the Department of Homeland Security has paused all election-related work and placed on leave at least 17 staffers who have worked on election security at the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency pending a review. It was also ending its involvement in a voluntary program that shared information with and provided cybersecurity resources to state and local election officials.
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Colleen Slevin in Denver contributed to this report.