Colorado is asking a federal judge in Denver to reject the U.S. Justice Department’s statement of interest in the case of former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters. In its filing, the state writes that the DOJ intervention has no legitimate basis and is a “grotesque attempt to weaponize the rule of law.”
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser submitted the filing Tuesday in response to the DOJ’s statement of interest.
“The United States cites not a single fact to support its baseless allegations that there are any reasonable concerns about Ms. Peters’ prosecution or sentence, or that the prosecution was politically motivated,” writes Weiser.
In October Peters was sentenced to nine years incarceration tied to her efforts to help a man gain unauthorized access to Mesa County’s Dominion voting machines in 2021. She and others were hunting for evidence that the machines had manipulated votes, something their efforts failed to find.
The Justice Department said it plans to evaluate the state prosecution of Peters, citing an executive order from President Trump titled “Ending the Weaponization of The Federal Government.” It will focus on whether the case was “oriented more toward inflicting political pain than toward pursuing actual justice or legitimate governmental objectives.”
Peters, who is currently incarcerated at the Larimer County jail, is asking the federal court to release her on bond while she appeals her state case. In the Tuesday filing, Weiser said Peters was denied bail because at trial she “demonstrated repeatedly that she believed she was above the law.”
“At no point during the proceedings did Ms. Peters exhibit any indication that she understood the gravity of her criminal conduct. Instead, even after her conviction, she reaffirmed her position that her conduct was justified by her conspiracy theories about the 2020 election,” his filing states.
Peters was found guilty by a jury of Mesa County residents on seven counts, including four felonies. Prosecutors made the case that she used the identity of one man to allow another one — a former pro surfer from California — to secretly attend a secure software update without going through a background check and to make a copy of the election equipment hard drives.
Peters has claimed that she was following the law on preserving election records -- an interpretation of Colorado law the state's top election administrators disagree with -- and that everything she did was within her authority. Her supporters are pushing Gov. Jared Polis to issue a pardon or clemency and say her trial and sentence were politically motivated.
In his filing Weiser, defended the handling of Peters' case, noting that the DA who prosecuted it is a Republican and that both the grand jury that recommended Peters for prosecution and the jury that convicted her were drawn from conservative Mesa County. Instead, Weiser wrote, it appears the DOJ’s “true interest in this matter is to advocate for a party who has very publicly promoted the 2020 election conspiracy theories of the sitting president.”
It’s unclear what could result from the DOJ’s interest in Peters’ case; the department does not have the power to overturn a state conviction.
