By Lindy Browning | Contributor, Rocky Mountain Voice
Judge Matthew Barrett has sentenced Tina Peters, once the Mesa County clerk and recorder, to serve eight and a half years in prison with the Department of Corrections, and six months in the Mesa County Jail as a result of being found guilty on various election charges related to her former capacity.
In a scathing rebuke of her defiant behavior after a guilty conviction, Barrett listed all the reasons that probation was not a possibility for Peters: “You are no hero… Yes, you are a charlatan… Incarceration is appropriate when a person is a danger to us all, by sword or by pen,” he said from the bench.
Peters’ attorney, Michael Edministor, asked the judge to consider a probated sentence, considering his client had exhibited a history of not being a flight risk. She had always been in court when scheduled, and the behavior warranted probation instead of jail, he said.
Earlier this summer, Peters was convicted by a jury of multiple felonies and misdemeanors. Among the felony charges were attempts to influence a public official and conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation. The misdemeanors included three charges of official misconduct, violation of duty and failure to comply with the secretary of state.
On Thursday, Oct. 3, in the sentencing phase of the high-profile trial, five witnesses were called in Peters’ defense, each of which spoke kindly of her, including Dallas Schroeder, a former Elbert County clerk and present commissioner.
Schroeder had also broken into a Dominion voting machine when he was clerk, but was never charged with a crime. The difference, the court heard, was that he opened the Dominion machine himself and did not utilize fraudulent identities to impersonate someone, in deception of the secretary of state and employees of Dominion Voting. He also did not leave his duties unattended as clerk and recorder for weeks, the court heard.
Schroeder testified that he had similar concerns to Peters toward the accuracy of election results. His office compared the Dominion tabulations of votes to a hand-counted paper ballot count.
Barrett asked if, after the hand count, there were any discrepancies discovered. The results were the same, Schroeder said.
“So no dead voters and no ghost votes?” Barrett asked. Schroeder again confirmed the vote totals to be the same.
Another witness for Peters, Pastor Dave Bryan of Northern California, told the court he had known Peters since she became active in politics. He noted concerns about the divide on the election issues at debate in the trial, and whether Peters was being put in the spotlight because of “who she is”.
“If you will remand her into our custody (The Church of Good Tidings) she can serve her probation there,” Bryan offered as an alternative to incarceration. “I don’t see that it serves any purpose to put her in jail for one single day.”
Cody Davis, a Mesa County Commissioner, and Scott McInnis, a former Mesa County commissioner, both testified regarding damages to Mesa County created through the process.
“It cost taxpayers $1.4 million dollars,” Davis said. “We had to replace the voting machines that were compromised; we paid her salary for 16 months, while she was removed from her office but still the clerk. We had to hire outside election officials to perform her duties, there were county legal fees. We had to put some employees on leave because she was trying to intimidate them.”
Although Schroeder had testified that no dead voters were found, McInnis recalled Peters claims at the time for the court.
“The defendant took on a role claiming stolen elections and it cascaded into a crisis level when she claimed that dead people were voting in Mesa County and the Chinese had hacked Mesa County,” he said. “Our trust capital was injured in our community.”
Mesa County reviewed every claim made by Peters, he said, and not one single fraudulent vote was found in Mesa County, he added.
The commissioners recalled, in an effort to rebuild trust, hand-counting ballots from the 2022 midterm election. They counted 60,000 votes by hand and compared it to the 60,000 votes run through the Dominion system, finding no difference in the vote results.
“It is not possible to overstate the damage Tina Peters has caused,” said Matt Crane, executive director of the Colorado County Clerks Association, who defined himself as an election subject matter expert.
Peters undermined democracy, undermined the security of her office, fueled a national movement of election denial, and fostered an environment of mistrust, Crane said.
“She never even completed the work to become a certified election official,” Crane testified to Barrett. “The only election fraud was Mrs. Peters.”
He asked Barrett to find for the harshest possible penalty. Some public sentiment is Peters didn’t deserve that as a Gold Star mother and as someone with no prior criminal record.
Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubenstein also testified: “The secretary of state has played no role in my prosecution of this case. [Peters’] actions are being singled out because of her actions alone.”
Peters had a goal to subvert the checks and balances of the system, he said.
“She had an audience, and still does. She shapes people’s views of courts, court orders, police, and county commissioners and has used her platform to turn people against their local government,” Rubenstein said. “This is the most aggravated case in my career and she should face the most aggravated sentence.”
Peters took the stand following the testimony and joined others who had pleaded for leniency in sentencing.
“It’s with a heavy heart that I hear vile accusations and anger directed at me,” Peters said, asking the judge for probation. “I’m taken aback at how awful I’ve been treated.”
A slide show she presented in her defense was shown to the court. It included photos of her late ex-husband, who sued her before he died for forging his signature on a quick claim deed that transferred ownership of his home to her name, by means of deceit and deception, on Oct. 7, 2021.
She also showed photos of her son, who served in the military and who died in an accident at an air show in 2017. She showed documents that she alleges prove that Rubenstein lied about her in court.
“I’m appalled by the people here asking for a harsh sentence,” she said, bursting into tears. “Is it really that bad to influence a public official, compared to people who are drug dealers?” she asked.
The extreme punishment doesn’t match the crime, she said.
“I don’t deserve to go to prison with people who committed heinous crimes… I just did my best to serve the people in Mesa County,” she said as she begged the court for leniency.
Barrett was not swayed.
“Your lies are well documented and I’m convinced that you would do this all over again if you could,” he said. Barrett noted her continued defiance, lack of remorse, and her continual craving for attention as seen in her social media feeds and podcast platforms.
“Every effort to undermine elections has been done by you,” he said with finality.
Upon entering his findings for sentencing, he ordered that Peters be remanded to custody immediately. She was handcuffed and booked into the Mesa County jail.
According to a recent interview, Rubenstein says the FBI is investigating several unindicted co-conspirators, including, but not limited to, Sherronna Bishop, Dr. Douglas Frank, Conan Hayes and others.