Election-denying MAGA employee gets nine years in prison

A Colorado judge on Thursday threw the book at a MAGA folk hero.

Tina Peters, the notorious Colorado election denier who sought to help Donald Trump overturn the 2020 election results, was sentenced to nine years in prison – a far cry from probation as her lawyers had requested.

Peters, 68, was found guilty last month of allowing a man associated with MyPillow's Mike Lindell access to Mesa County's voting system after the 2020 election – a breach that allowed illegal access to the very election data that that she had to protect.

Prosecutors said the clerk turned off the surveillance cameras, allowed the man entry and then shared voting data with her fellow conspiracy theorists. The entire conspiracy was even more of a headache because it took place in a state that was not even a narrow defeat for Trump four years ago.

USA ELECTION/COLORADO

Kevin Mohatt/Reuters

Prosecutors argued in Peters' trial that she sought fame in right-wing circles. She appeared to have succeeded in this — sometimes portrayed as a martyr in Trump's fight to prove that the 2020 election was stolen from him.

However, this MAGA fame came at a price. District Judge Matthew Barrett suggested Thursday that Peter's lack of remorse for her crimes was partly why she would spend nearly a decade in a state prison.

“I'm convinced you would do it again if you could,” he told Peters on Thursday, CNBC reported. “You are as defiant a defendant as this court has ever seen.”

Barrett added at the sentencing: “You are not a hero. You are a charlatan who has used and continues to use your former position in office to sell a snake oil that has proven time and time again to be trash.”

Peters has a long history of unapologetic for what she did. She smiled in her 2022 mugshot and ran for Colorado secretary of state — a bid that didn't survive a Republican primary. True to her word, Peters cried after the primary that her loss was the result of voter fraud.

Mesa County Sheriff's Office

CNBC reported that Peters insisted before Thursday's sentencing that she “just wanted to serve the people of Mesa County” and that she “did nothing malicious to break the law.”

Peters was convicted by a jury in August of seven felonies, including attempting to influence a public official, conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation and dereliction of duty.

Peters is the only U.S. election official convicted in 2020 on criminal charges related to stolen election conspiracy theories, but other cases remain open elsewhere.