There’s no shortage of local election officials who believe Donald Trump’s lies about his 2020 election defeat, but Tina Peters is a special case anyway. As NBC News reported, the Colorado Republican will now go to prison.
A former Colorado county clerk who promoted conspiracy theories about the 2020 election was sentenced Thursday to 9 years behind bars for charges including official misconduct related to a security breach of Mesa County’s voting system. Tina Peters was convicted in August of four felonies and three misdemeanors for using someone else’s security badge to give someone associated with MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, a prominent election denier and ally of former President Donald Trump, access to election equipment.
As one local prosecutor explained, Peters was “a fox guarding the hen house,” adding, “Her job was to protect the election equipment, and she turned it on and used her power for her own benefit.”
It’s been more than two years since the Republican Party conspiracy theorist was first charged after using her office to leak election machine data in her pursuit of a conspiracy that apparently never existed in reality.
As part of her efforts, Peters was celebrated by the likes of Steve Bannon — he claimed she was targeted for her fight against “this globalist apparatus” — although a Colorado jury came to a different conclusion and convicted the election denier in early August. , found her guilty of three counts of attempting to influence a public official, one count of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, official misconduct in the first degree, dereliction of duty and failure to comply with the Secretary of State.
Before the sentencing, Peters showed no remorse.
As the infamous election denier begins her sentence, there are some broader angles worth keeping in mind. The first is the message of the election season that it sends to other right-wing conspiracy theorists elsewhere.
“Today’s sentence is a warning to others that they will face serious consequences if they attempt to illegally tamper with our voting processes or election systems,” Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said in a statement after Peters’ sentencing.
It’s not exactly a secret that there are many conspiratorial election officials considering provocative and legally questionable moves this fall. Whether developments in Colorado catch their attention remains to be seen.
But I’m also struck by the broader partisan circumstances: Trump lied, and Peters took those lies seriously. Nearly four years later, she’s headed to a prison cell, while there’s a good chance he’ll return to the Oval Office.
This message updates our related previous reporting.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
