On Monday April 10, former Mesa County Clerk & Recorder Tina Peters appeared in court for sentencing on her Obstruction of Government Operations conviction last month.
Accused of attempting to prevent officials from seizing her iPad, Peters was sentenced to four months of home detention with an ankle monitor, 120 hours of community service, and an almost $800 fine. Peters is appealing the sentence.
“I don’t even have a traffic ticket,” Peters told me. “This is pretty harsh for a first-time offender and Gold Star mom with no prior criminal history.”
Peters made headlines in 2021 when she did a full back up, as required by law, of her county’s electronic voting machines prior to the State’s “Trusted Build” software update.
What followed was a whole-of-government effort to demonize and persecute the duly elected Clerk in an effort to discredit the shocking truth her actions would reveal.
The state took over the Mesa County Clerk’s office, ousted Peters’ loyal staff, and engaged in one of the greatest coverup operations in the history of Colorado.
But the damage to the official election narrative was already done.
A series of reports by cyber and technology experts revealed multiple state and federal violations of election law by the Secretary of State and election vendors.
The first Mesa County Forensic report, delivered September 15, 2021, revealed, “…election records, including data described in the Federal Election Commission’s 2002 Voting System Standards (VSS) mandated by Colorado law as certification requirements for Colorado voting systems, have been destroyed on Mesa County’s voting system, by the system vendor and the Colorado Secretary of State’s office.”
In case you think the local authorities in Mesa County are serious about finding and exposing the truth, within seconds of the report being delivered to the County Commissioners, it was leaked to reporters.
Before the Commissioners read it, they leaked it.
The second forensic analysis, delivered March 1, 2022, revealed that Mesa County’s electronic voting systems contained 36 separate wireless devices, allowing connections to the internet and/or other outside devices that can connect to the internet.
Now remember that, at the time, the standard narrative was that our electronic voting systems “cannot connect to the internet.” Despite that lie being uttered, repeatedly and under oath, across the nation, it was immediately memory-holed.
At once, the narrative shifted to “the systems weren’t connected to the internet,” and the Colorado Secretary of State now issues guidance to local clerks to monitor election systems to ensure they don’t accidentally reconnect to the internet. Notably, no one was monitoring for this during the 2020 election. Back then, the machines “couldn’t” connect to the internet.
The second report also revealed that Mesa’s system was set up to automatically delete audit records and system log files during the “Trusted Build,” despite the legal requirements to retain all records and log files for 22 months federally and 25 months in Colorado.
The third report, delivered March 19, 2022, revealed the creation of shadow databases, in the system back end — as well as illegal software and actual vote swapping — without the knowledge of election officials.
This is the equivalent of keeping a separate set of books in accounting, and this finding was so explosive that District Attorney Dan Rubenstein had to pretend to investigate to explain it away. Rubenstein’s “investigation” was conducted in collaboration with Dominion Voting Systems — yes, really — and he shakily explained away the damning discovery as human error and “time drift.”
Revealing the truth about our elections — and the level to which career elected officials are covering them up — is Tina Peters’ real crime.
Tina Peters will be back in court on May 5 for a “Contempt of Court” charge relating to recording a public, livestreamed hearing. The main trial on Peters’ indictment on seven felonies and three misdemeanors is set for October 17.
Remarkably, Peters remains faithful and unphased. “I am taking some time off to relax, spend time with God, and seek where He wants me to go, and what He wants me to do next.”
As the persecution of Peters has shown, true leadership in the face of overwhelming opposition is both remarkable and rare.
She deserves our gratitude. And she certainly has mine.
Ashe Epp is a writer and activist. You can find all her work at linktr.ee/asheinamerica