DENVER (CN) — The Tenth Circuit on Monday declined to halt the trial of Tina Peters, a former clerk and recorder for Mesa County, Colorado, who faces criminal charges related to leaking voting machine passwords in 2021.
Prosecutors say in April and May 2021 Peters allowed unauthorized individuals to access voting equipment during a sensitive security update and leaked voting machine passwords to the social media site Telegram.
The 68-year-old Peters faces three felony counts of attempting to influence a public servant; four felony counts related to impersonation and identity theft; and a misdemeanor count each of official misconduct, violating her duties and failing to comply with the secretary of state’s requirements.
Peters pleaded not guilty last September. In public speeches, she has expressed concerns about the integrity of the voting machines in Mesa County, particularly after voters declined to elect several conservative candidates during the 2021 Grand Junction municipal election.
Worried the local election could have been compromised, Tina Peters agreed to film the voting machine updates to allow the Florida-based company CyberTeam US to analyze them. The passwords and updates were posted online as evidence of the suspected fraud.
In a report published in September 2021, CyberTeams US did find unusual activity and deleted records. District Attorney Daniel Rubenstein investigated Peters' claims of election fraud and discovered several instances of human error, rather than an attempt to change the results of an election.
Over the years, Peters has been embraced by a community of conservatives who subscribe to the unsubstantiated conspiracy theories of election fraud that spread after Biden won the presidency in 2020. Several conservative candidates also deployed the leaked data as proof of fraud to garner interest to their own campaigns.
In her petition for an injunction Peters denied having broken any laws and said her requests for help went ignored by the district attorney, the secretary of state and the board of county commissioners.
Peters contends that Rubenstein in pursuing criminal charges “seeks to publicly punish Peters for her compliance with federal and Colorado election record retention statutes, for her public discussion of the integrity of digital voting systems, and for her petitions to the county board to abandon such.”
Arguing her actions were protected by the First Amendment, Peters sued Rubenstein along with Democratic Secretary of State Jena Griswold in federal court on Nov. 14, 2023.
Biden-appointed U.S. District Judge Nina Wang denied Peters' request for an injunction in January and dismissed Rubenstein from the case.
Peters appealed, requesting an injunction from the Tenth Circuit to halt her Feb. 9 criminal trial in Mesa County until her federal case plays out.
U.S. Circuit Judge Harris Hartz, appointed by George W. Bush, and U.S. Circuit Judge Scott Matheson, appointed by Barack Obama, filed the three-paragraph order.
"To obtain an injunction pending appeal, appellant must show that she is likely to succeed on the merits, that she is likely to suffer irreparable harm without an injunction, that the balance of equities tips in her favor, and that an injunction is in the public interest,” the judges explained. “We have considered appellant’s motion in light of these standards and we find she has not carried her burden.”
The order does not elaborate on which of the factors Peters failed to meet.
Peters’ attorney on the federal case, John Case of Littleton, said the order speaks for itself. Peters’ defense attorney in the underlying criminal case, Doug Richards with the Denver firm Richards Carrington, declined to speak about either case.
“We were happy to learn of the 10th Circuit’s denial of Ms. Peters’ latest effort to delay a trial on the merits,” Rubenstein said via email. “We remain prepared to begin that trial, with a jury she selects, this week.”
Attorney Christopher Brophy of the Denver firm Dinsmore and Shohl is leading defense on the Tenth Circuit appeal.
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