Ex-elections clerk Tina Peters asks for unprecedented release amid appeal

DENVER (CN) — A former Colorado elections clerk convicted of violating her duties for leaking voting machine data asked a federal magistrate judge on Tuesday to facilitate her release on bond pending her state appeal.

According to the research of Chief Magistrate Judge Scott Varholak, however, no federal court in the history of the United States has ever intervened to release an inmate on bond pending a state court appeal. In fact, Varholak said he isn’t even sure how doing so would be logistically possible.

“What if petitioner violates the bond? Does the state revoke bond? Do I revoke bond? I don’t think petitioner has cited a single case in the history of the United States where a federal court granted an appeal bond in a state case,” Varholak said before a packed courtroom on the fourth floor of the Alfred Arraj U.S. Courthouse in downtown Denver.

Former Mesa County clerk and recorder Tina Peters is currently serving a nine-year prison sentence after a Western Slope jury found her guilty of committing four felonies and three misdemeanors related to a 2021 leak of voting machine data.

The Colorado Court of Appeals denied Peters’ request for bond pending her appeal, prompting her to file a federal habeas petition in February.

Her attorney Peter Ticktin, who wrote the book “What Makes Trump Tick,” urged Varholak to look past procedural formalities at his 69-year-old client, who is living among murderers and bunking on a hard, thin mattress.

“In this particular case, we have a person in prison because of a fear that she’s a danger to society because of what she might say,” Ticktin argued. “If there’s ever been a case where somebody should be released on bail, this is it.”

Dozens of supporters who filled the court and overflow room nodded in agreement when Ticktin characterized his client as a “hero” who “helped save America.”

Peters came under scrutiny after images from Mesa County voting machines were posted to Telegram by a key player in the QAnon movement in August 2021.

State investigators learned Peters, then clerk and recorder overseeing the county’s elections, instructed her deputy clerk to turn off security cameras as an associate observed and photographed a sensitive voting machine update.

Daniel Rubinstein, district attorney for the 21st Judicial District, investigated Peters’ claims of fraud in the Grand Junction municipal election, which she said drove her actions. Rather than a plot to change the results of the election, Rubinstein’s office uncovered several instances of harmless human error.

Following a 10-day trial in August 2024, a jury found Peters guilty of three felony counts of attempting to influence a public servant and one felony count of conspiracy to commit impersonation, plus misdemeanor counts of official misconduct, violating her duties and failing to comply with the secretary of state’s requirements.

Ticktin suggested the federal court’s intervention would mean transferring custody of Peters into the federal supervised release program.

“We want the body out of the state into the federal hands,” he said.

Senior Assistant Attorney General Lisa Michaels countered that the right move would be to send the bond issue back to the state for reconsideration. Moreover, Michaels advocated for the outright dismissal of Peters’ petition.

“This court must wait until the state has an opportunity to rule,” Michaels said. “We’re not in the usual post-conviction place where we know it’s already been resolved.”

Peters successfully defeated a contempt charge in the Colorado Court of Appeals last December. A three-judge panel found prosecutors presented insufficient evidence to support the claim that she’d violated a court prohibition on recording in the courtroom during a hearing for her deputy clerk in 2022.

Varholak asked both parties to brief their arguments over the next month, but did not indicate what actions he would recommend to the federal judge that picks up the case.

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