{"id":338406,"date":"2025-12-09T05:52:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T05:52:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/338406\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T05:52:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T05:52:14","slug":"tina-peters-federal-judge-declines-to-release-the-only-trump-ally-in-prison-for-2020-election-related-crimes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/338406\/","title":{"rendered":"Tina Peters: Federal judge declines to release the only Trump ally in prison for 2020 election-related crimes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n A federal judge on Monday refused to release from prison former Colorado clerk Tina Peters<\/a>, the only ally of President Donald Trump currently behind bars for crimes related to the attempts to overturn the 2020 election.\n <\/p>\n

\n Last year, a state jury convicted Peters<\/a>, the former Republican clerk of Mesa County, Colorado, of participating in a criminal scheme with fellow election deniers to breach her county\u2019s secure voting systems, in hopes of proving Trump\u2019s false claims of massive fraud.\n <\/p>\n

\n Trump has championed the case of Peters<\/a>, 70, who is now one year into a nine-year prison sentence, calling her an \u201cinnocent political prisoner.\u201d CNN recently reported<\/a> that Trump is being strongly encouraged to more aggressively intervene in the matter, to try to get her out of prison.\n <\/p>\n

\n Peters filed a federal lawsuit earlier this year, known as a habeas petition, arguing that she should be released because of constitutional concerns from her trial, specifically that her free speech rights were violated. But US Magistrate Judge Scott Varholak rejected Peters\u2019 longshot bid to be released.\n <\/p>\n

\n Varholak rejected Peters\u2019 bid to be released immediaty because, he said, this was not the right time or proper jurisdiction for her legal challenge.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cMs. Peters raises important constitutional questions concerning whether the trial court improperly punished her more severely because of her protected First Amendment speech,\u201d Varholak wrote<\/a>. \u201cBut because this question remains pending before Colorado courts, this Court must abstain from answering that question until after the Colorado courts have decided the issue.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n The Trump administration is separately trying to get her out of prison or to move her into federal custody but has been rebuffed thus far by Colorado officials.\n <\/p>\n

\n Because these were state crimes, there isn\u2019t much Trump can do for Peters.\n <\/p>\n

\n Trump has publicly threatened \u201charsh measures\u201d against Colorado if Peters isn\u2019t freed and n a highly unorthodox move earlier this year, the Justice Department intervened<\/a> in Peters\u2019 federal habeas petition, urging Varholak to consider freeing Peters from prison. However, the Justice Department hasn\u2019t been much involved in the case since an April hearing.\n <\/p>\n

\n Trump has also bashed Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and state Attorney General Phil Weiser, both Democrats, who have thus far resisted pressure from Republicans to free Peters.\n <\/p>\n

\n Polis has said<\/a> he won\u2019t pardon Peters as part of any deal with Trump. Weiser previously told CNN there is \u201cno basis\u201d for Peters to be released and that he would oppose \u201cany scheme to prevent her from being held accountable under Colorado law.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Peters maintains her innocence and is appealing her conviction.\n <\/p>\n

\u2018Get off your asses and get me out!\u2019<\/p>\n

\n After Trump lost in 2020, Peters got involved with other activists who tried to prove Trump\u2019s fraud claims by breaching voting systems in Colorado, Michigan<\/a>, Georgia<\/a>, and other states.\n <\/p>\n

\n They were acting based on lies<\/a> peddled by Trump\u2019s own lawyers, including Rudy Giuliani, that the 2020 results were rigged by machines belonging to Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic.\n <\/p>\n

\n Peters was later caught<\/a>, indicted<\/a> by a Republican prosecutor and found guilty of multiple felonies by a jury in her ruby-red county.\n <\/p>\n

\n Peters has continued promoting false claims about the 2020 election from the La Vista Correctional Facility \u2013 a medium-security women\u2019s prison in Pueblo, Colorado.\n <\/p>\n

\n Through allies, she has maintained an active presence on X. Among other things, she has promoted depositions that her lawyers took over the summer, claiming to be from anonymous Venezuelan informants with information about US voting machines.\n <\/p>\n

\n She has also apparently latched onto an idea floated by Trump administration officials and right-wing conspiracy theorists \u2013 that the Justice Department can move her from state prison into a more comfortable federal facility, because she needs protection as a witness in a potential federal probe into the 2020 election.\n <\/p>\n

\n And in October, she posted a lengthy message<\/a> bashing the Justice Department for not doing enough to get her out of prison: \u201cThe President has demanded my release four times\u2026 why is the DOJ defying Trump\u2019s demands? Get off your asses and get me out!\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Ed Martin, a Trump loyalist who is the top Justice Department official overseeing clemency matters, recently said the administration is pressuring Colorado to transfer Peters into federal custody.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe did it in a way that puts the right kind of pressure on them,\u201d Martin said of the Trump administration\u2019s contacts with Colorado officials. \u201cIf you\u2019re Colorado \u2026 if the feds say we want something, you change your tune.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A federal judge on Monday refused to release from prison former Colorado clerk Tina Peters, the only ally…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":338407,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-338406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338406\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/338407"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}