Tina Peters simply will not go away. The onetime clerk for Mesa County, Colorado, is currently incarcerated while appealing her 2024 conviction for helming a massive election security breach. Peters remains a steadfast warrior for Donald Trump’s Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen, but she can’t keep pursuing her mission while sitting in a Colorado jail. The problem for Peters is that her conviction was in state court, so while she remains a true believer in the Big Lie, Trump can’t wave a wand and pardon her.
But she’s not going to stop trying.
On Tuesday, Peters asked a federal magistrate to let her out of jail on bond while she pursues her state appeal. Peters had already requested that the Colorado Court of Appeals release her on bond, and after they ruled against her, she filed a federal habeas petition. Peters is desperate to wedge this case into federal court somehow so that Trump can make it go away.
Now, you might be agog at the notion that a federal magistrate can just roll into a state court case and functionally overrule the Colorado Court of Appeals, and guess what? The federal magistrate was equally perplexed, because federal magistrates have no authority to intervene in a state case. Indeed, Chief Magistrate Judge Scott Varholak said, “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 was just as baffled about how things would work logistically if he were to grant the bond.
“What if petitioner violates the bond?” the magistrate said. “Does the state revoke bond? Do I revoke bond?”
Hey, it was worth a shot.
Trump is already in Peters’ corner. In May, he directed the Department of Justice to secure her release. On Truth Social, Trump called Peters an “innocent Political Prisoner” and said that she was being “horribly and unjustly punished in the form of Cruel and Unusual Punishment.” Also, she is a hostage who is being imprisoned by Democrats for “political reasons.”
Like Peters, her attorney, Peter Ticktin, is absolutely full-on MAGA. He wrote a fawning book about Trump, detailing their time together in high school at a military academy. He’s also one of Trump’s endless series of personal attorneys, having represented him in his suit against Hillary Clinton and James Comey. Ticktin is also a pal of Ed Martin, the Department of Justice’s very shady pardon attorney, and personally delivered 11 applications to Martin.
Related | Why Trump can’t quit Ed Martin
Ticktin’s argument to the federal magistrate was essentially that Peters shouldn’t be in jail with actual criminals, because she is not one. Instead, she’s being imprisoned for her speech.
“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,” he claimed.
Buddy, she’s in prison because she was convicted by a jury of her peers for giving a Big Lie conspiracy theorist rando complete access to election machines and allowing him to copy the hard drives, which later popped up on election conspiracy sites. This is a crime, period.
But wait! What about her mattress? Yes, part of Ticktin’s plea to the federal magistrate was that Peters is sleeping on a hard, thin mattress. During her sentencing hearing, Peters bemoaned the fact that she would not be able to get her special magnetic mattress if she were sent to prison.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is laser-focused on screwing with elections in Colorado in retaliation for the state’s prosecution of Peters. She is a martyr for the election denial cause, so how dare the state imprison her!
Peters is Trump writ small—a person who believes that she is on a mission and is therefore entitled to do whatever she wants to prove the 2020 election was stolen, and refuses to admit there are consequences for her actions.
No wonder she’s trying to get this to the federal courts so Trump can do her a solid. Her failure to do so should be a slam dunk because it’s unprecedented to have the federal government intervene in a state criminal court case. But this administration doesn’t believe in federalism, so it will keep trying to find a way to free Peters—rules and laws be damned.