If you didn’t make it past the headlines, you might think convicted election grifter Tina Peters won a major victory when the Colorado Court of Appeals overturned her nine-year sentence.
She didn’t.
She lost. Bigly.
The only possible winner in the case would be Gov. Jared Polis, who has insisted that Peters’ sentence was unduly harsh and now says he is still considering commuting her sentence. You’d think that Polis — whose talk of commutation has been denounced by pretty much everyone in the Colorado Democratic political world — would take this decision as a gift and now simply say he’ll let the courts determine whether the sentencing was fair.
But who knows what Polis will do regarding his all-too-obvious attempt at appeasing Donald Trump, hoping — vainly, I’d guess — that Trump would end his war against Colorado if only the governor would give Peters a break. That break, I should mention, would be for a person who not only flouted Colorado law, but also helped undermine what’s left of American democracy. And who, of course, has shown no remorse.
But I digress.
If you don’t believe me that Peters lost, just ask her attorneys, who lambasted the court’s 77-page, must-read (if you’re a geek like me) decision, which in turn had pretty much lambasted — though in restrained, academic language — how Peters’ attorneys had handled, or let’s say mishandled, the case.
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SUBSCRIBEPeter Ticktin, one of Peters’ more controversial lawyers and a longtime Trump pal, said the “kangaroo trial” was unfair, that the appeals court simply “kicked the can further down the road,” and that Peters should have, at minimum, been granted a new trial.
Here’s the money quote from Ticktin — who is now working with Trump on an executive order that would allow the president to somehow take over the coming midterm elections — who told Sun writer Olivia Prentzel this:
”About a week ago, even the Taliban let a Colorado resident go free, but Tina Peters remains in prison tonight.” He went on to say that Peters is “innocent and an American hero.”
He’s comparing Colorado courts and officials to the Taliban? Sure, that’s next-level crazy, but what else, after all we’ve seen and heard, would you expect from these people? How many more levels of cray-cray are there?
To recap: The court didn’t free Peters. The court, rejecting every Peters’ motion for appeal, confirmed that the case had been tried fairly and that the convictions in the case held. As Colorado attorney general Phil Weiser said, “Whatever happens with her sentence, Tina Peters will always be a convicted felon who violated her duty as Mesa County clerk, put other lives at risk and threatened our democracy. Nothing will remove that stain.”
And not incidentally, the court also ruled that Trump’s bogus pardon of Peters — which came at the urging of Ticktin — was not legal.
What the court did rule was that 21st Judicial District Judge Matthew Barrett’s sentence was “influenced in part in improper consideration of (Peters’) First Amendment rights.”
And what was the court’s remedy? It sent the case back to Barrett, the same judge, to do the resentencing. Peters asked for a different judge. The court refused. Barrett could recuse himself, but no one who knows Barrett seems to think that is remotely possible.
Ask yourself this: You think Barrett, who rightly called Peters a “charlatan” during the sentencing hearing, has changed his mind on the extent of Peters’ crimes after the Court of Appeals said he pretty much had everything right?
Of course not. And neither does anyone else.
Which is one reason why Peters will almost certainly appeal the case to the state Supreme Court. I mean, probably the best she could hope for from Barrett was that he might knock off a year or so to throw a bone to the appeals court.
The other reason for an appeal — this is my guess — would be that Peters and her lawyers could never accept a ruling that she was guilty of a security breach to try to prove the 2020 election was rigged. She’s a martyr to MAGA world. She can’t admit guilt and still be a martyr.
But here’s her problem, as several top legal minds explained to me.
Peters has 42 days from Thursday’s ruling to make an appeal to the state Supreme Court. History says the court could take anywhere from four to six months to reject or accept her appeal. If the state Supreme Court does grant cert — meaning it takes the case, which it does about 5% of the time — it could take as long as another 12 to 18 months for the court to take on the case and then hand down a decision.
Let’s do the math: 42 days, plus four to six months, plus 12 to 18 months, and what have you got?
You’ve got pretty much the amount of time Peters would have served before she would first come up for parole — which would be, if the sentencing stands, come around November of 2028, when a certain monumental election would — let’s hope — be taking place.
In other words, it’s possible that a Supreme Court ruling would be moot — unless, of course, Polis does step in.
The Court of Appeals might be right about the First Amendment piece in her sentencing — two of the judges on the three-judge panel have close ties to leading Democrats in the state — but not everyone I talked to agrees. Barrett did dress Peters down when sentencing her, saying she “had found a way to profit off of her lies and would continue to do so if she remained out of prison.” But judges often lecture remorse-free felons from the bench.
The appeals court also noted that Barrett told Peters her “words” were particularly damaging because of the influence of her position. Of course, she’s no longer in that position. But don’t think that her words don’t matter.
I’d take the bet that one or more county clerks throughout the country — influenced by Peters’ words — will refuse to accept a vote count that would have elected a Democrat in the November midterms.
But I wouldn’t want Peters to be able to justly claim that her freedom of speech had been violated by a judge. Just as I wouldn’t want Polis to commute Peters’ sentence, meaning that he’d be saying — in effect — that he doesn’t trust Colorado’s courts to do justice.
Let the state Supreme Court have its say. That would be the fairest thing.
You think the Supreme Court is going to disagree with the trial court and the appeals court that Tina Peters did not commit election fraud?
Or do you think — as I do — that if the Supreme Court takes the case, we’d see a Colorado justice trifecta in which Peters loses big, bigly and bigliest?
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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