Left: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a joint press conference with Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer in the East Room at the White House Thursday, Feb. 27, 2025, in Washington (Carl Court/Pool Photo via AP). Right: Former Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters looks on during sentencing for her election interference case at the Mesa County District Court Thursday, Oct. 3, 2024, in Grand Junction, Colo. (Larry Robinson/The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel via AP).
The county clerk sentenced to almost a decade in prison for pushing conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election says she was tossed into solitary confinement in Colorado after complaining about the way she was treated by corrections officers.
Tina Peters, as Law&Crime has previously reported, was convicted in August 2024 of engaging in a security breach related to unauthorized access to voting machines while she worked as a county clerk in Mesa County.
Peters and her deputy clerk, Belinda Knisley, engaged in election equipment tampering and official misconduct by allowing an unauthorized third party to make copies of voting machine hard drives in 2021, according to prosecutors. They teamed up to do this before and after a "trusted build" systems upgrade was carried out in May 2021.
Both Peters and Knisely repeatedly claimed President Donald Trump had won the 2020 election against Joe Biden and that the voting machines were rigged to give Biden the win.
In October 2024 — after a marathon hearing in which Peters repeatedly expressed defiance and stuck to her theories — Peters was sentenced to nine years in state prison for her felony offenses.
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Now, Peters' lawyer says her health is "deteriorating markedly," especially since being thrown into solitary confinement, according to a report by local Fox affiliate KDVR.
Peters filed a grievance against a corrections officer after she asked the officer not to discuss her case during a GED class, according to court documents cited by KDVR. According to that report, another inmate screamed at Peters when she asked for her case not to be discussed, and that inmate allegedly followed Peters to her unit while yelling at her.
A handwritten document Peters gave to her attorney reportedly cites the written grievance against the officer as the key factor that led to her solitary confinement.
Peters' lawyer also says that her clients other ailments include a cough, constant pain in her neck, back and hips, sleep deprivation, cognitive decline, and a possible recurrence of lung cancer, according to KDVR. She has requested Peters be released immediately.
The Trump administration has taken an interest in Peters' incarceration in what prosecutors in Colorado have called a "wholly inappropriate" and "grotesque" attempt to "weaponize the rule of law."
Earlier this month, the Federal Bureau of Prisons asked Colorado officials to transfer Peters into federal custody.
Colin Kalmbacher and Chris Perez contributed to this report.