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).
Tina Peters, the first election official found guilty of a felony in connection with 2020 election conspiracy theories, believes critics and judges who have handled her case want her to waste away in “the hole” of solitary confinement, saying Tuesday that “They want me to die here,” according to Peters’ lawyer. Her “morose” sentiment, as the attorney describes it, comes after a federal magistrate judge on Monday rejected a bid for Peters to be released from prison while she appeals her state conviction.
“I think I’m going to die here,” Peters’ lawyer, Peter Ticktin, recounted her saying during an interview with Law&Crime. “She’s depressed and upset,” Ticktin said. “This is a terrible decision.”
The Florida-based attorney spoke to Peters, whose only “human contact” comes in the form of phone calls between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m., on Tuesday morning just one day after Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge Scott Varholak ruled that he must not get involved in overturning her state sentence to allow her release. Peters, as Law&Crime has previously reported, was found guilty of engaging in election equipment tampering and official misconduct by allowing an unauthorized third party to make copies of voting machine hard drives in 2021.
Ticktin, a former classmate of President Donald Trump who represented the commander-in-chief in a failed lawsuit against Hillary Clinton over allegations of rigging the 2016 presidential election, sent a letter to Trump on Sunday urging him to consider a workaround for pardoning Peters on her state charges in Colorado. The Trump administration has said that it’s probing ways to get involved.
“The question of whether a president can pardon for state offenses has never been raised in any court,” Ticktin wrote. “The issue which needs to be answered whether our founders understood or intended when they wrote that the President had the Power to Pardon offenses against the United States, if it meant the states or only the federal government.”
Ticktin added, “Did they mean the one central authority, or did they mean the plural, meaning the states which were united? In that day and age, they were speaking of the United Countries, and the President was given the right to pardon all offenses.”
Love true crime? Sign up for our newsletter, The Law&Crime Docket, to get the latest real-life crime stories delivered right to your inbox.
Varholak’s order denying Peters’ release came Monday after the former Mesa County clerk filed a federal lawsuit asking to be let out of prison while her appeal is pending. The judge said that Peters, “without question,” raised important constitutional questions concerning whether the trial court improperly punished her more severely because of her protected First Amendment speech, but that doesn’t mean he can interfere.
“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,” Varholak explained. “Federal courts are prohibited from interfering with ongoing state criminal proceedings absent extraordinary or special circumstances.”
Varholak added, “It is undisputed that her direct appeal is pending.”
Ticktin told Law&Crime on Tuesday that Varholak failed to realize “how much harm he just caused” by rejecting Peters’ bid for her release.
“I don’t think he understands that there is, to use the words that he did, irreparable harm that is great and immediate,” Ticktin said. “He’s looking at the harm from not being able to speak, rather than the harm of being incarcerated.”
Taking aim at Colorado’s 21st Judicial District Judge Matthew Barrett, who sentenced Peters to nine years behind bars and reportedly blasted her as a “charlatan,” Ticktin said the “only reason she’s in prison is because Matt Barrett didn’t find she was a danger to society for physical reasons, he’s keeping her in prison because she’s dangerous for what she may say.”
Ticktin told Law&Crime, “In other words, there is no freedom of speech in America as long as judges take this kind of attitude.” He blasted Varholak’s decision as a “form of willful blindness” and said he didn’t look at the fact that she’s staying in prison, only that she can’t speak out on her case and other things.
Peters is currently in solitary confinement after complaining about her safety and the way she was treated by corrections officers. Ticktin wrote in his letter Sunday that Peters currently fears for her life, for both health reasons and things she’s endured behind bars, after being “attacked by other prisoners three times in different locations where guards had to pull inmates off of her,” per the letter.
“There is actually a safe unit where inmates who do not cause problems can be assigned,” Ticktin wrote. “She has applied to be put into that unit but was denied six times without a valid reason.”
Describing her current health, Ticktin told Law&Crime, “Her physical condition is growing worse. She’s unable to eat, because it’s just so depressing being in there. There’s a six-foot high window you can’t see out of. She’s thinking she’s going to die there, and that they want her to die there. Why else would they put her in such a severe situation? People go mad in solitary, why would they do this?”
Ticktin added, “Being in the hole is designed as a punishment, it’s not designed to keep her safe.” He said Peters’ ultimate goal now is to be transferred to a “safer locked cell” or facility in Denver, where her case started out and where they don’t have “maximum security type of prisoners” that can harm or threaten her.
“It’s so easy to protect her, humanely, but instead they’re pretending to protect her,” Ticktin concluded. “By throwing her in the hole.”
The Colorado attorney general’s office did not respond to Law&Crime’s requests for comment on Tuesday.
