Any day now a three-judge panel will decide whether or not to continue down a long and vicious road of lawfare aimed at Tina Peters, or deliver real justice and release her on bond while she awaits her appeal.
Peters was the county clerk and recorder who became the target of a deep state investigation after images she commissioned revealed vulnerabilities in the Mesa County election machines.
Sentenced for Free Speech
Besides denying her a defense—Judge Mattew Barrett tossed out 39 motions presented by Peters’ attorneys—he also based his sentencing largely on Peters’ speech.
During sentencing, he focused almost exclusively on a narrative started by the media and continued by the courts that Peters was seeking celebrity as a darling of the election-denier community and in the process became a danger to democracy.
Barrett said Peters’ words caused “immeasurable damage” that were “just as bad, if not worse, than the physical violence that [the] court sees on an all too regular basis.”
He admitted the harsh nine-year sentence was punishment for her speech, meant to deter future clerks from becoming too curious.
“Prison is for those folks where we send people who are a danger to all of us, whether it be by the pen or the sword or the word of the mouth…A stiff sentence will ensure other elected officials respect the responsibilities of their office.”
Scales Tipped
But if Peters was made to be an example, it wasn’t for people like Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who has recently come under fire for her own election’s password leak.
At the exact time Peters was being sentenced, Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s website was posting partial passwords for four months in a spreadsheet under a hidden tab waiting to be revealed by anyone who clicked an “unhide” button.
In an email to the Denver Post, DA Beth McCann said her office was investigating the leak but that Griswold is not the target of their investigation. What privilege to be exonerated from an investigation before it even begins!
And now a new bombshell dropped just two days ago, further illustrates the double-standard of our two-tier justice system.
According to this article posted by the Gateway Pundit, in 2021, Secretary of State Jena Griswold replaced County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters with former-or-current Dominion Voting Systems employee, Sheila Reiner, giving Reiner the title of “Election Supervisor” and allowing her to oversee the 2021 election.
Let me repeat that: the Secretary of State replaced a county clerk with a Dominion Voting Systems employee, and gave her the title of “Election Supervisor,” and nobody besides The Gateway Pundit and The Thinking Conservative are talking about it.
Update: In an email, Sheila Reiner admitted she worked for Dominion Voting Systems from 2019 to 2020 and that the emails in the Gateway Pundit article are legitimate. However, she denies any wrong. “I have nothing to hide.”
Tipping the Scales Back to Center
The three-judge panel must reject the ridiculous notion that Peters’ words are a weapon against democracy and instead focus on the facts.
Peters is an upstanding citizen. She has no criminal history. Nothing she did was illegal and when she saw what the images revealed, she moved quickly to get the information to the proper authorities.
Her realization that our computerized voting system is vulnerable and inconsistent, at best, is hardly a new revelation. In fact, It’s a concern that’s been broached on both sides of the aisle dating back to the invention of the first computerized ballot tabulator.
Peters expressing her opinion about election vulnerabilities is not a lie and stating those opinions doesn’t make her a threat to democracy.
Peters checks all the boxes for receiving bond while awaiting appeal. She does not pose a danger to the safety of any person or the community, is not serving time for a violent offense, and is unlikely to flee (she was already released once on bond for 31 months and attended all courtroom proceedings).
Nothing short of releasing Peters on bond and forcing Griswold to resign amidst an investigation can tip the scales of justice back to center.
A three-judge panel will soon have the opportunity to do the next right thing.
Neither Jena Griswold nor DA Beth McCann responded to my request for comment on this article.
By Tracy Wolfer Osborne
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