A former county clerk in Colorado has been sentenced to nine years in state prison after being convicted of engaging in a scheme to give the MyPillow chief executive, Mike Lindell, an infamous election denier, access to her county’s Dominion voting machines so that he could conduct an audit.

The sentencing hearing was emotional and chaotic as the defendant, Tina Peters, went through a presentation alleging there was election fraud in her home county in 2020, angering the judge. 

Peters served as Mesa County’s clerk and recorder between 2019 and 2023, and became a hero to election deniers across the country when she gave a man named Conan Hayes access to data on her county’s voting systems in May 2021. 

When information retrieved from the voting systems later appeared on the messaging app Telegram and on a right-wing digital news site, the Gateway Pundit, Colorado’s secretary of state, Jena Griswold, conducted an investigation of the voting systems, which ultimately led law enforcement to Peters. 

“I’m not a criminal,” Peters said at the sentencing hearing, claiming — falsely — that everything she did was “legal.” 

“I’ve never done anything with malice. I wanted to serve the people of Mesa County,” she added, growing emotional. 

Before she pleaded for leniency from Judge Matthew Barrett, however, Peters decided to present what she believed to be evidence about Dominion voting machines switching votes in the 2020 election. The extralegal audit conducted by Hayes — who was also convicted for his role in the scheme — showed that data had simply been removed from the machines following a certification of the 2020 vote, which is standard practice, according to the Colorado secretary of state. 

Peters gave a presentation on that deleted data, which was not admitted during the trial because it had nothing to do with the 2020 vote. “I’ve let you go on long enough. The votes are the votes,” Judge Barrett said when he directly questioned Peters on whether the 2020 vote was legitimate. 

 “They were changed,” Peters exclaimed. 

The maximum sentence Peters faced was ten years in state prison, and in hopes of getting off with probation she made the case that she was not medically or emotionally prepared to be confined. She showed photographs of her late father and her late son, who served as a Navy Seal before being killed in a training exercise in 2017. Peters also showed a photograph of her 95-year-old mother, who lives in Virginia. “She needs me,” Peters told the judge, growing emotional. 

Judge Barrett then returned to his chambers to think about his options for sentencing. He returned to the bench about ten minutes later.

It was clear from the beginning of his remarks that he was not only disgusted by what Peters had done, but by the actions of election deniers across the country. 

“I am convinced you would do it all over again if you could,” Judge Barrett told Peters. “You are a charlatan.” He said she “craved” the fame, the podcast appearances, and the private jet rides provided by Mr. Lindell. The judge called her a “snake oil” saleswoman interested only in herself. 

“This thought process unfortunately seems to consume so many in our country,” he added. “No one in this country has absolute power.”

The Dominion voting machines used by Peters’s home county became the subject of conspiracy theories in the wake of the 2020 election after a legal advisor to President Trump, Sidney Powell, claimed — without evidence — that the tabulators were switching votes. Powell later pleaded guilty to seven felony counts in a Georgia state court related to her role in trying to overturn the 2020 election results. 

Powell’s assertions about the Dominion machines spread like wildfire among Republicans and election truthers. Fox News’s airing of the Dominion fraud allegations later led to the cable outlet paying Dominion nearly $800 million for the defamatory accusations aired on television.