Tina Peters in a July 21, 2022, booking photo. (Newsline illustration from photo courtesy of Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office)
The MAGA movement makes no secret of its contempt for the previously uncontroversial notion that the republic, in the words of John Adams, is “a government of laws, not of men.” Instead, it is restructuring the government as a function of one man, President Donald Trump, who alone decides what the law is. This transformation, from republic to proto-monarchy, was articulated by Trump himself last month, when in a social media post he declared, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”
He who thinks he’s saving the country now is trying to save Colorado.
The Trump Department of Justice began meddling this week in the case of Tina Peters, the former Republican Mesa County clerk who participated in a breach of secure election equipment. Peters was convicted in a state court of violating state law by a jury of her peers, and she was sentenced to almost nine years in prison. But the message from Trump is that no laws, not even state criminal statutes, are legitimate if the outcome of their application is that one of his supporters faces justice.
This is an attack on state sovereignty, and if Trump prosecutors succeed in modifying Peters’ sentence or conviction it will do grievous harm to the rule of law in Colorado.
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In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Peters earned a national reputation as a fanatic proponent of baseless election conspiracies, especially those that concerned the election equipment in her own office. She teamed up with other election deniers in a scheme to prove the equipment couldn’t be trusted and allowed unauthorized access to sensitive software and system passwords.
In 2022, a Mesa County grand jury charged Peters with multiple felony counts in connection with the security breach in her office. The grand jury was randomly selected from among local citizens, the same pool of people who elected Peters clerk. The prosecutor was District Attorney Dan Rubinstein, an elected Republican.
The jury in Peters’ trial similarly comprised everyday Mesa County citizens. They found her guilty on three felony counts of attempting to influence a public servant, one felony count of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, and several misdemeanors. During an October sentencing hearing, Mesa County Commissioner Cody Davis, a Republican, told the court that Peters’ actions had caused distrust in the county’s election system, and he said, “She’s made a laughingstock of this community.”
Rubinstein emphasized the gravity of Peters’ crimes. “This case is by far the most aggravated attempt to influence a public servant I ever saw in my career,” he told District Judge Matthew Barrett. “It should yield the most aggravated sentence.” Barrett appeared to agree. Handing down a lengthy prison sentence, he said to Peters, “You are a charlatan … You betrayed your oath.”
This is all to emphasize that at no point during the trial did anyone make a plausible case that Mesa County elections were actually compromised, that Peters joined the conspiracy in good faith, or that the prosecution and judge were guided by anything other than facts and the law.
That’s why a court filing this week that cast doubt on the integrity of the Peters prosecution was so disturbing. The document, transparently motivated by politics, was signed by Yaakov Roth, acting assistant attorney general in the DOJ’s Civil Division; J. Bishop Grewell, the acting U.S. attorney for Colorado; and assistant U.S. Attorney Peter McNeilly in Colorado. They said they’re reviewing the Peters case to determine, in upside-down world-fashion, whether it was “oriented more toward inflicting political pain than toward pursuing actual justice or legitimate governmental objectives.”
Again, there is zero evidence that Peters’ prosecutors were motivated by politics. Conversely, everywhere you look there is abundant evidence that the Trump administration is eager to twist the law to serve its interests. Trump, a convicted felon, has long tried to undermine the courts and launched personal attacks against individual judges. He pardoned nearly every one of the Jan. 6 defendants, including the most violent insurrectionists. Trump’s DOJ has sacked officials who worked on legitimate investigations into him and prosecutors who handled Jan. 6 cases. And the department pursued an apparent quid pro quo in which it would drop corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams in exchange for Adams’ assistance in the administration’s immigration enforcement, an abuse of power that sparked a mass resignation.
It’s especially alarming to see Grewell’s name on the filing in the Peters case, since he’s the DOJ’s top lawyer in Colorado. Grewell was named acting U.S. attorney in early January and has worked in the Colorado District office for more than a decade. He’s not just some faceless D.C. functionary. He’s a longtime Coloradan who’s served under Democratic and Republican administrations. But with this move, it’s clear he’s corrupted, and Coloradans can no longer trust that he will fulfill his duties honestly.
The rule of law in America was established over generations in institutions that, though flawed, were generally trusted by many to operate with impartiality and integrity. Now that trust is being squandered, and Coloradans this week got a glimpse into how the Trump administration is dismantling the hard-won authority of the law. Once it’s gone, the only authority left will be that of a criminal who acts like a king.
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