{"id":21302,"date":"2025-07-23T17:05:16","date_gmt":"2025-07-23T23:05:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/federal-magistrate-hears-arguments-over-whether-to-grant-tina-peters-bail\/"},"modified":"2025-07-23T23:05:16","modified_gmt":"2025-07-23T23:05:16","slug":"federal-magistrate-hears-arguments-over-whether-to-grant-tina-peters-bail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/federal-magistrate-hears-arguments-over-whether-to-grant-tina-peters-bail\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal magistrate hears arguments over whether to grant Tina Peters bail"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Tina
Tina Peters, once a candidate for Colorado Secretary of State, is seen in Sedalia at the Wide Open Saloon for a primary night watch party on June 28, 2022. Peters lost the primary race to Pam Anderson. (Hart Van Denburg\/CPR News file)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters\u2019 effort to get a federal court to free her on bond while she appeals her state conviction was met with apparent skepticism by a federal magistrate during a hearing Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Last October, a state judge sentenced Peters to nine years on charges stemming from her efforts to help a man gain unauthorized access to Mesa County\u2019s Dominion voting machines in 2021. She\u2019s currently incarcerated at La Vista Correctional Facility, a medium-security facility for women located in Pueblo.<\/p>\n

Peters has filed a federal habeas corpus petition arguing the state court is trying to keep her from speaking out on election security, in violation of her First Amendment rights, while her state appeal is considered.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a person in prison because of a fear that she\u2019s a danger to society because of what she might say,\u201d said Peters\u2019 attorney, Peter Ticktin, during the hearing. Ticktin is a constitutional lawyer based in Florida who helped lobby for pardons for participants in the Jan. 6 attack, including Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes.<\/p>\n

At Tuesday\u2019s hearing, Chief Magistrate Judge Scott T. Varholak said he would only decide on First Amendment grounds, because other arguments her defense has raised, while relevant to challenging the underlying validity of her conviction, don\u2019t necessarily apply to whether she should be released on bond.<\/p>\n

He also noted the apparently unique logistic and jurisdictional challenges raised by Peters\u2019 habeas effort. Varholak said that typically with a habeas case, a federal court is being asked to find that a criminal sentence is illegal or unconstitutional and to vacate it.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut that\u2019s not what you\u2019re asking me to do here. You are saying, \u2018put her on bond,\u2019 and I don\u2019t know that there\u2019s anything that authorizes that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Varholak said he has not found a single case ever in the history of the United States where a federal court granted habeas on an appeal bond, which leaves him questioning how a potential release would even be managed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat if the petitioner violates that bond? Can the state court revoke the bond? Do I revoke the bond? What do we do in that situation?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

The state judge who oversaw Peters\u2019 case rebuked her during sentencing for continuing to push false claims about rigged voting machines and a stolen election.<\/p>\n

Her attorneys argue those remarks show Judge Matthew Barrett denied her bail to silence her, violating her constitutionally protected right to free speech.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery day that goes by is another day in hell for Tina Peters,\u201d said Ticktin, asking for the magistrate\u2019s decision to be expedited. \u201cWe have her in basically maximum security with murderers (and she) doesn\u2019t know each day if she\u2019s going to survive the next day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peters continues to argue she did nothing wrong when she helped an unauthorized person use someone else\u2019s identity to access her office\u2019s election equipment and attend a secure software update. And she remains a cause celeb for those on the right who believe election equipment makers conspired with Democrats to sway elections \u2013 claims that have never been upheld in any court.<\/p>\n

Ticktin said Peters has never claimed to be a hero, but that half the country believes that she is.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a lady who may have helped save America because of the acts that she did, which were in compliance with the laws of the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

President Donald Trump has taken an interest in the case. In May he directed the U.S. Department of Justice to help secure Peters\u2019 release, referring to her as a \u201chostage\u201d that was \u201cbeing held in a Colorado prison by the Democrats, for political reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFREE TINA PETERS, NOW!\u201d Trump wrote to punctuate the message.<\/p>\n

Varholak said if Peters is indeed being held in violation of her constitutional right he intends to act swiftly and would make a recommendation to the federal judge that will ultimately decide the case.<\/p>\n

To read more stories from Colorado Public Radio, visit www.cpr.org<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

skeptical of whether it could order her release<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21303,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[133,168,28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-21302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-courts","tag-crime","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21302"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=21302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}