Tina Peters: “Fox Guarding the Henhouse”

Disabled security cameras and fraudulently presented an election denial activist as a county employee, allowing the activist to have improper access to voting machines' hard drives.

Following her conviction and sentencing, the Trump administration withheld federal funds from Colorado in an effort to pressure the state into releasing Peters.

Continued to push election denial propaganda following her release from prison, claiming without evidence that “Democrats are going to cheat” in the 2026 midterms.

From 2019 to 2023, Peters was the elected Clerk and Recorder of Mesa County, Colorado — the official responsible for running the county's elections. Peters didn't merely promote 2020 fraud claims, but used her office to stage an actual breach of election equipment in pursuit of them. The facts are damning:

Peters began meeting with election conspiracy theorists in early 2021 about assumed “irregularities” in voting totals.

In the leadup to a routine voting machine software update, Peters “used the identity of a local man named Gerald Wood to give a different man — Conan Hayes, a self-described data expert from California” affiliated with election denier Mike Lindell — access to county voting equipment.

Peters told Dominion Voting Systems staff that Wood was a county employee training for the elections division, while telling others he was a contractor or a new employee in the Motor Vehicles division. Wood later testified he was not present and had not authorized the use of his identity.

Before the update, Peters directed that the surveillance cameras in the secure room be turned off.

Hayes copied images of the voting machines' hard drives, and in August 2021 those images, along with the equipment's BIOS passwords, were posted online. The copies were also displayed and discussed at Lindell's “cyber symposium” in South Dakota.

No evidence of fraud ever emerged. Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold decertified the compromised machines and a judge barred Peters from overseeing the 2021 election.

Peters was indicted in March 2022 and, in August 2024, convicted on seven of ten counts, including four felonies, relating to unauthorized access to election machines, including attempting to influence a public servant and conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation. In October 2024 she was sentenced to nine years in prison. At trial the prosecutor summed up the betrayal of her office bluntly, calling her “a fox guarding the henhouse” whose job had been to protect the equipment she instead compromised.

The Trump administration made freeing Peters a priority, revealing a great deal about its posture toward 2020 election deniers.

The campaign was overt and escalating. In May 2025, Trump posted on Truth Social calling Peters an “innocent Political Prisoner” and a “hostage” held by Colorado Democrats, and said he was directing the Justice Department to take all necessary action to help secure her release. In an extraordinary federal involvement in a state criminal matter, the DOJ intervened on her behalf, submitting a filing expressing concerns about Peters' sentence and urging a federal court to consider her petition for release.

After a blanket clemency gesture toward 2020 election-denial figures, Trump claimed in December 2025 to have pardoned Peters, though it had no effect on her state convictions. Though a presidential pardon cannot reach state crimes, Trump attempted to pressure Colorado into honoring the pardon by withholding federal funding from the state.

When Peters was eventually released following a commutation by Colorado Governor Jared Polis, Griswold said it “sends a dangerous message about accountability” and will embolden the election-denial movement. Since her release, Peters has claimed without evidence that “Democrats are going to cheat” in the 2026 midterm elections.