Episode 5144: WarRoom Special: The 500 Days Of Tina Peters
Tina Peters, a 72-year-old Gold Star mother and Colorado election clerk jailed for 499 days by February 14, 2026, faces brutal conditions—solitary confinement, extreme temperatures, mold—and First Amendment violations for exposing Dominion voting machine flaws tied to Venezuela’s rigged elections. Judge Barrett’s eight-year sentence, despite acquittals, silences her while Colorado officials shield Secretary of State Jenna Griswold from charges over allegedly destroyed election evidence. Trump’s pardon stalls as state authorities resist, risking a precedent where election officials or citizens are prosecuted for political speech, undermining future democratic integrity. [Automatically generated summary]
Former Mesa County clerk Tina Peters was sentenced to nine years behind bars yesterday for a data breach scheme inspired by Trump's false claims of voter fraud.
The idea that you won't respect elections if you lose is antithetical to a Democratic Republic.
Earlier this week, a federal judge ruled, listen to this, that Tina Peters, a 72-year-old Gold Star mother, must stay in prison while she appeals her case.
And since that ruling, inside that prison, Tina Peters has been attacked.
And I don't mean attacked just in one way, but in multiple ways, multiple times.
It is Saturday, the 14th of February in the year of our Lord, 2026.
It's St. Valentine's Day, and it is the 499th day of the incarceration of a Gold Star mother, a 72-year-old Gold Star mother.
And tomorrow is the 500th day.
I know that's unbelievable to hear, but that's the reality.
She is a political prisoner.
I think she's the most distinct political prisoner we've ever had here in the history of this country.
She's also pardoned by the president of the United States, and yet she continues to sit and rot in what is the highest security prison they have for women in the state of Colorado.
We're going to have a number of folks on here today to walk through exactly what's going on and what we have to resolve to get this done.
President Trump has pardoned her.
I know he is incredibly frustrated, and we may have to take a different path.
And we got to think that through today.
It is just unacceptable in the United States of America, particularly here's why it's so unacceptable now.
And it's ironic it's happening on the 499th day and the 500th day of Tina Peters' incarceration.
Because the FBI and DNI, Director of National Intelligence, seized the ballots and all the tapes from the machines and the tabulators in Georgia.
And we're going to court with the two heaviest, besides Mark Elias, the other two heaviest lawyers they can bring in, Abby Lowell and Norm Eisen, to take that evidence back.
In Georgia, we got them, and they know we got them.
And in Arizona, we had the Department of Homeland Security.
You heard John Solomon at the start of the first hour.
What did John Solomon say?
You're going to have revelations of foreign interference in these elections.
And Christy Noam said so much of it yesterday in Maricopa County.
Something is going to happen in Maricopa County to stand by.
And this is what Tina Peterson, this was her cause, just to have a free and fair election.
And what does she get from that?
The most honored people in our country, gold star mothers, whose children have died in defense of our country, our republic.
And I'll just remind everyone: it's been 500 days that she's been in prison, which is obscene, denied bond on appeal, but she has also been dealing with this for several more years before she was ever locked up regarding the lawfare and the weaponization of government.
And she was a target the moment she was elected clerk in 2018.
But Tina Peters doesn't quit, so neither should any of you.
Tina Peters, while she has been locked up now for well over a year, she is in, unlike men's prisons where they have clear delineations of the violent offenders and some of the lighter types of sentences, Tina Peters is in there with people who are convicted and have been in prison for many violent offenses.
They're repeat offenders.
Most recently, the incident that she was assaulted in several weeks ago, she was assaulted by a 29-year-old who has been in prison for stabbing her significant other and trying to kill him.
Her plea deal was, in fact, six years, three and a half years less than Tina's sentence.
So that is the kind of people that she's in there with.
These people have anger issues.
Many of them have drug problems.
Tina's heart actually goes out to many of them, but she's surrounded by people she does not blonde with.
The state of Colorado denied a transfer request that would have cost them nothing to put her in a safe location.
And it's been now over a year and 15, it's been 15 months now that Judge Barrett's statements sentencing Tina to all these sentences consecutively based on her First Amendment speech and in his own words saying that she's more dangerous to the public than violent offenders, that has stood this long.
And she has not been able to bond out on appeal this entire time.
And he has been, you know, he has been vindicated in his own statements because Tina has been kept in prison with these violent offenders for this entire time.
She's been assaulted repeatedly.
She has been marked specifically within the CDOC system as a minimum security, high-profile inmate.
She has applied to the honor pod several times and been denied, citing write-ups that she has received.
However, La Vista and CDOC's own records, his name is Mr. Ayers.
He actually responded to a request for any of those write-ups.
He said none exist.
There are no write-ups under Tina Peters' case file.
So they are purposely keeping Tina Peters in a dangerous environment.
They are denying her access to a housing situation that would keep her safe.
And the place is an absolute nightmare.
The best that they've been able to do is throw her in solitary for weeks at a time, where she's kept awake 24-7 under fluorescent lighting.
She has been sleeping on an inch thick mattress.
And it wasn't until just a few months ago after the media really decided to put pressure on officials in Colorado and what was going on inside of the Colorado Department of Corrections, including with the Civil Rights Division looking at some of the facilities and what was going on, that they decided they could find a two-inch mattress for Tina to sleep on, despite ignoring her medical requests, despite never allowing her to see a doctor, blowing off everything.
In this most recent assault on her, Steve, there were officials in La Vista that refused to even acknowledge that she was injured.
She was showing them her bruises from the event because it was being spun against her as if she were the aggressor.
And they did nothing.
They didn't refer her to medical for an evaluation.
They refused to document it.
They walked away and looked the other way.
So, I mean, this is the everyday situation that Tina Peters has been facing.
There are other inmates in there who get written up and have their iPads or their tablets taken away simply because they yell, free Tina Peters across the yard, or they show some sign of solidarity, recognizing the ordeal that she has been going through.
It's obscene what she's dealing with on a daily basis.
Tina Peters does not belong there.
And the travesty of justice that has allowed her to stay there, despite meeting all state criteria for bond on appeal, despite being a first-time nonviolent offender who has an excellent chance of her charges being reversed and her sentence being overturned on appeal, including this most recent hearing that raised a plethora of extremely concerning issues that should together constitute nothing but a mistrial.
Tina Peters needs to go free.
She's living in absolute hell.
She is a political prisoner and she doesn't belong with these people.
She is in danger every single day that she is in there.
She continues to get threats in the mail.
She complains about it to the prison, threats that I've seen many of them.
They threaten her with murder, with violence, with rape.
They wish death upon her.
And these recent incidents have led to kind of a precedent to be set within the facility where you can, you know, you can go after Tina Peters and nothing will really happen to you.
How is it possible that this woman just got granted parole after this incident with Tina?
If this were anyone else, she would have been kicked back at you.
I want to go to this, this fight that broke out that she started.
Talk to me about what happened.
The person that initiated this has been paroled since then, correct?
Normally, you would have some delay on that for doing it.
Talk about that, that she actually, Tina Peters got put in the hole, the special housing unit, which is solitary confinement, and that's there to break you psychologically.
This is the 29-year-old who was in there for stabbing someone, and she was given a six-year sentence.
After this incident, no follow-up was done.
No real investigation was conducted.
The media was given the footage within 12 hours of us learning about this, despite apparently the CDOC having to go through the entire process of getting the footage, scrubbing it, and getting consent from the inmates who were on camera to release it to the media.
Her attorneys didn't get it for weeks afterwards.
This inmate was now granted parole just, I believe, in the last week.
Well, physical violence, she has had hands put on her several times.
This is, I believe, the fifth time that at least I'm aware of.
So this most recent incident was used to spin it against Tina, but the woman struck Tina for no reason that she can really ascertain.
She has an anger issue and was probably turned against her because of some of the people in the facility.
She has had another incident where a teacher, someone who was teaching in the facility on the prison staff, was talking about Tina Peters' case and how ridiculous it was and how she should tell the media not to talk about what's going on within La Vista.
That caused an altercation.
And another woman who was in that same incident in the hallway with that teacher, who were both barking at Tina after she asked them not to speak about her case, she's now going and bragging that she was able to get away with hitting Tina Peters when she was in pod three.
And so they're emboldening other inmates and sending a message that you can do whatever you want.
And if it's Tina Peters, they'll take away your privileges if you stay free here, if you show support.
And apparently you'll get granted parole just a few weeks after you assault her, despite being a violent offender.
So you have that.
The environmental conditions are absolutely awful.
Civil rights division of DOJ has actually been sent a large batch of information that details reports from other inmates as well as Tina.
They have problems with the heating.
She's kept in exceptionally hot temperatures, reaching sometimes 90 degrees.
At other times, the HVAC is just an absolute mess.
And so they're freezing.
Tina has been, you know, given crons and reprimanded for trying to keep warm as an elderly woman with health issues.
She was reprimanded for trying to wear a scarf because it was too cold and she was afraid of getting sick.
Tina Peters: Political Prisoner Conditions00:11:58
All of the duplicity, duplicity, well, and the duplicity that's in it, all of the fraud, whether it's intentional or unintentional.
We've lost hundreds of millions of dollars for things like the wheelchair scheme scam.
We have not disassembled that program to make sure that we are spending the citizens' money wisely.
And when we're talking about spending money wisely, I have a hard time thinking that the Department of Corrections needs more money when the governor can keep a political prisoner 70 years old, not in for any sort of violent crime, recently assaulted.
And rumor has it that this person who recently assaulted decades younger has been offered parole for being the goon squad of the governor, the secretary, and the AG.
And so I have a hard time saying that this department needs money.
I think it's pretty clear that Tina Peters is a political prisoner, 70 years old, nonviolent crime, first-time alleged offender, for essentially circumventing the rules that Jenna has imposed in order to stop anybody from creating any backup copies.
And of course, anything that Tina did pales in comparison to what Jenna did with publishing hundreds of active BIOS passwords, which the AG's team considered and called the keys to the kingdom, the keys that would give the machines away, essentially, to nefarious actors.
So I think it's pretty clear that Tina Peters is a political prisoner.
Again, nonviolent, first time, it's an alleged offense.
It is hopefully going to be turned into a mistrial.
And then just it'll just, well, it's a phenomenal travesty of justice.
But overall, yes, she's definitely a political prisoner.
She could be at home at a lot less expense to the state.
The state is more afraid of Tina Peters than they are most, you know, most active criminals, most violent criminals.
Violent criminals go right back on the streets.
The Colorado legislature just vetoed or killed a bill to put harsher penalties on child rapists, but they are adamant that they want to keep Tina Peters in jail because they obviously fear what she has to say more than what the violent offenders will do to Coloradans or to the children.
You know, Trende Aragro, you didn't see the push with the Colorado authorities until President Trump got serious about it.
They are, and even the governor who is thinking of running for president and wanted to use this as a badge of honor, even when he's getting wobbly because he sees the conditions she's in.
He sees the violence, the health issues, the psychological issues pressing down on her.
But Jenna Griswold and the rest and the judge, they have bonded together to say absolutely not.
To them, she's a capital, this is a capital crime and she's a capital criminal.
Well, I think it's, for them, it is a capital offense because it would cut off the head of the snake if the information that Tina has is and understands.
And the information is out there.
It's not like she's keeping any secrets, but that information is allowed to get out, be published, put on trial.
That's how you cut off the head of the snake.
As to the conditions of Jenna Griswold, I had a friend who was a POW for five years in Vietnam.
He considered the conditions comparable, if not worse, to Vietnam.
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And when you see the growth, hold on, you understand why her son was a seal.
He equated his time in the corrections facility to having been worse.
He actually said worse than Vietnam.
So, you know, sleeping on a concrete floor, just horrific conditions.
You know, Stockdale talked about him in his book as well.
But yeah, he said they were comparable.
So when you look at 500 days in prison and you understand the grit of Tina Peters, you can understand where her son got it, that he became a Navy SEAL.
There are some on the GOP side, I should say, not on the Republican side, but on the GOP side that consider it to be a just trial.
And I don't think that's the case at all.
Not when the primary evidence for what she did was blocked, which was deemed inadmissible.
So the entire aspect of her being a whistleblower and backing up those files, because a whistleblower doesn't have to be correct in order to be protected as a whistleblower.
And what we're talking about is the election integrity, which actually does fall under the civil rights rule.
So I did point out during the Martin Luther King that day that she was actively participating what is a civil rights-led rule, the Civil Rights Act, and the hypocrisy of the Democrats for unanimously wanting to keep a 70-year-old nonviolent alleged offender.
I won't say offender.
She's alleged that they want to keep her in horrific conditions.
So for protecting the Civil Rights Act and being a whistleblower to its violation.
So I think that's incredibly hypocritical.
And anytime that I have the opportunity to point out the hypocrisy, then I'm going to take it.
Well, I think, you know, whatever it takes to get her out of the gulag in which Jared Polis is keeping her, Jared Polis is keeping her at risk of her life intentionally.
He has the ability.
For whatever excuses he's using, he has the ability to release her right now.
She is a whistleblower in a system that is used for federal elections.
And I think they should use whatever leverage they have on the federal election system to pull her out as not only a key witness, but put her in whistleblower and have her as a protected witness under the whistleblower status.
So the Colorado, the Attorney General was very, they were very crafty in their shaping of the case to make sure that they did not touch on the actual evidence.
So again, the crimes and they're all stacked back to back instead of being subsequent.
And as you can see by the release of or the alleged release of prisoner 193672, that she is that she is feared by the administration, by the Colorado administration, much more than any violent offender.
Well, they can find me on X mostly at Colorado Rep K DeGraaff.
And that's, yep, that's me.
So that's my X page.
And that's where they can find most of my updates.
So we'll post them there.
And that will also take you to the that will also get you to the YouTube channel where I where I store the videos so that you can watch and then you can so that citizens of Colorado can learn how government is being done to them and not for them.
Because we're going to, we've just started passing probably what's going to be over 600 new pieces of legislation that are going to cost the citizens of Colorado hundreds of millions of dollars when we're starting from a deficit.
I mean, you know, again, going back to day one, she has horrible accommodations, mattress.
Despite her medical conditions, they ignored her for over a year, even to give her a proper place to sleep.
The facility is completely infested with mold.
It was only after DOJ decided to announce they were coming in that they started cleaning things up.
It's still an absolute mess.
She's had a cough and still has, even when we talk to her now, every single day that has not gone away for at least nine months now.
She's lost a considerable amount of weight and she didn't have much to lose.
There's the constant fear of violence and people threatening her.
She continues to receive threatening mail letters that still get through the prison facilities filtering.
So she regularly still gets mail threatening her life and wishing all kinds of horrible things upon her.
Throwing her in solitary that they refuse to call solitary or IDO or special housing for many things that are not her fault and then kept 24-7 under fluorescent lights, not allowed to go outside.
One to two hours a day, she is allowed outside of her cell, cut off from all phones and contact with the outside in between those conversations.
They have solitary confinement, the shoe, the special housing unit, is a place to break you.
The hardest cases they have, they feel they can't, that don't get along with the rules or want to be a tough guy or a tough one, they put them in there to break them.
It's psychologically and physically demanding.
24 hours a day, you got the lights on, you never get outside.
It's very small, no reading material.
It's to psychologically break you, and they put Tina Peters in there all the time to try to break her.
I want to bring in, I'm going to start with John Case.
We have two of her brilliant lawyers, Peter Ticton, that got the pardon from the president at the federal level, and John Case.
John, I think one of the things people are finding hard, the whole thing of getting there, but they gave her consecutive sentence, instead of running concurrently or letting her out on appeal, which would be quite natural in a case like this, they really tripled the penalty and made sure they got her.
This is what makes Mrs. Peters such a danger to our community.
It's the position she held that has provided her the pulpit from which she can preach these lies, the undermining of our democratic process, the undermining of the belief and confidence in our election systems.
And 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.
So, in other words, the judge sentenced her to eight years, nine months, not quite nine years, eight years, nine months in prison because of words that she used to criticize the computer voting system.
And the trial was really, the trial and sentencing were the culmination of a process that began with a federal investigation of Tina, then pressure from the Secretary of State.
They actually sent her a written stipulation in January of 2022 demanding that she retract her statements in writing about the voting system.
Tina refused to do it.
They said, if you don't sign this retraction, we're going to remove you from your duties as clerk and recorder.
And she said, I'm not signing that.
And they did remove her from her duties as clerk and recorder by getting a local judge to do that.
After that, they started prosecuting her.
They got a grand jury indictment.
Then we went to trial.
She was acquitted of three felony charges, but convicted of four.
Those are on appeal along with the three misdemeanor charges.
And we're confident we're going to get some relief at least from the Colorado Court of Appeals.
We had a very good experience at oral argument.
We had a great panel of three judges.
They asked terrific questions of me and of the assistant attorney general who has prosecuted Tina from day one.
This wasn't really a county case in Mesa County.
It was a centralized prosecution by the Attorney General of the state of Colorado.
Two deputy AGs were in the courtroom at all times.
They examined every witness.
And the DA finally took a role at sentencing where he demanded that the judge put Tina away for the maximum time.
I want to get Peter in here, but let me ask you: in the Colorado women's prison system that we have, giving her eight years and nine months when you're 70, I guess, one year old or 70 years old, and given the conditions and what's happened to her, they essentially tried to give her a death sentence.
Peter Ticton, you actually have worked your ass off.
You got a pardon from the President of the United States.
Why are we having that 500 days of Tina Peters, the commander in chief of the Armed Forces, the Chief Magistrate and Chief Senior Enforcement Officer of the United States government and the president of the United States, all in one office, the office of the president, has pardoned Tina Peters, sir?
Well, the Court of Appeals has to basically rule on that.
That's the first thing they have to decide even before their decision comes out.
So that's what we're waiting for.
We don't know which way they're going to go, but we expect that they're probably going to go along with the flow of saying that it doesn't apply to state charges.
And from there, we go to the Supreme Court of the United States, and that's where the decision will be made.
So That's where we do go up there.
But I just wanted to just pivot.
I've been watching, and I love your other guests.
They're right on track.
Apollo's been just an amazing person, never giving up.
But there are three reasons that Tina Peters is in prison because you ask, how could this be?
And why is it?
And the first reason is to shut her up.
Okay.
She doesn't have the ability to criticize Dominion machines.
She doesn't have the ability to raise the hue and cry and say there's something wrong with our election system.
You earlier said that it's going to come out that there's foreign involvement in this, and there is.
And she is the one that would be on the forefront of being able to say we have an election emergency.
We cannot be using the machines going forward.
But of course, she's quieted.
Secondly, she's a scapegoat.
Jenna Griswold is the real criminal here.
And when I say that, I'm not just speaking figuratively.
I'm talking specifically and actually she is because in 62 different counties, she literally caused the hard drives of the Dominion machines to be wiped clean and then overwritten.
She destroyed the evidence.
And that, and there is a very specific federal statute that requires it be kept for 22 months.
So she violated that.
That's good for a year in prison for each one.
62 years in prison is what she could be subject to.
And the third reason, other than the scapegoat, is because they need to basically have somebody there as an example to all of the other clerks in the United States, not just Colorado.
So she is there to warn all the other clerks: don't you dare make a copy.
Don't you dare image the hard drive of Dominion Machine or Liberty Machine or any machine, because if you do, you're going to get what Tina Peters is getting.
And believe me, it's working.
It's scaring the other clerks and the supervisors of elections throughout the United States.
So those are the three reasons that Tina Peters is in prison.
The second point you brought up, though, is the U.S. attorney, because President Trump won.
And I understand with blue slips, we've only gotten 14 U.S. attorneys in for the 94.
But on your second point, the federal violations of Jenna Griswold, the Secretary of State, and she's maniacally focused audience on keeping Tina Peters in prison.
Is there any understanding that either at Maine Justice or somewhere in the weaponization program over there or the U.S. attorney in Colorado?
Have they begun an investigation of Griswold and are they going to bring charges?
Look, world leaders don't say no to Donald Trump, and yet the officials in Colorado do.
And it's not going to last.
They're not going to prevail over this.
It's a matter of time.
But this is an issue that's only going to get resolved in the Supreme Court of the United States as to whether or not the federal pardon by the President of the United States will actually apply to state crimes.
And, you know, our position is that it does, and especially state crimes that are in an area of national control, such as national elections.
So we're optimistic in terms of the pardon issue, and we're moving forward with that.
We need to first see what the Court of Appeals of Colorado is going to do with it, because they actually have to rule on that.
They have to determine, do we have jurisdiction or is jurisdiction already gone because all these crimes are now wiped off the votes?
Well, we filed a reply in our effort to have Tina released on bond while the court is deciding her appeal.
This is the fourth application we have made for bond pending appeal.
And we've never had a ruling.
No court has ever decided whether her First Amendment rights were violated when the judge sentenced her to prison because of the words that she used to criticize the computer voting system.
Tina exposed the threat to our liberty from computer voting systems.
And the same software that was used to rig elections in Venezuela, a variation of that software is now used in Colorado and throughout the United States.
If we don't get rid of these computer voting systems, we're all going to lose our freedoms.
They're a menace to our liberty.
So, John, if people want to help the legal effort and help Tina, they can go to tinapeters.us.
And Steve, we so much appreciate your allowing us to speak for Tina.
Well, first of all, you know, I've got to say that we've got one of the most amazing president that we've ever had in the history of the country, Donald Trump.
Thank you, Donald Trump, for giving that pardon to Tina Peters.
We're going to do everything we can possibly do to make sure that that pardon is meaningful and that it carries the weight and enhances the office of the president.
So I thank you, sir.
Secondly, as far as Tina Peters is concerned, we need to get her out of prison.
And there are different ways things underway.
And I'm hoping that that motion that John and I basically and our team basically filed is going to do the trick.
It gives the Court of Appeal an opportunity because when you look at it, even assuming that they're going to just have resentencing, even assuming that they're not going to get rid of any of the convictions, and I'm sure that's not the case, it's going to be more than that.
But let's just say it's only the sentencing.
Then that means that the time that she's in prison could be now more than the time that the resentencing would be.
It could have been time for the amount of time served if she had been released pending appeal.
And so every single day is an additional day, and the Court of Appeals has the strength and the power to be able to release her now.
And the state has taken the position they don't have that ability or that strength.
And we're going to see if the Court of Appeals ties its own hands for now and for the future, or if it exercises its inherent authority to release her.
Well, you know, now we're talking about Tina Peters.
So let's just stick with her, Tina Peters, T-I-N-A, P-E-T-E-R-S dot U.S. That's the place to go.
That's where you'll be updated on Tina Peters, and you'll be able to donate to her commissary or to her attorneys or to whatever you think is where you want to apply the funds.
Well, first, just thank you to everyone who's listening.
I do hope you hold Tina in your prayers.
But if they can do this to Tina Peters, they can do this to every single one of you.
The precedent that has stood from the moment Judge Matthew Barrett sentenced her through all this appeal process and her habeas is that you can be imprisoned and denied bail for first-time offenses for your political speech and treated like an absolute prisoner of war.
She is a prisoner of war.
And everyone needs to remember this came down from DOJ.
This was a RICO operation, in my words, with DOJ, with, I'm sorry, the Secretary of State of Colorado and Dominion.
That's why she became such a target starting in 2018.
But the corrupt DOJ under Mayor Garland was involved in this prosecution and this travesty going back to 2021 at least that we have on record.
And Tina Peters, even now, her cry, her war cry from prison is, please, President Trump, we need to get rid of this of these machines because it's shown in the Mesa reports.
This is why Jenna Griswold doesn't want her let out and has urged no one to offer her any solace, any ability to be released as she should be is because they're afraid.
She knows that Tina preserved evidence.
And Tina's message to President Trump is: thank you.
Thank you for fighting.
Please, we need to get rid of these machines because we have very little time before the midterms.
And I'll just ask you all to remember, this is a gold star mother, a 70-year-old who is being tortured psychologically and been denied justice in a show trial, a mistrial.
And you are next.
If this continues to stand, if we do not actually have real elections, Tina Peters' legacy will be the canary in the coal mine that was snuffed out instead of the symbol that she has already been made of what it means to stand up and to fight no matter the consequence.
for the republic and for all of you.
So just please go to tinapeters.us for her show, for her legal defense fund.
Make sure you follow her on social media.
But Tina Peters is the symbol that they made her out to be.
It wasn't the 2020 election.
It was the municipal election because her own constituents told her, pay attention to this, please, Tina.
And then she preserved records.
So if you can do your job and be thrown in prison and turned into a villain, your children can be as well.