(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department on Monday filed a highly unusual motion stating its intent to review a state-level conviction of a Trump ally who was sentenced to nine years in prison for leading a security breach of her county’s elections computer system following the 2020 presidential election.
Former Mesa County, Colorado, clerk Tina Peters was sentenced last October for giving an individual affiliated with MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, an ally of President Donald Trump who amplified false election claims, access to election software she used for her county. Screenshots of the software later appeared on right-wing websites that in turn used it to further promote baseless claims of voter fraud.
Early last month, Peters filed a motion with the federal district court in Colorado seeking to challenge her guilty verdict.
On Monday, the senior acting head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division, Yaakov Roth, filed a statement of interest with the court, urging a judge to give “prompt and careful consideration” to concerns Peters’ counsel has raised about her case.
“Reasonable concerns have been raised about various aspects of Ms. Peters’ case,” Roth said in the filing. “Accordingly, the United States respectfully submits that the concerns raised in the Application warrant – at the very least – prompt and careful consideration by this Court (and, at the appropriate time, the Colorado appellate courts).”
The Justice Department does not have the legal authority to unilaterally overturn state-level convictions. However, some critics have expressed concerns that such intervention highlights a troubling willingness by Trump-appointed officials at the Department of Justice to aid allies of the president, while also raising the prospect of retribution against his political opponents.
Roth’s filing further states that Peters’ case fits into a broader review underway at the Justice Department of “cases across the nation” that the filing argues may be “abuses of the criminal justice process.”
“This review will include an evaluation of the State of Colorado’s prosecution of Ms. Peters and, in particular, whether the case was ‘oriented more toward inflicting political pain than toward pursuing actual justice or legitimate governmental objectives,’” the filing stated.
“Nothing about the prosecution of Ms. Peters was politically motivated,” Mesa County District Attorney Daniel Rubinstein said in response to an ABC News request for comment. “In one of the most conservative jurisdictions in Colorado, the same voters who elected Ms. Peters, also elected the Republican District Attorney who handled the prosecution, and the all-Republican Board of County Commissioners who unanimously requested the prosecution of Ms. Peters on behalf of the citizens she victimized.”
“Ms. Peters was indicted by a grand jury of her peers, and convicted at trial by the jury of her peers that she selected,” Rubenstein said.
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