Tina Peters, a former county clerk convicted of felonies over a voting-system breach, appeared on '60 Minutes' with Gov. Jared Polis, who commuted her nine-year sentence. Secretary of State Jena Griswold and clerks' association director Matt Crane also made statements about her actions.
Tina Peters is a former county clerk who was convicted of felonies for her role in breaching her county's voting systems. She was sentenced to a nine-year prison term. Colorado Gov. Jared Polis commuted the sentence in May, after she had served less than two years, following pressure from the Trump administration. Peters was released from Colorado state prison in June.
Peters appeared in a nationally televised interview on '60 Minutes' with CBS's Bill Whitaker, alongside Polis; it was recorded in August. In it, she said people cannot trust voting machines and that she believes they can be breached. When Whitaker asked whether she broke the law, she responded by asking if that was the question and said that others had said she broke the law. Peters also said she was authorized to protect election records under a federal provision, 52USC.70201, which she described as a federal mandate to preserve election records.
Secretary of State Jena Griswold alleges Peters helped an unauthorized individual pose as a county employee, gave him access to secure voting equipment and allowed him to copy proprietary software. In the interview, Griswold said Peters was elected by her county to uphold the elections but attacked them from within. She said Peters ordered her video surveillance cameras turned off, took images of voting equipment and shared them with a network of election deniers. Asked by Whitaker what was harmed, Griswold named voting equipment, confidence in Colorado and American elections, and election workers.
The wiping of election records that Peters cited was part of a routine system update of voting machines across the state, and Matt Crane said all election results were preserved. Crane, director of the Colorado County Clerks Association and a Republican, said Peters' staff had already backed up every record that federal and state law required to be retained. Crane also described Polis' commutation of Peters' sentence as a complete betrayal of the election community.
Polis told 60 Minutes that Peters should have received one to three years and that he was shocked when she got close to nine years. Whitaker told Peters that more than 60 lawsuits alleging voter fraud in the 2020 election were dismissed or withdrawn, and that investigations, many by Republicans, found no evidence of fraud that would have changed the outcome. No federal, state or local investigators found evidence of fraud that would have changed the outcome.
Since her release, Peters has returned to the election denial circuit. She attended the Fraud Fighter Summit in Las Vegas, appeared on Alex Jones' streaming show and met Trump at the White House.
