The Persecution of Tina Peters –
Part II
Guest post by Tracy Osborne
After 606 days behind bars, Tina Peters is finally free!
See Part I here.
The Problem with Perjury
During the trial, Peters’ attorney confronted IT specialist Wood with the text messages he had sent within hours of the Trusted Build, which proclaimed, “I’m happy to help out. I do hope the effort proved fruitful.”
Wood admitted on the stand that the phone number and nickname in the group thread were his, but when asked if he remembered that specific exchange, Wood was suddenly hit with an inexplicable case of amnesia. Because Wood refused to authenticate the texts, Judge Matthew Barrett barred them from being entered as evidence, and the jury never saw the messages..
Later, Bishop authenticated the text thread on the stand. She said it was a conversation between her, Peters, and Wood which clearly showed Wood was in on the plan to let Hayes use his name badge. But by then, it was too late. Because Wood had been called by the prosecution—not the defense—Peters’ attorneys were not permitted to recall him to authenticate the messages himself. The result was a confusing procedural mess that likely left the jury more puzzled than informed.
In a January 2025 interview on Debbie Georgatos’ program, America Can We Talk? Sherronna Bishop—the private citizen who first helped collect affidavits and whom prosecutors later smeared an “unindicted co-conspirator”—recounted her experience with Wood:
“Gerry Wood was a major component of this. Four felonies were launched at Tina Peters because of Gerry Wood. Gerry Wood was just a regular guy. He met me at an event and said, ‘If there’s anything I can do in the tech space, let me know. I’d be happy to help.’”
“I didn’t know anything about tech, so I thought, ‘Probably not, but I’ll save your number. Something might come up.’”
“Clerk Peters had asked if the county would do the forensic image. They said no, so she said, ‘Hey, do you know anybody who might be able to do a forensic image?’ I said, ‘Well, there’s this guy named Gerry who says he does tech stuff. I don’t know. I’ll ask him.’”
“Initially, Gerry Wood said, ‘Yes, I can do the forensic image,’ but as we got closer, he realized he didn’t know how to do a forensic image, which is fine. We had a Signal chat that he was a part of, along with Clerk Peters, and he asked repeatedly during the time of the Trusted Build, ‘How’s it going?’ And I’m telling him it’s going great. He said, ‘I was so glad I could help you with this.’ How did he help?”
“He helped by allowing the man who did do the forensic image—Conan Hayes—to use his name badge. Conan Hayes is a CIA asset. He signed an affidavit which was supposed to be provided to the jury, but the court did not allow it. They blocked it.
“Clerk Peters went above and beyond to make sure the caliber of people involved in this were legitimate. These were real people who could do the real job. Conan Hayes has done many operations for the government. He was responsible for taking down Backpage, where obviously tons of child trafficking was going on. His father was also a CIA agent and wrote a book, and I read the book. That’s how I realized Conan had followed in his father’s footsteps.
“Conan had the best clearance of any person on the whole planet, but he didn’t want anyone to know he was there, so Gerry Wood offered up his name badge and agreed Conan could use it.
“Nobody stole that badge. Nobody stole his identity. They launched four felonies at Tina Peters because Gerry Wood changed his story after the FBI raided his home. It’s a scary thing to have the FBI raid your home. It still makes me emotional. It’s very upsetting to me, but he lied. He absolutely volunteered [his name badge], and then he lied.
Did DA Dan Rubenstein Orchestrate the Kidnapping of Peter’s Husband?
Peters’ indictment was only part of what she believes was a broader effort to pressure, isolate, and break her. Peters believes DA Rubenstein orchestrated what’s been described as a kidnapping of her husband.
The following account is from numerous interviews I conducted with Peters as well as interviews she’s done with other journalists.
First, a little background:
Thomas and Tina Peters were married in 1985. They built a successful construction business together and had two children—a son, Remington and a daughter, Cayce. Life was mostly good.
Then in 2017, tragedy struck. Their 27-year-old son Remington, who was a Navy SEAL, died as the result of a double-parachute fail during a Fleet Week aerial demonstration over the Hudson River.
In their grief, Tom and Tina grew apart, and in January of 2018, Tina filed for divorce citing irreconcilable differences. But in Colorado, there’s a mandatory cooling-off period where no party can move forward with a divorce until 91 days have passed. For Tom and Tina, the cooling-off period worked. In those 91 days, they reconciled and decided to stay together.
Tina recalls a conversation she and Tom had in their kitchen where Tom said, “Don’t ever leave me, Tina” and she replied, “I won’t ever leave you, Tom.” They were back on track.
Unfortunately, by 2020, Tom’s health had declined significantly. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s and Dementia. Tina cared for him at home for as long as she could, but the disease progressed quickly, and by 2021, Tina decided Tom, who had fallen regularly at this point, needed around-the-clock care. She admitted him to the La Villa Grande Nursing Facility in their hometown where she visited him regularly.
Then, in October of 2021, while under investigation by Biden’s DOJ, DA Rubenstein, AG Weiser, and SOS Griswold, and just two weeks after submitting the sober letter to the board of commissioners, Tina went to visit Tom in the nursing home, but personnel at the front desk told her she no longer had power of attorney and was not allowed to see him.
Tina was confused. “I wasn’t even sure what the term ‘power of attorney’ meant,” she said. She returned home and tried to get Tom on the phone, but to no avail.
A couple of weeks later, on November 16, the FBI raided TIna’s home. “It was terrifying,” she said. “They upended an unopened box of my late son’s effects and just left them scattered on the floor.” The box included personal belongings from Remington’s time in the SEALs as well as photos of his posthumous body. “I was not ready to see any of that,” she said. “It was devastating.”
The next day, Tina finally got Tom on the phone, but she decided not to tell him about the raid. “He had good days and bad,” she said. “But at this point, he was mostly childlike. I couldn’t tell him what was happening. He wouldn’t be able to process all that.”
It turns out Tom had news of his own. He told Tina he was scared because a group of people had visited him in the nursing home and he had signed papers, but he couldn’t remember what they were for. In a moment of lucidity, he told Tina to contact their lawyer, Zach Reams.
Tina reached out to Reams who responded via email.
Tina learned that the papers Tom signed were divorce papers. Because Tina never rescinded the separation papers she filed four years earlier in 2018, the divorce moved forward. Tina tried to fight it, but to no avail, and just one month later, in November, 2021—after 36 years of marriage—she and Tom were officially divorced.
To this day, Tina can’t say for sure who gave those papers to Tom.
Tina was also told that someone had opened an Adult Protective Services case against her, accusing her of abuse and neglect, and that power of attorney for Tom had been shifted to his estranged sister, who lived in Idaho.
Tina said that in the 30 years she and Tom had lived in Colorado, Tom’s sister had never once visited. According to Tina, Tom had no relationship with her whatsoever. Tina tried to fight the power of attorney, but again to no avail. Tom’s sister then arranged for him to be moved into a vacant house in Arkansas owned by Tom’s also-estranged brother.
Tina said she tried to contact both the brother and sister to tell them that Tom could not live alone for various reasons—he could not stand without falling, could not go to the bathroom unattended, was incapable of making a meal or remembering to take his meds—but every time she tried to explain Tom’s’ condition over the phone, they would hang up on her.
“Someone had obviously told them horrible lies about me,” Tina said. “They were convinced I was some kind of monster.”
Later, Tina learned that Tom’s brother put him in a nursing home in Little Rock, an hour and fifteen minutes away from his house. Tina called to check on him and was told he never had visitors. Tina’s daughter reported that when Tom’s brother did visit, he would request Tom give him $100 for gas money.
Then, Tina’s daughter received a phone call from a hospital in Arkansas. They had been unable to reach either Tom’s brother and sister and told her that her father had suffered a bad fall and was unconscious. They would not give her any more information citing HIPAA. Eventually, Tina’s daughter learned that her father had recovered enough to return to his nursing facility in Arkansas.
Tina—without power of attorney and believing she was under investigation with Adult Protective Services—suspected she would not be allowed to visit Tom at the nursing home in Arkansas.
Undaunted, she booked a flight and went anyway.
When she walked into the facility, she was relieved to find the front desk momentarily unattended. She started down the hallway wondering how in the world she was going to find Tom. Then, she heard a familiar sound—the opening theme song to Bonanza. Tina followed the music to Tom’s room where she found him watching the old western.
“I didn’t recognize him at first,” she said. “He was skin and bones, only 90 pounds. He was dehydrated and starved. I just sobbed.”
Finally reunited, Tina was determined not to let Tom go again. Amazingly the nursing facility didn’t seem to have any orders to stop Tina from visiting.
“While I was there, he was doing so much better,” she said. “He was filling out. I have pictures of him holding onto my arm. He would always say, ‘Tina, don’t leave me.’ And I’d tell him, ‘I’m not leaving you, Tom.’ He was so happy every time I walked into his room.”
But then one day during her visit, the police showed up. Somehow, Tom’s brother had learned of Tina’s visits and alerted the authorities. She was escorted off the premises and banned from returning.
“This whole time, I’m still fighting the power of attorney and Adult Protective Services thing,” she said. “But it never went anywhere. How could it? No one had any evidence of abuse or neglect. I still don’t even know if a case was opened or if someone was just calling around telling Tom’s family and the nursing homes that I was abusive.”
Tina eventually got her power of attorney back, and said, “The DA never brought formal charges against me for abuse, but with the divorce and losing power of attorney and all the allegations out there, it was enough to keep me estranged from Tom for two years.”
Tragically, in November of 2023 when Tina was finally arranging for Tom to be transferred back to Colorado, he died. “It was just too late,” Tina said, “Too much had happened. When you have Parkinson’s and dementia, you really need full-time care with good people, people who love you, and Tom had been deprived of that. Just a month after I got him back, he was gone.”
To this day, it’s still unclear how Tina lost her power of attorney and who, if anyone, filed an Adult Protective Services case against her.
DA Rubenstein has denied orchestrating the kidnapping of Tina’s husband. He told local political blogger Anne Landman that he has never met Tom Peters nor has he ever been to LaVilla Grande Nursing Home.
Tina doesn’t dispute that. She believes DA Rubenstein orchestrated the whole thing using other people to do his dirty work, specifically a local attorney.
“It worked,” Peters said. “Look what one phone call from DA Rubenstein did—my own attorney wouldn’t represent me.”
The Hypocrisy of Jena Griswold
While the DOJ and state were busy building a case against Peters, Griswold was busy championing a new bill making it illegal for future clerks to peek behind the curtain.
The original draft of SB22-153 included a censorship clause that would have made it illegal for county clerks to make “any false statement” about elections. That language was dropped after intense pushback over First Amendment concerns.
The rest of the bill, which would later become known as the Colorado Election Security Act, passed. It made it illegal for clerks to image voting systems without written permission from Griswold’s office, made publishing passwords a felony, and allowed the Secretary of State’s office to certify election results without the canvassing board.
“She plugged up all the holes in the dike,” said Peters. Clerks are supposed to be the stewards of safe elections, but the message is clear: “If you see something, say nothing, or you could end up like me.”
Later, while Peters was standing trial and after the Colorado Election Security Act had become law, it was discovered that Griswold’s office had accidentally published more than 600 election passwords on its website. The passwords covered voting systems in every Colorado county except one and had been published online for months.
Griswold tried to keep the blunder quiet. She did not alert county clerks, and news of the leak only became public because the Colorado GOP came forward with it.
Kyle Clark of 9News interviewed Griswold about the password leak in light of the election-security law she had recently championed.
Clark asked, “In 2021 when Mesa County’s voting system passwords leaked, your office said, “Public disclosure of the bios passwords for one or more components of Mesa county’s voting system alone constitutes a serious breach of voting system security protocols. By that standard did your office commit a serious breach of voting system security protocols?”
Griswold responded “no.”
Clark said after the Mesa County passwords were leaked, Griswold ordered that the machines be decertified. He asked if she would now decertify the machines again, given her own leak.
Again, Griswold answered “no.”
Clark then asks Grisold: “In 2021, you directed the Colorado Department of State to investigate the leak in Mesa County. Who will investigate the leak from your office?”
Griswold responds that her office was investigating her office.
Clark ended his interview with one final question: “This is not the first time your office has made mistakes…In 2022 your office sent out mailers to 30,000 non-citizens inviting them to register to vote. They, of course, are not eligible to vote. That same year, your office used Colorado’s ballot tracking system to send messages to specific Coloradans encouraging them to vote when they had, in fact, already voted causing confusion that had to be cleaned up by the county clerks, and now this leak of passwords. Given your office’s repeated errors that have damaged confidence in our elections—which you say is paramount—will you resign?”
Griswold responded, “Absolutely not.”
Eventually, DA Beth McCann investigated the leak; however, before her investigation even began Colorado Public Radio reported that McCann said, “Griswold is not the target of the investigation.” What privilege to be exonerated from an investigation before it even begins.
McCann never filed charges, Griswold eventually blamed the whole thing on an employee who had already left her office, and after a few rounds of bad press, the whole thing blew over.
The contrast is hard to miss: Both Griswold and Peters were investigated for inadvertently leaking election passwords. Griswold was exonerated before the investigation even began. Peters got nine years.
And once Peters was charged, the imbalance only deepened. At trial, she was not allowed to fully explain why she acted at all.
A Defense Denied
If you’ve read thus far, you already know far more than the jury ever heard.
Judge Barrett curtailed Peters’ defense to such an extent, that the jury never understood her motivations or the larger context of why she hired Hayes, who he was, or why she sought to preserve election records in the first place.
The following is a list of evidence that Judge Barrett barred Peters’ attorneys from presenting at trial claiming they would “mislead or confuse the jury.”
- Peters was not allowed to tell the jury about the oath she took to uphold a state law that required her to preserve election records for 25 months and a federal law that required her to preserve records for 22 months.
- Peters was not allowed to show the jury the federal law, which makes it a crime for clerks to fail to preserve election records.
- Peters was not allowed to tell the jury that she believed the Trusted Build would delete vital election records she was sworn to preserve.
- Peters was not allowed to fully develop testimony about her phone call with Dominion employee, David Stahl, who confirmed the Trusted Build would make it impossible to audit both the municipal and 2020 elections.
- Peters was not allowed to enter into evidence the text messages exchanged between Wood, Bishop, and Peters, which showed Wood was in on the plan to let Hayes use his name badge.
- The prosecution played a clip of an audio recording of Peters talking to Dr. Frank, the man who had introduced her to Hayes. In the recording, Frank tells Peters that it would be a “feather in her cap if she found corruption and cleaned it up.” The prosecution called that feather-in-the-hat clip the “beginning of a ” Peters was not allowed to let the jury hear the rest of the recording in which she can be heard saying, “We must follow the law.”
- Peters was not allowed to call Hayes as a witness
- Peters was not allowed to tell the jury that she believed Hayes was a government worker
- Peters was not allowed to show the jury the following declaration that Hayes submitted to the court.
- Peters was not allowed to tell the jury that she turned off the cameras and allowed Hayes to use Wood’s name badge—not to conceal her own actions—but because Hayes said he needed to keep a low profile because he believed he was being hunted by the cartels.
- Peters was not allowed to show the jury the sober letter she wrote to the county
- Peters was not allowed to show the jury any part of the Mesa reports
- Peters was not allowed to tell the jury that SOS Griswold illegally and prematurely deleted 29,000 election records.
- Peters was not allowed to tell the jury that the machines created hidden databases that obscured the masked ballot-tabulation results.
- Peters was not allowed to tell the jury that the machines were equipped with 36 wireless devices capable of connecting to the internet during an election.
Peters’ team wanted to use the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution in her defense. That clause says federal law is the “supreme law of the land” and takes priority when it conflicts with state law. Her attorneys wanted to argue that if Peters was acting under a federal duty to preserve election records, Colorado could not punish her for carrying out that duty.
DA Rubenstein filed a motion asking Judge Barrett to bar Peters from using the Supremacy Clause, and Barrett granted that motion with a simple, “So ordered.” No other explanation was given.
Peters’ legal team also wanted the jurors to be instructed on two affirmative defenses—Execution of Public Duty and Choice of Evils. Affirmative defenses are simple instructions that, if supported by enough evidence, can be read to the jury.
The Execution of Public Duty defense protects people who are carrying out actions authorized by law as part of their official responsibilities. Peters’ attorneys contended that the jury should have been instructed that if they found she was carrying out a lawful public duty to preserve election records, they could acquit her.
Judge Barrett refused to give that instruction to the jury because he said taking the forensic images went beyond the scope of Peters’ duties.
The Choice of Evils defense applies when a person violates one law as an emergency measure in order to prevent greater and imminent harm. Peters’ team wanted to argue that she believed election records were at risk of being altered, deleted, or lost, and that her actions were necessary to preserve evidence and protect the integrity of the election system.
Her attorneys contended that the jury should have been instructed that if they found she influenced public officials but only did so to prevent a greater evil—like the permanent destruction of records—from happening, then they could acquit her.
Again, Judge Barrett refused to give that instruction to the jury, saying the deletion of records was not an emergency that required her to act and that there was no threat of imminent harm.
An uninformed jury was not Peters’ only problem. She also learned the jury may have been compromised.
A Tainted Juror
After a verdict is reached, the defense will sometimes hire an investigator to interview jurors to better understand what influenced their decision and whether any trial issues may have affected the outcome.
The following is from Peters’ appeal:
“After the jury verdicts and before sentencing, an investigator retained by defense counsel spoke with two jurors. One juror told the investigator he might have voted differently if he had heard testimony that Clerk Peters had a duty to preserve election records.”
“A second juror stated that during the first week of trial, the phone lines at her business were cut, it cost her $4,000, and she wondered throughout the trial ‘if I was being targeted.’ The juror suspected that Clerk Peters [or someone in Peters’ camp] was the culprit.”
According to Peters’ appeal, “It is unknown whether the juror told other jurors that she suspected Clerk Peters of cutting her phone lines. She certainly never disclosed it to the court or counsel before she participated in finding Clerk Peters guilty.”
When Peters requested an evidentiary hearing prior to sentencing, Judge Barrett denied the motion.
The appellate court upheld Barrett’s decision, writing that Peters’ “argument that a hearing was required was based solely on speculation that the juror believed she was being targeted by someone associated with Peters.” They concluded, “Peters did not offer enough support for her conclusory assertion that the juror was biased.”
In other words, Barrett denied the motion to investigate, and the appellate court upheld that decision, saying that Peters had not shown enough proof to require an investigation. But that raises the question: How does a defendant prove possible juror bias if the court will not allow a hearing to investigate it?
Bond and Appeals Denied
In Colorado, in order to be considered for bond pending appeal, a defendant must generally show she is not a flight risk, does not pose a danger to the community, has a record of appearing in court, and has at least a meaningful basis for appeal.
Peters—a nonviolent, first-time offender—checked all those boxes, and yet she was denied bond time and time again.
Despite Wood’s lie carrying the case before the grand jury and again at trial, despite the defense Peters was denied, and despite the tainted juror who sat in judgment, the appellate court upheld the prosecution and the trial court at nearly every turn—until it finally got one thing right: Barrett’s sentence could not stand.
A First Amendment Problem
During sentencing, Judge Matthew Barrett subjected Peters to an embarrassingly theatrical lecture where he claimed her words were “just as bad, if not worse, than the physical violence that [his] court sees on an all too regular basis.”
He concluded that “prison is…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 mouth.”
During oral arguments for Peters’ appeal, Judge Welling said, “My read of the transcript is that the judge considered [Peters’s belief on election fraud] and that went into the calculation of the sentence. That’s a First Amendment problem.”
Judge Tow agreed: “You can’t sentence her more because you disagree with what she said.”
Judge Lipinski agreed, saying the concern was especially significant because Barrett had strictly curtailed what Peters was allowed to say in her defense. “On the one hand, the court says, ‘Ms. Peters you can’t [talk about election fraud].’ On the other hand, he refers to those same beliefs when sentencing her.”
Judge Welling agreed: “You don’t get to ride both horses.”
In their unanimous decision, the appellate judges ordered a resentencing for Peters. She asked that a new judge be appointed for resentencing, but the court denied that request, sending the decision back to Barrett.
Thankfully, before Barrett could resentence, Governor Jared Polis—somewhat unexpectedly—intervened and granted Peters clemency, saying that no one in America should be given a longer sentence because the judge doesn’t agree with them.
A few weeks earlier, Polis indicated he was leaning towards mercy when he posted the following on X:
Last week, former State Senator Sonya Jaquez Lewis was sentenced to probation and community service after being convicted of four felonies….it is not lost on me that she was convicted of the exact same felony charge as Tina Peters — attempting to influence a public official — and yet Tina Peters, as a non-violent first-time offender, got a nine-year sentence. Justice in Colorado and America needs to be applied evenly…”
On June 1st, after 606 days behind bars, Peters walked out of the La Vista Correctional Facility in Pueblo, Colorado.
The Final Danger
The most interesting thing about the Tina Peters case is not what she did. Backing up a computer is boring—and Peters wasn’t the only one to do it. Douglas County Clerk Merlin Klotz told CPR, “We always took a full image backup of our server before a trusted build.” Elbert County Clerk Dallas Schroeder also acknowledged making a copy of his county’s election server.
What was unusual was Griswold’s response. Rather than examine the affidavits, review the Mesa Reports, or seriously probe the companies at the center of those allegations—as other secretaries of state had done—Griswold flipped the script. She activated a machine of federal and state agencies, government officials, politicians, prosecutors, and the press, all moving in one direction: to criminalize the very clerk and private citizens who had brought those concerns forward in the first place.
Griswold’s inverted approach flipped justice on its head. Plenty of criminals have gone to prison for destroying evidence. Peters was the first to go for preserving it.
Through the Tina Peters case, we saw what the machine can do. It can put its boot on one woman’s neck and never let up. It can use lawfare to win in court. It can use biased reporting to manipulate public opinion. And it can draft new legislation to seize control and consolidate power.
But perhaps the greatest danger the machine poses is the fear it teaches the rest of us to carry: the fear that makes us stop asking questions, stop speaking plainly, and censor our opinions in front of our neighbors, friends, and even our own families, all to avoid being branded with the tinfoil hat.
That is how history gets rewritten. Not by force alone. But through silence.
Had God given Tina Peters less grit or a softer spine, it may have worked on her. She may have acquiesced, admitted fault, and helped write the ending they wanted.
We’re lucky she didn’t.
Now that she’s free, Peters has no intention of lowering her voice. And we can’t either.
The following people did not respond to requests for comment on this article: Charles Ashby, Lynn Bartels, Conan Hayes, Jena Griswold, Beth McCann, Dan Rubinstein, Wayne Williams, and Gerald Wood.
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