Judge Points Out Glaring Typo While Denying Pro-Trump Election Worker’s Petition to Get Out of Prison

Larry Robinson/The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel via AP

Former Colorado election official Tina Peters’ latest effort to get out of prison flopped Monday, as a federal magistrate judge denied her habeas corpus petition because her state-level appeals had not yet run their course.

Peters, a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump who shared his penchant for baselessly claiming he lost the 2020 election because of fraud, served as the Mesa County Clerk and Recorder. She was indicted in 2022 for allowing an unauthorized person — later discovered to be affiliated with MyPillow founder and fellow election conspiracy monger Mike Lindell — to access and tamper with the county election equipment, breaking into the voting machines under her supervision and copying data that was later leaked online.

She was convicted of seven felonies (including attempting to influence a public servant, criminal impersonation, first-degree official misconduct, violation of duty, and failure to comply with the statutory requirements of her role as clerk) and then sentenced to nine years in prison in October 2024.

Trump has repeatedly and vociferously attacked the prosecutors, the judge, and others involved in convicting Peters, complaining it was caused by “Communist persecution by the Radical Left Democrats to cover up their Election crimes and misdeeds in 2020″ — even though the DA was a Republican.

The president has gone so far as to threaten the state of Colorado with “harsh measures,” attacking Colorado Gov. Jared Polis by name, if Peters were not released, but angry Truth Social posts cannot actually free her, and Trump’s pardon power is powerless, as it only is for federal crimes, not Peters’ state-level convictions.

Monday’s ruling from Chief U.S. Magistrate Judge Scott T. Varholak with the District Court of Colorado centered on that same state vs. federal issue in denying Peters’ habeas corpus petition, a legal pleading that seeks to have the court review the petitioner’s imprisonment, bring the petitioner to court, and decide if their continued imprisonment is lawful.

In his 12-page opinion, Varholak cited a decades-old legal precedent that “federal courts are prohibited from interfering with ongoing state criminal proceedings absent extraordinary or special circumstances,” and found that such circumstances were not present in Peters’ case.

“[T]here are ongoing state criminal proceedings against Ms. Peters,” Varholak noted, and the issue she was arguing that her First Amendment rights were violated was “intricately intertwined with her current appeal,” plus “there exists the presence of an important state interest.”

Furthermore, the judge wrote, Peters “had the opportunity to raise her claim [about the First Amendment arguments] during the state criminal proceedings.”

It was “[w]ithout question” that Peters was raising “important constitutional questions concerning whether the trial court improperly punished her more severely because of her protected First Amendment speech,” Varholak declared, “[b]ut because this question remains pending before Colorado courts, this Court must abstain from answering that question until after the Colorado courts have decided the issue.”

Several keen-eyed commenters noted that the judge had noted a typo in the title of Peters’ motion (highlighting of relevant text added to screenshot below):

Screenshot via Court Listener.

“Petitioner’s Emergency Motion for Court to Issue Expidited (sic) Opinion And Order on Petitioner’s Application for a Writ of Habeas Corpus,” the motion’s title read, misspelling the word “expedited.”

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