Colorado’s election-denying clerk turned herself in to law enforcement for violating the terms of her release less than a week after she persuaded a judge not to send her back to jail for improperly traveling out of state while awaiting trial for breaking into her county’s election system.
Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters was booked at the Pitkin County jail at 9:22 p.m. Thursday, Parker Lathrop, the county's chief deputy of operations, said.
She was released after paying bond later that night, according to Lathrop.
Peters is under indictment in a break-in of the county’s election system to search for evidence of former President Donald Trump’s election claims. A judge barred Peters from overseeing last year’s local elections or this year’s.
Peters lost her bid for the Republican Party nomination for Colorado Secretary of State last month. After the Secretary of State’s office told her she was not entitled to a hand recount under the law, Peters contacted dozens of county election offices asking them to do their own. One of those, authorities said, was Mesa County’s in violation of her release.
Last week, Peters’ attorneys convinced a judge not to send her back to jail for traveling to Nevada to speak to a conference of conservative sheriffs — a violation of the terms of her release, which prohibited her from leaving the state without approval. But her attorneys said they were to blame for the trip because they didn’t tell her not to travel.
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