Lawyers for former Colorado elections clerk Tina Peters will try to convince a state appeals court on Wednesday afternoon to overturn her conviction in a case involving a security breach at the election office she ran. Mesa County jurors convicted Peters last year for her role in a security br each of her office’s voting equipment when she was the elected GOP clerk. She is currently serving a nine-year sentence of incarceration. While she pursued a routine appeal through the state’s Court of Appeals, Peters also filed a federal petition for “habeas corpus,” a legal tool used to challenge one’s confinement. Specifically, Peters sought to be released on bond while her appeal moved forward in state court. She previously asked the Court of Appeals to grant bond, but it denied her request. Trump pardoned Peters in December, but his pardon power does not extend to state crimes. Peters’ lawyers have insisted that Trump has the authority to pardon her, arguing that President George Washington issued pardons to people convicted of both state and federal crimes during the Whiskey Rebellion in 1795. Lawyers for the state pointed out that the governor of Pennsylvania at the time issued pardons to those who broke state laws during the unrest. Peters’ lawyers argued that the president has a right to pardon people who committed crimes to carry out federal duties, such as preserving election information. Peters has claimed she should not have been prosecuted because she had a duty under federal law to preserve them. Peters had used another person’s security badge to allow a former surfer affiliated with Lindell, Conan Hayes, to watch a software update of her county’s election management system. Prosecutors said he made copies of the system’s hard drive before and after the upgrade, and that partially redacted security passwords later turned up online, prompting an investigation. Hayes was not charged with any wrongdoing. Her lawyers also said the partially redacted passwords didn’t pose a security risk and pointed out that some of the same type of voting system passwords for Colorado counties were accidentally posted on a state website until they were discovered in 2024. In the latter case, prosecutors determined there was no intent to commit a crime so no charges were filed. Lawyers for the state have argued that Peters did not need to commit crimes to protect election data because her staff had already backed up the information before the upgrade. Instead, they say the hard drive copies captured proprietary Dominion Voting Systems software. Peters also said District Court Judge Matthew Barrett violated her First Amendment rights by punishing her with a stiff sentence of nearly a decade for making allegations about election fraud. He called her a “charlatan” and said she posed a danger to the community for spreading lies about voting and undermining the democratic process. Last month, Peters lost an attempt in federal court to be released from prison while she appeals her conviction. Her lawyers say she is entitled to at least a new sentencing hearing because Barrett based his sentence partially on a contempt conviction in a related case that the appeals court threw out last year. They also are asking the appeals court to recognize Trump’s pardon and immediately set Peters free. Reporter Michael Karlik and the Associated Press contributed to this article. ...read more read less