The word “unprecedented” has appeared in legal filings to describe more than one of President Donald Trump’s actions in the opening days of his second term. Ditto alleged attacks on the rule of law.
One of the latest examples presenting both claims comes in response to the Trump Justice Department’s bid to intervene in the Colorado state criminal case of Tina Peters. She’s the former county clerk who was convicted and sentenced to nine years in prison for tampering with voting machines in a failed bid to prove they were used to rig the 2020 election against Trump.
So, what does the federal government have to do with this case?
Arguably nothing.
But the DOJ still filed a “statement of interest” in Peters’ case, in which the government requested “prompt and careful consideration” of her claims. The government’s filing last week said “[r]easonable concerns have been raised about various aspects of Ms. Peters’ case,” citing, among other things, her “exceptionally lengthy sentence” and the First Amendment. The filing also said the DOJ is reviewing cases across the country “for abuses of the criminal justice process” and that Peters’ case will be included in that review.
Colorado Attorney General Philip Weiser’s office responded to the statement on Tuesday. He called the DOJ’s “unprecedented and extraordinary” intervention “a naked, political attempt to threaten or intimidate either this Court or the attorneys that prosecuted this matter.” He further noted that the federal statement “cites not a single fact to support its baseless allegations that there are any reasonable concerns about Ms. Peters’ prosecution or sentence, or that the prosecution was politically motivated in any way.”
“Rather,” Weiser said in the filing signed by state solicitor general Shannon Stevenson, “what appears ‘politically motivated’ — and a grotesque attempt to weaponize the rule of law — is the very statement the United States has filed.”
The state said it’s “unnecessary and unwarranted” for the federal government to weigh in here because it has an interest in fairness in all cases but “has singled out this case in which to wield its power for the benefit of a party who has aligned herself politically with the President.”
While the Peters matter is pending, the Trump administration is separately defending his executive order targeting a disfavored law firm in Washington, D.C., as we await word from a federal judge in New York on the DOJ’s quest to dismiss New York Mayor Eric Adams’ case in a way that would give the Republican administration continued leverage over the Democrat. Against that backdrop and the rest of the administration’s actions in this nascent term and Trump’s first one, the Peters intervention seems to fit well within his view of “law and order.”
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