Tina Peters met with Trump to discuss election plans, former Trump administration attorney says

A former U.S. Department of Justice attorney said Monday that former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters met with President Donald Trump at the White House to discuss “election integrity” and plans for upcoming elections. 

Ed Martin, who left his position with the Justice Department to take on legal work related to upcoming elections, told Real America’s Voice that Peters, a Republican who was convicted of multiple felonies for her role in a security breach of her office’s election equipment, met with Trump to talk about federal involvement in the November midterm elections.

“It is a local election … there is local control. However, the laws that govern the system, like safety and national security, are federal laws,” Martin said. “And so, when Tina Peters, you know, famous Colorado clerk, was in the Oval Office today just two hours ago talking about this question, the president’s taking it seriously.”

The nature of the plans Peters and Trump discussed are unclear.

The White House does “not comment on private meetings that may or may not have happened,” spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement. Adrienne Mazzone, publicist for Peters’ attorney Peter Ticktin, said Ticktin cannot discuss or confirm matters that fall under attorney-client privilege. An unnamed source confirmed to ABC News that Peters and Trump met Monday.

Martin said if Congress does not pass the SAVE America Act, which would implement a nationwide requirement that voters show documents proving their citizenship, “the president’s going to have to do what he’s going to do.”

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin has said that foreign adversaries have access to voting machines in the U.S., but his department provided no additional details to PolitiFact to clarify what Mullin meant by that. He said adversaries “can change voter registration and your vote,” but voter registration does not involve voting machines, and there’s no proof that foreign actors have tried to manipulate voting machine security controls, an election technology expert told PolitiFact.

The department said it has $1 billion in taxpayer dollars prepared to protect elections, with specific requirements for any government entity to receive grant funding. More recently, department officials said it does not plan to send Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to patrol polling places, but voter advocates remain skeptical of that claim, The Associated Press reported.

While courts have blocked many of his efforts, Trump has taken action to target mail ballots, including an executive order that would have implemented requirements for states to notify the Postal Service if they intend to allow ballots to be sent through the mail.

Trump has repeatedly claimed that mail-in voting is susceptible to widespread fraud. There is no evidence for that, and fraud with mail-in ballots is extremely rare. Colorado’s post-election audits regularly confirm that ballots are counted accurately. Trump voted by mail in Florida’s GOP primary this year and in recent days encouraged supporters to vote any way they can, including by mail.

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, said Peters and Trump “are election deniers who have repeatedly lied to the American people.”

“Coloradans can rest assured knowing that we’ve so far defeated Trump’s unlawful attempts to influence election administration, and we will fight any attempt to interfere with Colorado elections,” Griswold said in a statement.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, cut Peters’ prison sentence earlier this year, and the Colorado Department of Corrections released her in June.