Infinity Pool Trailer #1 (2023)

An appeals court tossed out a nine-year sentence for discredited Colorado election clerk Tina Peters.

The Donald Trump ally will be re-sentenced by a district court judge after the Colorado Court of Appeals upheld her conviction but found that Mesa County District Court Judge Matthew Barrett had wrongly based part of his sentence on Peters’ exercise of her right to free speech, reported the Denver Post.

“Notwithstanding the fact that some of the trial court’s considerations were tied to proper sentencing considerations, when the court’s comments are viewed in their totality, it is apparent that the court imposed the lengthy sentence it did because Peters continued to espouse the views that led her to commit these crimes,” the opinion states.

The "tenor" of Barrett's original sentencing order indicates that he "punished" Peters for her persistence in insisting the 2020 election had been fraudulent and that keeping her in prison was necessary to prevent her from espousing views the judge felt were "damaging," and the appeals court sent the case back to him for a resentencing.

The appellate court found there was sufficient evidence to convict Peters and that she was not immune to state prosecution, and the judges also found that a purported pardon from Trump carried no authority under Colorado law.

The court denied Peters' request that a new judge resentence her, saying that issue should be raised in a lower court, and ruled that a prosecutor’s description of her case during closing arguments had no impact on the verdict.

“The evidence of her knowledge of the illegality of her conduct is so overwhelming, we simply cannot say that the prosecutor’s statement (even if improper) had any impact on the verdict, let alone an impact so great as to cause serious doubt about the reliability of the judgment of conviction,” the panel found.

Peters, now 70, was convicted by a Mesa County jury of four felony and three misdemeanor crimes for plotting to sneak unauthorized individuals into a secure area to examine voting equipment to look for evidence of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

President Donald Trump criticized Republican Senate leadership Sunday for having supported a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) without funding for two key immigration enforcement agencies, calling their actions “a shame.”

“It's a shame. They should really just go to a filibuster, they should terminate the filibuster and they should vote, that's what I think,” Trump told a reporter aboard Air Force One on Sunday.

“I think the Senate is playing it too soft – the Republicans. They're wonderful people, but we're dealing with very sick individuals – the Democrats are sick, there's something wrong, they're like terrorists!”

In the middle of the night last week, the Senate passed a bill to fund DHS and end the ongoing partial government shutdown that has sparked chaos and long lines at airports nationwide. House Republican leadership, however, rejected the bill and instead put forward their own alternative to fund DHS.

Donald Trump may have partly written the most recent White House East Wing court filing with his legal team, an analyst has claimed.

Trump has faced a series of legal challenges against his White House renovations, particularly a $400 million ballroom project and the refurbishing of the Eisenhower Building's exterior. A legal team working for Trump asked an appeals court yesterday (April 3) for an emergency ruling, which, if granted, would allow construction on the East Wing to continue.

The documents making the argument to the appeals court appear to have been partly written by the president himself, according to CBS News' Arden Farhi.

He wrote, "The opening pages of the court filing are loaded with exclamation points ('Time is of the essence!'), parenthetical asides, misplaced capital letters ('Almost 400 Million Dollars of private donations'), and multiple adjectives for emphasis ('shocking, unprecedented, and improper injunction') – all rhetorical flourishes of the president's online posts.

"One sentence runs 130 words and covers more than half a page. 'Private donors and American Patriots singlehandedly funded the 300 to 400 Million Dollar project (depending on finishes), which is on budget and ahead of schedule.

"'No taxpayer dollars are being used for the funding of this beautiful, desperately needed, and completely secure (for national security purposes) ballroom,' the filing reads."

It has not been confirmed whether Trump wrote any part of the recent legal filing. The administration has put in new fiscal requests for this year, which include hundreds of millions of dollars for the project.

The administration’s fiscal 2026 proposal includes more than $377 million “for repairs and renovations to the executive residence,” with another $174 million projected for 2027, according to budget documents reported by Politico.

An Office of Management and Budget spokesperson told Politico that the totals include not only work on the residence itself, but also security-related costs, adding the funding is for “a number of renovations, not just the executive residence.” The budget does not specify which projects the money would fund, Politico noted Friday.