Jerry Cantrell @ Town Ballroom

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.

Jon Stewart questioned MAGA voters just now breaking with Donald Trump over the Iran war, arguing Trump has always been the same "movie trailer president."

The post Jon Stewart Shames Trump Voters Suddenly Breaking with President on Iran: ‘It So Frustrates Me’ first appeared on Mediaite.

The New York Times editorial board condemned President Donald Trump's decision to pardon approximately 1,500 Jan. 6 rioters, many of whom have since committed additional crimes.

Unlike past presidents who issued controversial pardons near the end of their terms, Trump deployed what MAGA ally Steve Bannon described as a "flood the zone" strategy: issuing so many pardons so quickly that public attention cannot keep up with the consequences.

The Times documented 12 serious recidivists, including four who were incarcerated at the time of their pardons and subsequently committed new offenses.

The board stated, "The American public deserves to understand the mayhem that the Jan. 6 pardons have unleashed."

The editorial warned that Trump and Republicans face accountability through midterm elections, arguing voters must deliver "a political price" for the pardons. The Times noted Trump continues valorizing the Capitol attack, which included threats against the Vice President, assaults on police officers, and resulted in one officer's death from strokes and four officers' suicides.

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