Tina Peters, the former Mesa County clerk recently released from prison, warned supporters that what happened to her could happen to them, too, if they did not “stand up and fight back” at an event at the Douglas County Fairgrounds.

Peters was one of several speakers at “Freedom Fest,” a two-day event featuring Republican politicians, commentators and influencers. The event was hosted by Rocky Mountain Voice, a media outlet founded by former University of Colorado Regent and Republican gubernatorial candidate Heidi Ganahl.

Other speakers included Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Fox News host Greg Gutfeld and television personality Dog the Bounty Hunter.

“Here’s the reality of it: if we don’t stand up and we don’t fight back now, what happened to me will happen to each one of you,” Peters told attendees during her speech on Friday.

Peters, a Republican who served one term following her 2018 election, was serving a roughly nine-year prison sentence for a mixture of felony and misdemeanor offenses related to a security breach of her office’s voting equipment in 2021. Broadly, jurors found that Peters had used deception to enable unauthorized access to a “trusted build” update of her county’s election software and that videos and images from the update were later posted online. 

Last May, Gov. Jared Polis commuted her sentence, arguing that nine years was an “extremely unusual and lengthy sentence” for a first-time offender who committed a nonviolent offense.

Peters was released from prison on June 1.

While the governor commuted her sentence, Peters said she is still “in the throes of a fight.” Days after Polis announced he was commuting Peters’ sentence, her lawyers filed an appeal with the Colorado Supreme Court seeking to reverse her convictions. The court has not yet acted on her petition.

“This needs to go to SCOTUS, because when you are fulfilling a federal obligation, which I did in preserving federal election records, it’s called the Supremacy Clause,” she said. “It’s something that needs to be settled once and for all that a state cannot come against you for doing that.”

Peters spoke of her time in prison. In her closing comments, she told her audience to protect their liberty at all costs.

“This is our 1776 moment,” she said. “You cannot back down; you cannot give up, and you cannot give in. There’s a lot of work that still needs to be done.”

Reporters Michael Karlik and O’Dell Isaac contributed to this story.