Colorado elections clerk Tina Peters released from prison after sentence commuted | Colorado
Tina Peters, the former clerk convicted of participating in a scheme to pursue election conspiracy theories promulgated by Donald Trump, was released from prison Monday after the president successfully pressured Colorado’s Democratic governor to commute her sentence.
Peters’ release was confirmed by the Colorado Department of Corrections. State agency says it will not have further information about 70-year-old man
His sentence was shortened by Colorado governor Jared Polis in May after Trump launched a lengthy pressure campaign against the governor and his state.
Peters served less than a quarter of his nine-year sentence.
Peters became the first local election official to be accused of violating security following the 2020 election, which Trump lost to Joe Biden at the end of his first presidency.
He snuck in an outside computer expert tied to MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who himself denied that Trump lost the White House in 2020, and cloned the county’s Dominion Voting Systems computer server, updated in 2021.
Peters later joined Lindell onstage at a “cybersymposium” that promised to reveal evidence of election fraud. Video and photos of the computer system upgrade, including passwords, were posted online. The move fueled false claims that voting machines were manipulated to steal the election from Trump.
Peters was convicted in 2024 of attempting to influence a public official, conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, breach of duty and other charges by jurors in Mesa County, a stronghold of Trump-supporting Republicans. The appeals court upheld his conviction in April but ordered Peters re-sentenced because it said the judge who sent Peters to prison unfairly punished him for speaking out about election fraud.
Trump supported Peters’ case but did not have the authority to pardon Peters because he was convicted under state law. Instead, the president pressured Polis to do so, berating him on social media and banning him from attending a White House meeting with other governors. The Trump administration also announced plans to disband the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado and move the U.S. space command to Alabama.
Police commuted Peters’ sentence on May 15. He wrote in a letter that although Peters was convicted of serious crimes and deserved to remain in prison, the sentence was “highly unusual and lengthy” for a first-time nonviolent offender.
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, also a Democrat, called the move a “dark day for democracy” and said it amounted to “selling out our state’s justice system for Trump.”
