Trump again demands Colorado governor free convicted election clerk Tina Peters
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President Donald Trump on Wednesday renewed his call for the release of pro-Trump election worker Tina Peters, who was convicted for her role in a scheme aimed at finding evidence of voter fraud in the president’s 2020 election loss.
Peters, a former elections clerk in Colorado’s Mesa County, is serving a nine-year prison sentence after being convicted in August 2024 on seven charges, including four felonies, related to the 2021 security breach of the county’s voting systems, as Trump sought evidence to support his claims that his loss to former President Joe Biden was due to voter fraud.
Trump has been pressuring Democratic Gov. Jared Polis to release Peters, 70, since returning to the White House last year.
“73-year-old cancer patient Tina Peters was sentenced to nine years in a Colorado prison by Democratic governor Jared Polis and a corrupt political machine for exposing fraud by Democrats during the 2020 presidential election,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Wednesday. “Once again, release Tina!”
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President Donald Trump continued his calls for the release of Tina Peters. (Photo: Marc Piscotty/Getty Images)
Police accepted the sentence was “severe” because Peters had no previous criminal record.
The governor recently noted on social media that Peters was sentenced to nine years in prison, while a former state lawmaker convicted of the same crime was sentenced to only probation and community service.
“Justice needs to be administered equally in Colorado and America; you never know when you may have to rely on the rule of law. I use this context when considering cases like this with sentencing disparities,” Polis wrote to X.
But Polis said the pardon decision will be made depending on whether Peters expresses remorse for his actions, which authorities say he did not take.
“What a successful pardon application would have to show would be appropriate remorse and apology. That’s what I’m looking for,” he previously told KUSA-TV. he said.
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President Donald Trump has been pressuring Gov. Jared Polis to release Peters since he returned to the White House last year. (The Denver Post via Hyoung Chang/MediaNews Group/Getty Images)
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, whose office helped prosecute Peters, emphasized that he showed no remorse for his actions.
“Pardons should be based on remorse, rehabilitation and mitigating circumstances, not political influence, favor or punishment,” said Weiser, a Democrat who is running to replace the term-limited Polis.
U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., who hopes to replace Polis as governor. Similarly, he said Peters should not be pardoned or his sentence commuted.
“Donald Trump may want revenge on Colorado, but giving in to his political pressure will not make our state stronger or safer,” he said.
Trump has repeatedly defended Peters on social media and announced last year that he would grant Peters a “full pardon,” but since that authority rests with the governor, such a move would not apply to a state conviction.
Earlier this week, a federal judge found that the Trump administration had threatened to withhold funding from Colorado, describing it as potential retaliation for the state’s reluctance to pardon Peters. The finding came shortly after Trump announced a symbolic pardon.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly defended Tina Peters on social media. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo)
U.S. District Court Judge R. Brooke Jackson wrote that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s threat in December to withhold millions of dollars in federal funding to Colorado’s SNAP program violated the Spending Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
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“This broader context gives the game away; the pilot project appears to be about punishment and nothing else,” the judge wrote.
A lawsuit filed this week alleged that the Trump administration targeted a climate and weather research laboratory in retaliation against Colorado officials who imprisoned Peters.
Fox News’ Anders Hagstrom contributed to this report.
