\n<\/p>\n
Tina Peters<\/span> is supposed to spend the next eight years of her life in prison. The former Colorado county clerk was convicted last year of charges tied to tampering with voting equipment under her control in 2020. President Donald Trump has repeatedly called for Peters\u2019s release, warning of \u201charsh measures\u201d if she remains incarcerated. But even a president obsessed with retribution, who granted blanket clemency to people convicted of federal offenses connected to the January 6, 2021, attacks on the Capitol, can\u2019t erase Peters\u2019s sentence. Her state-level conviction is beyond the reach of his federal pardon power. And so she sits in a Colorado prison, the most prominent MAGA prisoner still behind bars.<\/p>\n The sprawling campaign to \u201cFree Tina Peters\u201d is testing Colorado\u2019s authority to enforce its own laws without interference from a federal government that wants to undo a conviction handed down by a jury. Trump\u2014aided by the Justice Department, the Bureau of Prisons, White House counsel, and MAGA activists\u2014is seeking to unravel her punishment in multiple ways, with the hope that one might work: a transfer into federal custody, a full pardon, or a release before the end of her sentence. (Her attorney and the Trump ally Steve Bannon recently floated on a podcast the idea of having Trump call in the 101st Airborne Division to set her free. The attorney said he\u2019d \u201clove to see that happen.\u201d)<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s embrace of Peters\u2019s cause threatens to erode the public\u2019s trust in the validity of electoral outcomes and the independence of state criminal-justice systems, constitutional experts told me. Election officials from around the country who have faced years of violent threats and harassment for defending the 2020 presidential vote\u2014and each election since\u2014told me the clamor around Peters signals to those who may seek to interfere in the 2026 midterm elections that they can flout the law with support from the White House.<\/p>\n Trump posted on Truth Social yesterday that he is granting Peters a \u201cfull Pardon,\u201d but legal experts said his power doesn\u2019t extend to state charges. The one person who could free Peters\u2014Colorado Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat who has issued tepid public statements on the case, seems disinclined to offer Peters, a 70-year-old lung-cancer survivor, any leniency.<\/p>\n \u201cI, like the president, have the values of compassion and mercy, and there\u2019s been times when people are ill and we\u2019ve let them out,\u201d he told me in an interview this month. So far, he said, \u201cthe indications I\u2019ve seen are that she\u2019s healthy.\u201d If circumstances change, he added, \u201cI\u2019ve told people publicly, as well as the White House,\u201d that \u201cwe would consider doing something.\u201d<\/p>\n In Mesa County, along the state\u2019s snowy western slopes, where Peters once served as the chief election official, most people I spoke with seem to think that she is exactly where she belongs. \u201cThere\u2019s not an uprising in Colorado to free Tina Peters,\u201d Scott McInnis, a Republican who served as a congressman and county commissioner, told me.<\/p>\n But far from the state correctional facility where she finds herself, the effort to release Peters continues. Her attorney pursued Trump\u2019s pardon for his client, who once regaled crowds with elaborate election-cheating theories. Peters is deteriorating in prison, even struggling to finish her own sentences, according to friends and attorneys who have seen her.<\/p>\n \u201cWhere is everybody,\u201d read part of an \u201cUPDATE FROM TINA PETERS: 364 Days of Injustice\u201d posted on X in October. \u201cThe President has demanded my release four times \u2026 Why is the DOJ defying Trump\u2019s demands? Get off your asses and get me out!\u201d<\/p>\n Before<\/span> she was celebrated as a martyr to the MAGA cause, Peters, with a white bob and red lipstick, was seen among supporters as a whistleblower who revealed irregularities in her county\u2019s voting systems. Although Trump overwhelmingly won Mesa County in the 2020 election, he lost Colorado and its nine electoral votes.<\/p>\n In 2021, Peters believed she was in a position to help prove his stolen-election claims. Prosecutors said she deceived colleagues to obtain credentials that allowed an unauthorized person to access the county\u2019s election equipment. Last year, a jury found her guilty of seven counts, including attempting to influence a public servant and conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation. Before sentencing her to almost nine years in prison, the judge said he was convinced she would commit her crimes again, if she could.<\/p>\n \u201cYou are no hero, you abused your position, and you\u2019re a charlatan who used and is still using your prior position in office to peddle a snake oil that\u2019s been proven to be junk time and time again,\u201d Judge Matthew Barrett told her. Her constant undermining of election systems presented an immeasurable danger to democracy, he said.<\/p>\n Peters\u2019s X account has continued to offer dubious election claims. (No one in her circle would say whether Peters, who is being held at a women\u2019s prison in Pueblo, is actually posting the missives or whether someone else is.) She is appealing her conviction. Her legal team, political allies, and grassroots supporters have also spent much of the past year working to get Trump\u2019s attention.<\/p>\n Shortly before the president\u2019s inauguration, Peters\u2019s X account noted that Polis was the only person who could pardon her, and tagged Trump. Soon after, her case was discussed with Trump as he hosted members of Congress at Mar-a-Lago, a person briefed on the discussion told me. Representative Lauren Boebert, a Colorado Republican who once represented Mesa County, spoke about the need to keep the U.S. Space Command\u2019s headquarters in Colorado. Someone else brought up Peters\u2019s case, the person said, and the president made clear he didn\u2019t think the state should have put her in prison.<\/p>\n Soon after, amid a years-long battle over the future of the command, which is responsible for military operations in space, Boebert spoke to Polis and said that a Peters pardon could help prevent the president from relocating the headquarters, the person said. Polis told me he talks regularly with Boebert but doesn\u2019t remember \u201ca particular discussion\u201d where Peters \u201cwas discussed in the same breath\u201d as the Space Command. (The congresswoman and her team didn\u2019t answer my questions.)<\/p>\n The Justice Department lent its support to a federal habeas corpus petition that Peters brought earlier this year, a move described to me by former federal and state prosecutors as extraordinary. Citing a Trump executive order to address what the president described as the misuse of the government against political foes during the Biden administration, Justice Department lawyers said they were reviewing Peters\u2019s prosecution to determine if it was \u201coriented more toward inflicting political pain\u201d than pursuing justice. Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, a Democrat, said in a court filing that DOJ\u2019s intervention in the case was \u201cunprecedented, highly problematic, and a threat to the rule of law.\u201d A federal judge rejected the petition this week, saying that state court proceedings needed to play out. But the judge wrote that Peters raised \u201cimportant constitutional questions concerning whether the trial court improperly punished her more severely because of her protected First Amendment speech.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump has taken to Truth Social to argue that Peters was wrongly convicted and to threaten unspecified \u201charsh measures\u201d if she remained incarcerated. He called her an \u201cinnocent Political Prisoner\u201d and directed the DOJ to \u201ctake all necessary action\u201d to secure her release. \u201cFREE TINA PETERS, NOW!\u201d he wrote in May.<\/p>\n Beyond Peters, Trump had a long list of complaints about Colorado, including efforts to keep him off the 2024 ballot, his subsequent 11-point election loss, and a portrait in the state capitol he denounced as \u201cpurposefully distorted\u201d before its removal. In September, Trump announced he was moving the Space Command\u2019s\u00a0 headquarters to Alabama, which the Department of the Air Force years ago identified as its preferred location. The president said Colorado\u2019s \u201ccrooked\u201d vote-by-mail system as a \u201cbig factor\u201d in his decision. A White House official noted that Trump had chosen to house the headquarters in Alabama during his first term, before Joe Biden relocated it to Colorado. \u201cPOTUS was simply restoring his first term decision,\u201d the official wrote in a statement.<\/p>\n Sitting inside the lobby of a Phoenix hotel during the Democratic Governors Association retreat this month, Polis would not say whether he had talked privately with the president about Peters. \u201cI would just say any conversations have just been consistent,\u201d he told me. When I asked Polis if Peters was a factor in any negotiations over the Space Command, the governor replied, \u201cShe committed a crime and she was prosecuted by a Republican DA in a Republican county, convicted by a jury of her peers in a very Republican area in our state.\u201d<\/p>\n In early<\/span> November, the president and his aides started searching for information about Dan Rubinstein, the Mesa County district attorney whose office had brought the case against Peters. Jeff Hurd, the Republican who represents the county in Congress, told the president that Rubinstein was a conservative and a principled lawman, two people familiar with their discussion told me.<\/p>\n On November 7, David Warrington, the top lawyer in the White House, sought to speak to Rubinstein, leaving a voicemail I obtained in response to a request for public records. \u201cPresident Trump asked me to give you a call about a matter,\u201d Warrington said. Rubinstein confirmed to me that he spoke with Warrington about Peters but would not divulge any details. A White House spokesperson did not comment on the call.<\/p>\n Days later, the Federal Bureau of Prisons asked state correctional officials to transfer Peters into its custody. The motivation for the request is unknown, but it coincided with an amplified social-media campaign mounted by MAGA influencers to get Peters released, along with claims from her attorneys and allies that she was \u201cwitness\u201d to election crimes perpetrated by Democrats. Her lawyers and friends also said she had a worrisome persistent cough.<\/p>\n The Colorado Department of Corrections has not granted the request. Polis told me that Peters does not meet the criteria that would lead to a federal transfer\u2014she\u2019s not in danger, he said, and she doesn\u2019t present a danger to others: \u201cNeither one seems to be the case with this inmate, so our Department of Corrections has not requested a transfer.\u201d Peters\u2019s former colleagues have been more vocal. Giving Peters special treatment, they said, would undermine the entire judicial system. \u201cIt would imply that accountability for violations of Colorado law can be negotiated or avoided, while those who acted honorably were left to face the consequences alone,\u201d the Colorado County Clerks Association wrote in a letter to the governor.<\/p>\n In a separate letter, Rubinstein and Weiser, the attorney general, described the transfer request to Polis as an attempt to bypass the state\u2019s judicial system\u2014\u201call to offer a politically connected inmate the comforts of an easier sentence.\u201d At worst, they wrote, moving her to federal custody \u201ccould aid the unauthorized or illegal release of a convicted felon.\u201d<\/p>\n Sitting behind his desk, near a giant portrait of Lady Justice, Rubinstein told me the federal government\u2019s role in his business is limited. \u201cThis is a crime of local interest,\u201d he said, adding, \u201cWe should be able to charge, try, and punish someone who commits crimes against our local people without interference.\u201d<\/p>\n From Washington, Trump continued his pressure campaign, posting on his Truth Social that Peters was sitting in prison, \u201cDYING & OLD.\u201d<\/p>\n If Peters<\/span> does not win her appeal, her attorney Peter Ticktin told me, she hopes to serve the remainder of her sentence at a federal women\u2019s prison\u2014preferably the Federal Prison Camp in Alderson, West Virginia (where Martha Stewart served five months and learned how to crochet). Ticktin, a longtime friend of Trump, said it\u2019s a better fit for the Gold Star mom, who he doesn\u2019t think should be living with so many violent criminals. (She has been threatened and attacked, he wrote in a letter this month to Trump and his pardon office.) Plus, he said, she\u2019d be close enough to Washington, D.C., that it would be easy for federal authorities to question her about the alleged election-related crimes she claims to have witnessed in Colorado.<\/p>\n Ticktin insists the transfer idea isn\u2019t a backdoor way to win her release. \u201cShe\u2019s not getting freed if that process takes place,\u201d he said. If the U.S. were to take custody of her under false pretenses and then free her, he said, \u201cthat would destroy the whole system.\u201d<\/p>\n Ticktin, who helped secure pardons for some of the January 6 rioters, said he is in touch with Ed Martin, Trump\u2019s pardon attorney. Martin has indicated on social media and Bannon\u2019s show that he is working to help Peters. In September, Martin said on his personal X account that Peters had just talked to him from prison. \u201cTina,\u201d he wrote, \u201cwe are coming for you, M\u2019am.\u201d The Justice Department declined to comment.<\/p>\n Ticktin aggressively sought a presidential pardon for Peters, and he described to me at length a novel legal theory that would allow Trump\u2019s decision to apply to state crimes. \u201cI know that this may not seem like something that makes sense, because everybody knows that a president can only pardon for federal crimes,\u201d Ticktin told me. \u201cBut that\u2019s not actually true.\u201d He rooted around for a copy of the Constitution, and directed me to Article II, Section 2, which says: \u201cThe President \u2026 shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.\u201d Ticktin argues that at the time that it was written, \u201cUnited States\u201d referred to the individual states, not to a federal entity as it does today.<\/p>\n \u201cIt does not make sense that they intended to give individual states the power to circumvent the President\u2019s power to pardon,\u201d he wrote in a letter to Trump and the pardon office after we spoke. \u201cThe matter of Tina Peters is a perfect example of how the power of the President is being circumvented.\u201d<\/p>\n Ticktin told me he thinks his argument \u201cwill pass muster before the Supreme Court.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite<\/span> the president\u2019s attention and the clamor online within MAGA, there\u2019s little uproar over Peters\u2019s sentence in Grand Junction, Colorado, where she worked as the county clerk. \u201cI\u2019ve just sort of stopped paying attention,\u201d one woman told me outside of the bagel shop where, police said, Peters resisted arrest. A half dozen people at a restaurant said they had little sympathy for Peters. Others said they were horrified at the prospect that a jury verdict could be overridden by the federal government. A few Republicans told me they thought that Peters broke the law but that her sentence was excessive. Peters\u2019s successor at the clerk\u2019s office, Bobbie Gross, a Republican, prefers not to talk about the office\u2019s prior occupant. But it\u2019s becoming impossible not to. Polis, she said, \u201cis going to pick a path, whatever that might be.\u201d Hours after I met with her, Trump had more to say on Truth Social. He called Polis a \u201cSLEAZEBAG\u201d and \u201clightweight\u201d who let his state \u201cgo to hell.\u201d The president signed off: \u201cFREE TINA!\u201d<\/p>\n This week, the Justice Department\u2019s Civil Rights Division said it opened a civil investigation into conditions at Colorado correctional facilities and residential youth centers. The probe, viewed by some as retribution for Peters\u2019s incarceration, will examine among other things whether the state provides adequate medical care and safe and sanitary conditions at its prisons. The DOJ did not respond to a request for comment. Harmeet Dhillon, the division head, noted on X that her office is also investigating prisons in other states. The Justice Department, she wrote, \u201chas a duty to protect all Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s pardon announcement came in a Truth Social post \u201cgranting Tina a full Pardon for her attempts to expose Voter Fraud in the Rigged 2020 Presidential Election!\u201d The idea that a president could pardon someone tried and convicted in state court, Weiser said in response to the post, \u201chas no precedent in American law, would be an outrageous departure from what our constitution requires, and will not hold up.\u201d<\/p>\n Other legal experts tell me that Trump and Peters\u2019s lawyers will have a difficult task convincing the Supreme Court that presidential pardons extend to state crimes. Instead, Peters\u2019s best chance of relief lies in Polis or the state\u2019s parole board (she is eligible to appear before it in January 2029). The date falls after<\/em> the presidential election, the lead-up to which will surely bring more of the conspiracy theories and misinformation that led Peters to prison. Election clerks nationwide take pride in the work they have done to ensure their voting systems are safe and secure. They frequently invoke her crimes and conviction as the price to be paid for breaking the law. And the question posed by the county clerks\u2019 letter hovers over Peters\u2019s case: What message would it send to the thousands of people who diligently carry out the democratic process if someone who continues to undermine it from a prison cell is rewarded by the hand of a president?<\/p>\n Michael Scherer and Sarah Fitzpatrick contributed reporting. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tina Peters is supposed to spend the next eight years of her life in prison. The former Colorado county clerk was convicted last year of charges tied to tampering with voting equipment under her control in 2020. President Donald Trump has repeatedly called for Peters\u2019s release, warning of \u201charsh measures\u201d if she remains incarcerated. But<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37149,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[1671,4014,12922],"class_list":{"0":"post-37148","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-social-issues","8":"tag-atlantic","9":"tag-maga","10":"tag-prisoner"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=37148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/37149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=37148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=37148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=37148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}