As election denier Tina Peters tries to overturn her conviction, Colorado’s Democratic governor signals openness to clemency
By Marshall Cohen, Fredreka Schouten, CNN
(CNN) — Former election clerk Tina Peters’ prison sentence has long been a rallying cry for President Donald Trump and other 2020 election deniers. Her lawyers returned to court Wednesday to appeal her conviction as Colorado’s Democratic governor has signaled a new openness to letting her out of prison early.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis recently said he’s considering clemency for the 70-year-old Peters – who was convicted in a 2020 election-related data breach scheme – because she is “elderly” and got a “harsh” punishment. While Trump’s symbolic federal pardon of Peters last month has no effect on her state charges, Polis’ recent comments are the strongest indication that he might commute the remainder of her 9-year sentence.
“We’re looking at this across a number of people – people in their 70s and 80s in our system, how much of a threat to society are they?” Polis, who is in his final year in office, told CBS Colorado last week. “We balance that in a way that makes sure that they can spend their last few years at home.”
Colorado officials have faced an intense pressure campaign from the White House over Trump’s demands that they release Peters from prison, with Trump taking several actions against the state in his first year back in office. Both Democratic and Republican election clerks in Colorado have raised concerns about Polis’ comments, arguing that releasing Peters would undermine confidence in elections.
“Ms. Peters’ sentence was not harsh by any reasonable standard,” said Matt Crane, a former GOP clerk who now runs the Colorado County Clerks Association. “Granting clemency to an unrepentant convicted criminal who deliberately sought to undermine our democratic system would be deeply concerning and risks further eroding public trust in the institutions Americans rely on for free and fair elections.”
Peters was convicted in 2024. She’s serving her sentence at a women’s prison in Pueblo and is the only Trump ally currently behind bars for 2020-related crimes.
Peters denies wrongdoing, and a hearing in her appeal was held Wednesday afternoon in Denver. The judges on the appeals panel, all of whom were appointed by a Democratic governor, pressed both sides with tough questions. They might not announce their decision for months.
Peters is listed as having a parole hearing expected in September 2028, according to the Colorado Department of Corrections website. But with Colorado’s parole eligibility rules, and if Peters earns time off for good behavior, she could become eligible to move into a halfway house or a similar arrangement this November, according to Alondra Gonzalez, communications director for the corrections department.
“The Governor takes the responsibility of clemency very seriously, and his team reviews all applications submitted,” Polis spokesperson Shelby Wieman told CNN in an email Tuesday evening. “He will review this inmate’s application just like he would any other.”
One of Peters’ lawyers, Patrick McSweeney, told CNN on Tuesday that Peters was overjoyed by Trump’s symbolic federal pardon, which he believes will help overturn her guilty verdicts even though the president can’t erase state charges. He also said he wasn’t involved in Trump’s other moves against Colorado.
“They could be helpful, or they could antagonize Colorado officials, I just don’t want to weigh in on that,” McSweeney said. “We’re content that she has the better legal arguments, and she will prevail in the Colorado Court of Appeals.”
He said Polis’ public comments seemed positive for Peters, but time will tell.
“I don’t tend to get caught up with statements from governors and politicians until they happen, especially when you’re in litigation,” McSweeney said.
Polis has the power
Polis has described himself as supporting “pro-freedom” policies and has a history of bucking the Democratic Party on some national issues. Freeing Peters from prison would be one of Polis’ sharpest breaks yet from his party during Trump’s second term.
The governor has drawn attention for celebrating Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s appointment to lead the Department of Health and Human Services and more recently praising Trump’s ouster of Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro as other Democrats in the state questioned the legality of the military operation.
A person active in Democratic politics in the state said some of Polis’ fellow Democrats were confounded by the governor’s recent statements that appear to support leniency for Peters. The person said they fear that releasing the former clerk from prison would embolden the 2020 election denier movement that continues to rage around the country.
Trump recently called Polis a “Scumbag” who should “rot in Hell” for not bending to his demands on Peters. And he has also targeted Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, a Democrat who opposes clemency for Peters and spoke out against Polis’ recent comments.
These posts from Trump usually led to an uptick in threats against the Colorado officials, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Accusations of a ‘revenge campaign’ that the White House denies
Weiser, who is seeking the Democratic nomination in this year’s governor race, has accused Trump of carrying out a “revenge campaign” and filed a federal lawsuit asking a judge to stop the administration from continuing to “unlawfully punish the State of Colorado” over Peters’ continued imprisonment.
In an updated federal lawsuit filed last week, Weiser pointed to a string of recent actions by the administration that he cast as linked to the administration’s ire over Peters’ continued incarceration. They include closing a Colorado-based climate lab, denying federal disaster assistance requests from the state, yanking federal transportation funds and threatening to withhold federal money for low-income families.
Trump also vetoed a bill for a Colorado water project and moved US Space Command from Colorado Springs to Alabama.
Polis in a statement alleged that Trump’s actions are “making life more difficult for the people of our state.”
In an email to CNN, the White House sought to refute the lawsuit’s individual claims, arguing, for instance, that there is “no politicization” in Trump’s decision-making on disaster relief and that Trump was restoring US Space Command to a location he had chosen during his first term.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson described Trump as exercising “his lawful and discretionary authority to ensure federal dollars are being spent in a way that aligns with the agenda endorsed by the American people when they resoundingly reelected the President.”
Weiser’s new allegations amend a lawsuit that he first filed in October, that seeks to overturn Trump’s decision relocating the US Space Command to Huntsville, Alabama. In announcing that move, Trump cited Colorado’s use of mail-in voting as a factor in his decision.
In the lawsuit, Weiser said Colorado has “sovereign authority” over how it administers elections and criminal justice within its borders.
A major hearing Wednesday
As the drama builds outside of court, Peters’ lawyers faced off Wednesday at the Colorado Court of Appeals against Weiser’s team.
The case originates from Peters’ involvement in an effort by fellow pro-Trump election deniers to breach voting systems in Mesa County, where she was the clerk, in 2021. She was found guilty in 2024 by a jury in her ruby-red county of multiple felonies, including first-degree official misconduct and attempting to influence a public servant.
The state trial judge who sentenced Peters called her “a charlatan” who was “as defiant as any defendant this court has ever seen.” Even from behind bars, Peters has continued through allies to post debunked conspiracy theories on her X account about supposed vote-rigging tied to Venezuela during the 2020 election.
Peters’ lawyers maintain that she didn’t break the law but rather was trying to uphold the law. In their view, the data breach was not a breach at all – it was a good-faith attempt to follow federal laws requiring that election officials preserve records of federal elections.
“The law is well-settled,” McSweeney told CNN. “Anyone acting pursuant to a federal law, if they’re acting within the scope of their authority, and doing what is necessary and proper, then they enjoy immunity from any state prosecution.”
But at least two judges at Wednesday’s hearing questioned whether Peters would be protected by that sweeping federal immunity. Judge Craig Welling said, “Just because she can do certain things, that doesn’t necessarily come within the scope of the immunity.”
Lisa Michaels, arguing on behalf of Colorado’s attorney general, said Peters engaged in a “plot of deception” to bring a pro-Trump conspiracy theorist into her office so he could improperly access county servers and make copies of 2020 election data.
“Tina Peters was not a federal official,” Michaels said. “She was a state official who was prosecuted by the state for deceiving state and local officials.”
But the appellate panel also repeatedly challenged Michaels.
One judge said a legal argument she put forward was “baffling.” And two of the judges expressed strong concerns with how the trial judge linked Peters’ election-denying rhetoric to the lengthy prison term she received, which her lawyers claimed violated her First Amendment rights.
The prosecution was initiated by a Republican prosecutor, but the attorney general’s office, led by Weiser, is responsible for defending the guilty verdicts during the appeals process.
The attorney general’s team also recently defeated a longshot effort by Peters to convince a federal judge to release her from prison while her state-level appeals play out.
“Attorney General Weiser believes the sentence for Tina Peters is appropriate, it is important for her to be held accountable for her crimes, and it would be a grave injustice to reduce her sentence,” Weiser spokesman Lawrence Pacheco said in a statement.
This story has been updated with additional details.
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