Colorado Gov. Jared Polis had been under pressure from Trump to pardon Peters, a former county clerk who helped secretly copy voting machines’ hard drives.
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Colorado’s Democratic governor granted clemency Friday to a former county clerk convicted on charges related to a scheme to bolster President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
Gov. Jared Polis (D) has faced pressure and attacks from President Donald Trump aimed at eliminating the sentence given to former Mesa County clerk Tina Peters. Election officials from both parties condemned Polis for Friday’s action, saying he gave special treatment to someone who has undermined confidence in elections.
Polis’s clemency order will grant Peters parole on June 1, potentially shaving years off her prison sentence.
Polis said he carefully considered his decision to grant clemency to Peters and others convicted in unrelated cases.
“This power has the ability to change lives — help grant a second chance for someone who has made grave mistakes — and it comes with great consideration, and sometimes even controversy,” the governor said in a statement.
Prosecutors filed 10 charges against Peters in 2022, accusing her of helping to secretly copy Dominion Voting Systems’ hard drives by slipping a purported computer expert into secure areas of her office using someone else’s security badge. Within months, data from her office appeared online and was featured at a symposium held by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who has spent years leveling false claims about elections and seeks to end the use of voting machines.
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A jury convicted Peters of seven charges, including four felonies, in 2024, and District Judge Matthew Barrett sentenced her to nine years in prison.
Peters appealed. An appeals court in April upheld her conviction but ordered her to be resentenced after determining that Barrett had based part of the sentence on her public comments rather than her actions. Polis praised the decision at the time, saying he thought Barrett had given a 70-year-old nonviolent offender too much time behind bars.
Barrett has not yet resentenced Peters, but Polis’s action will ensure that she gets out of prison soon.
Trump and his allies have long pushed to get Peters out of prison.
The Justice Department took the unusual step of intervening in court on behalf of Peters as she sought release. Trump issued her a pardon in December, but the state appeals court determined that it had no practical effect because she was convicted on state charges, not federal charges.
Trump long pressed Polis to free Peters and earlier called him a “sleazebag” for not helping her. The president and his administration have taken several actions targeting the state, and many Colorado officials have interpreted them as retribution for Peters remaining behind bars.
Trump vetoed a bipartisan drinking-water project in the state. He announced he was moving U.S. Space Command from Colorado to Alabama. The administration said it was breaking up a massive atmospheric research center in the state. And the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service blocked a wolf reintroduction plan, dealing a blow to a program important to Polis and his husband, an animal rights advocate.
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