President Donald Trump’s administration appears to believe that general rules don’t apply. Whether it's disappearing undocumented immigrants, shooting US citizens and deploying the National Guard against them, capturing the leader of a sovereign nation, or threatening to take control of Greenland, Trump’s reach appears limitless.
But despite the bravado, there is one situation that, so far, Trump has been unable to bend to his will: the case of Tina Peters, a former election clerk in Mesa County, Colorado, who became a hero in the election denial community after she used another person’s credentials to facilitate an associate watching a software update of her county’s election management system.
Peters has served roughly 14 months of a nine-year prison sentence, and figures in the election denial community like former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn have been campaigning for her release ever since. Over the last few months, Trump has joined in, seemingly pressuring the state of Colorado to release Peters.
Unlike the nearly 1,600 January 6 prisoners Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of on his first day in office, the president cannot pardon Peters because she was convicted on state rather than federal charges—though this didn’t stop Trump issuing a “pardon” on Truth Social last month. Nevertheless, Trump is now conducting an increasingly intense pressure campaign against Colorado and its Democratic governor, Jared Polis, whom Trump has called a “sleazebag” and a “scumbag” for refusing to release Peters.
Polis has since said he is considering granting clemency to Peters, a decision that has left elected officials in the state, both Democrats and Republicans, baffled and worried. Those who spoke to WIRED warned that reducing jail time for Peters—who continues to maintain her innocence and has shown no signs of remorse—would endanger the lives of election workers ahead of the midterms in November.
“I have major concerns that [commuting Peters’ sentence] emboldens the far right that has been attacking our elections and election officials,” Jena Griswold, Colorado’s secretary of state and the state’s top election official, tells WIRED. “I am concerned about the message that it sends to those of us who have been on the front lines in this threat environment, doing the work, day in and day out. The idea that the work we do to protect our elections and democracy can be so quickly undermined and the effect that has on election officials.”
Polis declined to be interviewed, but his spokesperson Shelby Wieman tells WIRED, “The Governor takes the responsibility of clemency very seriously, and his team reviews all applications submitted. He will review this inmate’s application just like he would any other.”
Peters first came to national attention in May 2021 when she allowed Conan Hayes, a former pro surfer who later worked for pillow-salesman-turned-election-denier Mike Lindell, unauthorized access to election equipment in Mesa County, as part of a scheme to prove that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen from Trump. QAnon promoter Ron Watkins subsequently published the data taken from Mesa County in 2021, which also appeared on the conspiracy-filled Gateway Pundit website. The information was widely hailed by election deniers as further proof that US elections were rigged, even though widescale election rigging in 2020 was never actually proven, and Trump’s own officials called it the most secure election in history. (Hayes was never charged with a crime.)
Peters was officially charged in March 2022 when she was already campaigning to become Colorado’s secretary of state. In June 2022, Peters lost the Republican primary but immediately questioned the validity of the result. A recount added 13 more votes to her total, but she still lost the primary by over 88,000 votes.