{"id":131411,"date":"2026-06-01T13:49:20","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T19:49:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-elections-clerk-released-from-prison-after-governor-commutes-sentence-2\/"},"modified":"2026-06-01T13:49:20","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T19:49:20","slug":"colorado-elections-clerk-released-from-prison-after-governor-commutes-sentence-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/colorado-elections-clerk-released-from-prison-after-governor-commutes-sentence-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Colorado elections clerk released from prison after governor commutes sentence"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Candidate
Candidate Tina Peters speaks during a debate for the state leadership position, Feb. 25, 2023, in Hudson. (David Zalubowski\/Associated Press file)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

DENVER \u2013 Tina Peters, the former county clerk convicted<\/a> of participating in a scheme to chase election conspiracy theories promulgated by President Donald Trump, was released from state prison Monday after the president successfully pressured Colorado\u2019s Democratic governor into commuting her sentence.<\/p>\n

Shortly after her release was confirmed by the Colorado Department of Corrections, Peters appeared on the program of Steve Bannon, a former Trump adviser who was part of the right-wing campaign to free Peters. Gov. Jared Polis said he would shorten Peters\u2019 sentence if she expressed regret about her actions.<\/p>\n

But in her interview with Bannon, Peters repeated the debunked conspiracy theory<\/a> that voting machines cheated Trump out of reelection in 2020 and portrayed herself as a martyr to the effort to expose it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know that the Democrats are going to cheat, and no one is really addressing the problem that I spent my time in prison as retribution for,\u201d Peters said.<\/p>\n

Multiple reviews<\/a>, recounts<\/a> and audits<\/a> in the battleground states<\/a> where Trump disputed his 2020 loss have all affirmed that Democrat Joe Biden won. Dominion Voting Systems, the company used for Colorado elections, has also succeeded in multiple defamation cases<\/a> against conservative news outlets and others who repeated the false claims that its voting systems<\/a> were somehow manipulated to change the outcome.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s pressure campaign<\/strong><\/div>\n

Peters\u2019 sentence was shortened by Polis last month after Trump waged a lengthy pressure campaign against the governor and his state. Peters served less than a quarter of her nine-year sentence<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe really is extremely grateful to Donald Trump,\u201d Peters\u2019 attorney, Peter Ticktin, said in an interview. \u201cIf it weren\u2019t for Donald Trump, she\u2019d still be behind bars.\u201d<\/p>\n

In her interview with Bannon, Peters said she plans to spend \u201cthe next few weeks regaining my health and with loved ones and family.\u201d She said she is interested in becoming involved in prison reform and the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4.<\/p>\n

Peters also is challenging her conviction, a case her attorneys hope to take to the U.S. Supreme Court if needed. She told Bannon she will \u201cfight to clear my name and bring out the truth of why they came after me the way they did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peters was the first local election official to be charged with breaching security after the 2020 election. She snuck in an outside computer expert affiliated with My Pillow Chief Executive Mike Lindell \u2013 who himself denied that Trump lost the White House<\/a> in 2020 \u2013 and the person copied the county\u2019s Dominion Voting Systems computer server as it was updated in 2021.<\/p>\n

Peters then joined Lindell<\/a> onstage at a \u201ccybersymposium\u201d that promised to reveal proof that the election was rigged. Video and photos of the computer system upgrade, including passwords, were posted online. The move stoked false claims<\/a> that voting machines were manipulated to steal the election<\/a> from Trump.<\/p>\n

Last year, a federal jury found that Lindell had defamed<\/a> a former Dominion employee over claims related to the 2020 election.<\/p>\n

Peters was convicted in 2024 of attempting to influence a public servant, conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, violation of duty and other crimes by jurors in Mesa County, a Republican stronghold that supported Trump. An appeals court upheld her conviction in April, but ordered Peters to be resentenced because it said the judge who sent her to prison wrongly punished her for speaking out about election fraud.<\/p>\n

Trump had championed Peters\u2019 case, but because she was convicted under state law, he did not have the power to pardon her. Instead, the president pressured Polis to do so, lambasting him on social media and disinviting him to a White House meeting<\/a> with other governors. The Trump administration also announced plans to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research<\/a> in Colorado and relocated<\/a> the U.S. Space Command to Alabama.<\/p>\n

Polis commuted Peters\u2019 sentence on May 15. In a letter, he wrote that although Peters was convicted of serious crimes and deserved to spend time in prison, the sentence was \u201cextremely unusual and lengthy\u201d for a first-time non-violent offender.<\/p>\n

Polis launched a Substack over the weekend and his first post was a lengthy explanation of his reasoning in pardoning Peters. He said he was concerned about the First Amendment implications of Peters\u2019 sentence and didn\u2019t want to leave her in prison while she waited for the legal fight over that to conclude in the courts.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to provide finality to this case, and as Governor I used my constitutional power of clemency to do what I believe is right,\u201d Polis wrote.<\/p>\n

Democratic backlash against Polis<\/strong><\/div>\n

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, on Monday released a statement warning that the release will \u201cembolden the election denier movement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Colorado\u2019s Democratic Party has already censured Polis<\/a> for the pardon, and the state\u2019s Democratic politicians kept piling on Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cTina Peters is walking free. A felon, convicted by a jury of her peers, walking free,\u201d Sen. Michael Bennet, who is running for the Democratic nomination for governor, said in a video he released shortly after Peters\u2019 release.<\/p>\n

Lawrence Pacheco, a spokesperson for Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, who also is running for governor, said the state\u2019s top prosecutor \u201cremains concerned about her conduct upon returning to Mesa County given her lack of remorse for her crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Shortly after her release, Tina Peters appeared Steve Bannon\u2019s program<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":131412,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6401],"tags":[168,1820,819,28,265,6419,1621],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-131411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-regional-news","tag-crime","tag-dh-trueanthem","tag-gov-jared-polis","tag-headlines","tag-politics","tag-tj-trueanthem","tag-voting"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131411"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=131411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}