Trump’s Pressure Campaign to Free Tina Peters, A Hero to Election Deniers, Has Colorado on Edge
The administration of President Donald Trump appears to operate under the assumption that standard rules of governance and conduct do not apply to its actions. From policies that have left undocumented immigrants effectively uncounted, to lethal force used against U.S. citizens and deployment of the National Guard against domestic political opponents, to the capture of a sovereign nation’s leader and open threats to claim control of Greenland, Trump’s willingness to push legal and political boundaries has seemed almost boundless.
But for all of the administration’s swagger and willingness to flout long-held norms, there is one standoff that Trump has so far failed to force to go his way: the case of Tina Peters, the former Mesa County, Colorado election clerk who became a celebrated icon among election deniers after she used another person’s login credentials to let an associate access and monitor a software update for her county’s election management system.
Peters has now served roughly 14 months of a nine-year state prison sentence, and leading figures in the election denial movement—including former Trump advisor Steve Bannon and disgraced ex-national security advisor Michael Flynn—have lobbied for her release nonstop since her conviction. Over the past several months, Trump himself has joined the push, mounting growing public pressure on the state of Colorado to free her.
Unlike the roughly 1,600 people charged in connection with the January 6 Capitol riot that Trump pardoned or commuted sentences for on his first day back in office, the president has no legal authority to pardon Peters: she was convicted on state, not federal, criminal charges. That technicality did not stop Trump from issuing a symbolic “pardon” for her on his Truth Social platform last month, however. Now, he is ramping up an increasingly aggressive pressure campaign targeting Colorado and its Democratic governor, Jared Polis, whom Trump has derided as a “sleazebag” and “scumbag” for refusing to release Peters.
Polis has recently said he is weighing whether to grant clemency to Peters—a decision that has left both Democratic and Republican elected officials across the state confused and deeply alarmed. Multiple officials who spoke to WIRED warn that cutting Peters’ sentence (she continues to claim innocence and has shown no remorse for her actions) would put election workers’ safety at serious risk ahead of November’s midterm elections.
“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, told 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. It signals that the work we do to protect our elections and our democracy can be undermined so easily, and that has a chilling effect on every election official across the state.”
Polis declined to be interviewed for this story, but his spokesperson Shelby Wieman told 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.”
The Background of Peters’ Case
Peters first rose to national notoriety in May 2021, when she granted unauthorized access to Mesa County’s election equipment to Conan Hayes, a former professional surfer who later worked for Mike Lindell—the MyPillow CEO turned prominent election denier. The access was part of a broader scheme to “prove” that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump.
QAnon promoter Ron Watkins later published the data pulled from Mesa County’s systems in 2021, which also appeared on the conspiracy-promoting Gateway Pundit website. Election deniers widely hailed the leak as further proof that U.S. elections were rigged, despite the fact that no evidence of widespread 2020 election fraud has ever been confirmed, and Trump’s own administration at the time called 2020 the most secure election in U.S. history. Hayes was never charged with any crime in connection with the incident.
Peters was formally charged in March 2022, while she was already running for Colorado’s secretary of state. She lost the 2022 Republican primary for the seat, but immediately questioned the result’s legitimacy. A recount added just 13 additional votes to her total, leaving her more than 88,000 votes short of victory.
She was convicted in August 2024 on seven of the 10 charges she faced, including four felony counts. At her October 2024 sentencing hearing, district judge Matthew Barrett said:
“You are no hero. You’re a charlatan who used and is still using your prior position in office to peddle snake oil that’s been proven to be junk time and time again.”
Peters is scheduled to become eligible for parole in September 2028, and is currently incarcerated at the medium-security La Vista Correctional Facility for women in Pueblo. Throughout her incarceration, she has remained a celebrated martyr figure among election deniers.
Trump’s Escalating Pressure Campaign
For months, Trump showed little public interest in Peters’ case—but that shifted in recent months, as Peters’ legal team prepared to appeal her conviction. The first public sign of the Trump administration’s interest in the case came in early March, when the U.S. Department of Justice announced it was reviewing Peters’ conviction. The announcement came just weeks after Trump criticized Polis for hanging an unflattering portrait of Trump in the Colorado State Capitol.
In May, Trump shared his first public post about the case on Truth Social, writing:
“Tina is an innocent Political Prisoner being horribly and unjustly punished in the form of Cruel and Unusual Punishment. This is a Communist persecution by the Radical Left Democrats to cover up their Election crimes and misdeeds in 2020.”
Trump then called on the Department of Justice “to take all necessary action to help secure the release of this ‘hostage’ being held in a Colorado prison by the Democrats, for political reasons.” He repeated his demand for her release in another August Truth Social post, threatening to impose “harsh measures” if Peters was not freed.
In early September, Trump announced he would relocate U.S. Space Command from Colorado’s Peterson Space Force Base to Redstone Arsenal, an Army facility in Alabama. In November, the Federal Bureau of Prisons sent a formal request to Colorado state officials to transfer Peters to a federal prison—a rare request that can only be initiated by state authorities. Just days after the letter was sent, Trump posted another call for her release on Truth Social, writing: “FREE TINA PETERS, WHO SITS IN A COLORADO PRISON, DYING & OLD.”
Colorado election workers and many state officials now believe the president is waging a targeted retaliatory pressure campaign against the state to force Polis’s hand. In recent months:
The Trump administration has threatened to revoke Colorado’s control over its federal wolf reintroduction program
Trump announced plans to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research based in Boulder
On December 30, Trump vetoed plans to finish the Arkansas Valley Conduit, an infrastructure project that would deliver clean drinking water to roughly 50,000 people in southeastern Colorado
The administration is also attempting to claw back federal grant funding earmarked for low-income Colorado families
Throughout this push, Trump has continued to post about Peters on Truth Social, specifically targeting Polis, whom he called “the SLEAZEBAG Governor of Colorado” on December 3. On New Year’s Eve, he wrote:
“Hard to wish [Peters] a Happy New Year, but to the Scumbag Governor and the disgusting “Republican” (RINO!) DA … I wish them only the worst. May they rot in Hell. FREE TINA PETERS!”
Over the past nine months, Trump has posted about Peters’ case eight times on Truth Social.
A Divided Colorado Reacts to Potential Clemency
Throughout this period, Peters’ legal team, led by Peter Ticktin—who attended New York Military Academy with Trump—has been lobbying directly for White House intervention. On December 7, Ticktin sent a nine-page letter to Trump outlining Peters’ case and requesting a formal pardon. Four days later, on December 11, Trump posted on Truth Social: “Today I am granting Tina a full Pardon for her attempts to expose Voter Fraud in the Rigged 2020 Presidential Election.” Though Trump has no constitutional authority to pardon someone convicted of state charges, Ticktin has claimed the pardon applies to his client.
Peters’ team has also applied for clemency directly from Governor Polis. While Polis initially showed little indication he would consider the request, in recent weeks he has hinted he is open to commuting Peters’ sentence, which he has called excessively “harsh.”
“You look at every case on clemency on the merits,” Polis told CBS recently. “You have somebody who is nonviolent, a first-time offender, elderly. On the other hand, does she take full accountability for her crime? We don’t look at this in isolation.”
Polis’ apparent shift in stance has left many across Colorado stunned. Earlier this month, Griswold joined a county election clerk and the director of the state’s county clerks association to send a formal letter to Polis urging him not to commute Peters’ sentence.
“I do not believe that giving in to a vengeful president makes the retribution stop,” Griswold told WIRED. “Trump is a lawless president. He disregards the law, he disregards the Constitution, and when people do not cave, he then starts retribution. I believe giving in leads to more illegal actions and outrageous actions from the president.”
Ticktin pushed back on the claim that Trump’s actions are retaliatory. “Donald Trump and I have known each other since we were 15 years old,” Ticktin told WIRED, adding that he has spoken directly to the president about the case. “By Governor Polis standing up to Donald Trump for something that's unreasonable, he's drawing more attention to the state and causing the state to be looked at more, [but] I don't think that it's retaliation by Donald Trump.”
The White House did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment on whether Trump is waging a retaliatory campaign against Colorado, but instead provided a list of justifications for each of the administration’s actions targeting the state—including responses to two unrelated issues WIRED did not even raise: childcare funding and disaster relief.
Nearly all election clerks across Colorado have aligned against clemency for Peters. Following an online association meeting earlier this month, all but one member of the Colorado County Clerks Association signed on to the letter Griswold sent to Polis.
Matt Crane, the association’s executive director, said that for his members, just months out from high-stakes midterm elections, even the hint of a commuted sentence sends a dangerous message that puts lives at risk. Election workers across the U.S. have faced escalating threats for years, and just this past summer, an election office in Archuleta County, southern Colorado, was firebombed by a suspect who authorities say adheres to election denial conspiracy theories.
“The environment is already hostile for election officials because of the lies coming from the president and his supporters, so this stuff with Tina just exacerbates that,” Crane said. “If the governor commutes her sentence, it sends a very clear message that it is OK for people to undermine our institutions and attack our elections, both the election itself and the people who do the work, because they'll have a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card.”
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