Colorado elections clerk released from prison after governor commutes
sentence
[June 02, 2026]
By NICHOLAS RICCARDI
DENVER (AP) — Tina Peters, the former county clerk convicted 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’s Democratic
governor into commuting her sentence.
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' sentence if she expressed
regret about her actions.
But in her interview with Bannon, Peters repeated the debunked
conspiracy theory that voting machines cheated Trump out of reelection
in 2020 and portrayed herself as a martyr to the effort to expose it.
“I 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,” Peters said.
Multiple reviews, recounts and audits in the battleground states 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 against conservative
news outlets and others who repeated the false claims that its voting
systems were somehow manipulated to change the outcome.
Trump's pressure campaign
Peters’ 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.
“She really is extremely grateful to Donald Trump,” Peters’ attorney,
Peter Ticktin, said in an interview. “If it weren’t for Donald Trump,
she’d still be behind bars.”
In her interview with Bannon, Peters said she plans to spend “the next
few weeks regaining my health and with loved ones and family." 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.
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
"fight to clear my name and bring out the truth of why they came after
me the way they did.”
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 —
who himself denied that Trump lost the White House in 2020 — and the
person copied the county's Dominion Voting Systems computer server as it
was updated in 2021.
Peters then joined Lindell onstage at a “cybersymposium” 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 that voting machines were manipulated to steal
the election from Trump.
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Last year, a federal jury found that Lindell had defamed a former
Dominion employee over claims related to the 2020 election.
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.
Trump had championed Peters' 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 with other
governors. The Trump administration also announced plans to
dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado
and relocated the U.S. Space Command to Alabama.
Polis commuted Peters' 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 “extremely unusual and
lengthy” for a first-time non-violent offender.
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'
sentence and didn't want to leave her in prison while she waited for
the legal fight over that to conclude in the courts.
“I wanted to provide finality to this case, and as Governor I used
my constitutional power of clemency to do what I believe is right,”
Polis wrote.
Democratic backlash against Polis
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, on Monday
released a statement warning that the release will “embolden the
election denier movement.”
Colorado’s Democratic Party has already censured Polis for the
pardon, and the state’s Democratic politicians kept piling on
Monday.
“Tina Peters is walking free. A felon, convicted by a jury of her
peers, walking free,” Sen. Michael Bennet, who is running for the
Democratic nomination for governor, said in a video he released
shortly after Peters’ release.
Lawrence Pacheco, a spokesperson for Colorado Attorney General Phil
Weiser, who also is running for governor, said the state’s top
prosecutor “remains concerned about her conduct upon returning to
Mesa County given her lack of remorse for her crimes.”
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