Colorado Gov. Jared Polis announced Friday that he’s commuting the prison sentence of Tina Peters, a former county clerk and 2020 election denier who was sentenced to nine years behind bars for tampering with election equipment.
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Polis, a Democrat, wrote in an executive order that Peters “is granted parole effective June 1.” Her attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The move comes after a state appeals court found last month that Peters’ lengthy sentence was improper and directed she be resentenced.
Peters’ cause had been repeatedly championed by President Donald Trump, who has posted “Free Tina Peters” numerous times on his social media site and blasted Polis as a “sleazebag” who should “rot in hell” for not using his power as governor to free the former Mesa County clerk.
The term-limited Polis said in January he thought Peters’ sentence was “harsh” but that he wouldn’t let his clemency decisions be driven by presidential directives.
“You look at every case on clemency on the merits,” he told CBS News at the time.
Peters was convicted of four felony and three misdemeanor charges in August 2024 for using another person’s security badge to allow someone associated with MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, a prominent election denier, access to county election equipment involving Dominion Voting Systems.
The county’s machines had to be replaced afterwards when data, including passwords for the machines, was posted online.
Polis indicated in a March post on X that he was considering cutting Peters’ sentence short in light of a much shorter sentence that had been handed down on a similar charge against a Democratic politician.
“Justice in Colorado and America needs to be applied evenly,” he wrote in the post.
An attorney for Peters, Peter Ticktin, told NBC News at the time that “We are hoping that Governor Polis commutes Tina Peters’ sentence this week.”
“There is no reason to keep Tina Peters in prison,” the attorney added.
At her sentencing in 2024, District Attorney Daniel Rubinstein asked the judge to impose the maximum sentence, while noting that despite Peters’ claims of widespread fraud, she never identified a single bogus vote.
County officials said Peters’ fraud claims led to a slew of death threats against election workers.
Peters maintained she had done nothing wrong.
“It is with a heavy heart that I hear the vile accusations and anger levied against me for what I did to protect the people of Mesa County,” she told the judge at her sentencing.
In their April 2 ruling, a panel of Colorado Court of Appeals judges found the judge who’d sentenced Peters put too much weight on Peters’ beliefs about election being stolen, violating her First Amendment rights.
“Her offense was not her belief, however misguided the trial court deemed it to be, in the existence of such election fraud; it was her deceitful actions in her attempt to gather evidence of such fraud. Indeed, under these circumstances, just as her purported beliefs underlying her motive for her actions were not relevant to her defense, the trial court should not have considered those beliefs relevant when imposing sentence,” the appeals court ruled.
It also noted that Peters was no longer in a position of power.
“She is no longer in a position to engage in the conduct that led to her conviction,” the judges wrote.
They directed the trial judge, Matthew Branch, to resentence her — without consideration of her comments on the 2020 election.
