Colorado elections clerk released from prison after governor commutes sentence

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.

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 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.

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.

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.”

Nicholas Riccardi, The Associated Press