Colorado Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, commuted the nine-year prison sentence of former Mesa County clerk Tina Peters on Friday, granting her release effective June 1 and writing in a letter to Peters that while she was convicted of serious crimes and “deserved to spend time in prison,” the sentence was “extremely unusual and lengthy” for a first-time offender who committed nonviolent crimes. The commutation came after months of sustained pressure from President Donald Trump, who had publicly attacked Polis, barred him from a White House meeting with governors earlier in the year, and directed his administration to restrict federal funding and programs in Colorado — making Peters’ case one of the most visible examples of a president using the levers of federal power to benefit an ally who promoted his false claims of election fraud.
Peters, 70, was convicted in 2024 by jurors in Mesa County — a Republican stronghold that supported Trump — for a 2021 scheme in which she brought an outside computer expert, an associate of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, into her county’s election office to make an unauthorized copy of the Dominion Voting Systems election computer server while state officials were updating it. Video and photographs of the upgrade, including system passwords, were later posted online after Peters appeared with Lindell at a “cybersymposium” that promised to reveal proof of election rigging. An April 2026 Colorado appeals court upheld Peters’ conviction but ordered her to be resentenced, ruling that the original judge had improperly punished her for speaking publicly about election fraud — a decision Polis praised.
Trump had no direct pardon authority over Peters’ state-level conviction, which placed her beyond the reach of the federal clemency power he used to free those convicted for the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. But the president nonetheless made Peters a cause célèbre. He called Polis a “Scumbag Governor” and the Republican district attorney who prosecuted her, Daniel Rubinstein, a target of his criticism for keeping Peters imprisoned. Trump referred to Peters as “elderly” and “sick.” His administration choked off federal funds, ended programs, denied disaster aid, announced the dismantling of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, and relocated U.S. Space Command to Alabama. “Colorado is suffering a big price,” Trump said.
Around the time of the commutation announcement on Friday, Trump posted on his Truth Social platform: “FREE TINA!”
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, responded to the commutation at a news conference with some of the sharpest language of her tenure. “It was a dark day for democracy,” Griswold said. “Selling out our state’s justice system for Trump is an affront to the rule of law. A clear message is being sent to those willing to break the law and attack democracy for the president — they will likely not face consequences for their actions.”
Senator Michael Bennet, a Democrat running for Colorado governor, said he “vehemently disagreed” with Polis’s decision. “Lawlessness only breeds more law