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Tina Peters, 70, was released from a Colorado prison on Monday after serving less than a quarter of a nine-year sentence she received for participating in a scheme to breach Mesa County’s election systems. The Colorado Department of Corrections confirmed her release and said it would have no further information about her.
The department did not specify where Peters was released or what her conditions of supervision are, if any.
Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, commuted Peters’ sentence on May 15. In a letter at the time, Polis 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 and non-violent offender.
Peters was the first local election official to be charged with breaching election security after the 2020 election, which Trump lost to Joe Biden. According to the Guardian’s reporting, Peters brought an outside computer expert affiliated with MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell into the Mesa County election office. That person copied the county’s Dominion Voting Systems computer server during a software update in 2021. Peters then appeared with Lindell onstage at a “cybersymposium” that promised to reveal proof the election was rigged. Video and photographs of the computer system upgrade, including passwords, were posted online.
Jurors in Mesa County — a Republican stronghold that supported Trump — convicted Peters in 2024 of attempting to influence a public servant, conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, violation of duty and other crimes. An appeals court upheld the conviction in April but ordered resentencing, finding that the trial judge had wrongly punished Peters for speaking publicly about election fraud claims.
Trump had long championed Peters’ case. Because she was convicted under state law, Trump did not have the power to pardon her. He instead mounted a pressure campaign against Polis, lambasting the governor on social media and disinviting him from a White House meeting with other governors. The Trump administration also announced plans to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado and to relocate U.S. Space Command to Alabama.
Jena Griswold, the Colorado secretary of state and a Democrat, called the commutation a “dark day for democracy” and said it amounted to “selling out our state’s justice system for Trump,” according to the Guardian.