President Donald Trump announced Thursday he is granting Tina Peters a full federal pardon, which is likely to increase the pressure campaign to free the former Colorado clerk from state prison even though he cannot erase her state charges.
“Tina is sitting in a Colorado prison for the ‘crime’ of demanding Honest Elections. Today I am granting Tina a full Pardon for her attempts to expose Voter Fraud in the Rigged 2020 Presidential Election,” the president wrote on Truth Social.
Peters, the former Republican clerk of Mesa, Colorado, was found guilty last year on state charges of participating in a scheme to breach voting systems that hoped to prove Trump’s false claims of mass voter fraud in 2020. She was sentenced to nine years in prison and is serving her sentence at a women’s prison in Pueblo, Colorado.
Peters is currently the only Trump ally in prison for crimes related to the attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. She still believes that election was stolen, her lawyers recently told CNN. Her lawyers have also raised concerns about her physical safety and told a judge that her health is declining behind bars.
Trump’s pardon has no legal impact on her state conviction and incarceration. But the administration has been pressuring Colorado officials to set her free or at least transfer her into federal custody, where she could be moved into a more comfortable facility. The Justice Department even stepped in to support Peters’ unsuccessful attempt to convince a federal judge to release her from prison.
After months of hearings and legal filings, a federal judge in Denver rejected her federal lawsuit seeking release on Monday, concluding that state courts are the proper venue for her to challenger her conviction.
Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis in a statement defended Peters’ conviction. “No President has jurisdiction over state law nor the power to pardon a person for state convictions. This is a matter for the courts to decide, and we will abide by court orders,” he said.
Polis has previously said he won’t pardon Peters as part of any quid-pro-quo deal.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, a Democrat who is fighting to uphold Peters’ conviction and keep her behind bars, also dismissed the pardon in a statement.
“The idea that a president could pardon someone tried and convicted in state court has no precedent in American law, would be an outrageous departure from what our constitution requires, and will not hold up,” Weiser said.
One of her lawyers sent a letter to Trump earlier this month, making the case for a pardon. Those efforts were successful at securing a symbolic clemency action from Trump, however, only Polis has the power to pardon Peters for her state crimes and set her free.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins contributed to this report.
