Colorado
Colorado elections clerk set to be released from prison Monday based on her sentence commutation
DENVER, Colo. (AP) — Former Colorado elections clerk and conspiracy theorist Tina Peters is scheduled to be released from prison Monday after serving less than a quarter of a nine-year sentence for her role in a scheme to copy her county’s election system.
Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, commuted Peters’ sentence last month following pressure from President Donald Trump.
The Colorado Department of Corrections would not confirm the time of Peters’ release, and a representative for her attorney said Peters would not speak to the media when she is freed.
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.
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 the 70-year-old 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, called the move a “dark day for democracy” and said it amounted to ”selling out our state’s justice system for Trump.”
A sculpture that currently sits inside a now-closed Aurora recreation center may get a new lease on life if the Aurora City Council approves a move.
The Beck Recreation Center closed last summer, and part of the building is scheduled for demolition. The remaining portion will serve as a golf shop for the nearby SpringHill Golf Course. That means a huge glass and metal sculpture installed in 2014 needs to be moved.
On Monday, Aurora’s city council will vote on a proposal to move it to Tallyn’s Reach Library. The artist, Reven Marie Swanson, has art installations across the country, and even some overseas.
“Without sounding like I’m bragging, my artwork is in 26 states, 38 municipalities in Colorado and in three countries, ” said Swanson.
She’s a sculptor who combines metalwork and glasswork to create unique pieces, like the one that currently sits inside the shuttered Beck Recreation Center.
“It’s called ‘Under the Swimming Pool,’ and it’s the idea about when you walk into the vestibule. It felt like I could create something that you could actually be under the water and looking up through the surface of the water as if you’re walking on the bottom of the pool,” said Swanson.
In the summer of 2025, structural issues shut the doors at Beck for good, and since then, Swanson’s sculpture has been stuck there.
“I was a little nervous because city governments are very quick to do what they call ‘de-access’ artwork. And I was really hoping that this piece wouldn’t get de-accessed,” said Swanson.
Luckily, the City of Aurora has other plans. They want to move the piece from Beck to Tallyn’s Reach Library.
Swanson says it should be a simple move, but the sculpture, which hangs from the ceiling, will have to be attached to the library’s ceiling in a new way, using new materials. But Swanson says she likes the new location.
“It’s a really beautiful building. It’s got wonderful light, which is going to interact really nicely with the glass,” said Swanson.
And she is glad it will live on, continuing to inspire and enchant Aurorans.
“When I walked into the library, the librarian, she was like, ‘I am so excited to get this art!’ And it makes an artist feel good. Like you accomplished something,” said Swanson.
The proposal, which will be heard at Monday’s city council meeting, is estimated by the city to cost between $15,000 and $25,000, primarily because of the cost of materials needed to suspend it at the new location. The initial cost to install it at Beck Recreation Center in 2014 was nearly $35,000 dollars.
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