Colorado governor Jared Polis announced in mid May that he was commuting the sentence of Tina Peters, former Mesa County Clerk in Colorado and notorious Stop the Steal operative. In taking the controversial action, Polis is reducing Peters’ prison sentence from the original 9-year sentence to 17 months, or time-served. Polis’ commutation is not a full pardon, which means Peters’ will always be a convicted felon. Dareh Gregorian from NBC News:
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis announced Friday that he’s commuting the prison sentence of Tina Peters, a former county clerk and 2020 election denier who was sentenced to nine years behind bars for tampering with election equipment.
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The commutation comes after a state appeals court found last month that Peters’ lengthy sentence was improper and directed she be resentenced.
Peters’ cause had been repeatedly championed by President Donald Trump, who has posted ‘Free Tina Peters’ numerous times on his social media site, including Friday, and blasted Polis as a ‘sleazebag’ who should ‘rot in hell’ for not using his power as governor to free the former Mesa County clerk.
Dareh Gregorian for NBC News
In addition to Trump’s usual name-calling and mudslinging, he also, according to reports, tried to exact revenge on Colorado by dismantling National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). That (likely illegal) action is now being contested in court by University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), manager of NCAR, explicitly calling his dismantling effort a “campaign of retaliation” against Colorado after state officials refused to comply with Trump’s pressure campaign to free convicted-felon (and 2020 Insurrection co-conspirator) Peters.
The original infractions for which Peters was convicted were numerous and sordid, as NBC also notes.
Peters was convicted of four felony and three misdemeanor charges in August 2024 for using another person’s security badge to allow someone associated with MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, a prominent election denier, access to county election equipment involving Dominion Voting Systems.
The county’s machines had to be replaced afterward when data, including passwords for the machines, was posted online.
Dareh Gregorian for NBC News
Polis cited Colorado Board of Appeals in his argument that Peters should not be punished for “exercising her First Amendment right to free speech.” For his part, Lindell has been linked to multiple wacky (and 100% debunked) conspiracy theories related to the 2020 election, including a plan to institute Martial Law that included Sidney Powell and Kash Patel—who is, as of this writing anyway, FBI director.
AUTHOR FOOTNOTE
What Jared Polis does not know (or, more likely, remains unbothered by) is mobster Donald’s predeliction for being a spoiled baby constantly demanding more pounds of flesh. Just ask any university, DEI-embracing corporation or law firm if Trump goons’ meddling in their affairs stopped after compliance—or if fascists kept coming back with new demands. (They did and always do.) And then they demand still more after that.
Tina Peters of course has a right to free speech, like all Americans—even ones predisposed to criming. But the First Amendment is not a Get Out of Jail Free card for MAGA operatives who have committed election felonies. That’s not how any of this works.
Colorado Board of Appeals (according to my research anyway; I’m not a lawyer just a layperson who follows this stuff closely) made a narrow procedural ruling in sentencing (that Polis later exploited). First, the panel’s language via CNN: “Her offense was not her belief, however misguided the trial court deemed it to be, in the existence of such election fraud; it was her deceitful actions in her attempt to gather evidence of such fraud.”
From that point, Peters’ lawyer and Polis took the narrow holding and inflated it into a claim that Peters “was punished for speech” when, in very real and unsettling ways, that’s categorically false. And inflating that holding (using it as justification for sentence reduction) actually feeds the right wing’s “victim complex” that’s been an active op for literally decades now. Trump of course is the primary avatar for The Enterprise’s perpetually aggrieved whiners.
Polis’ political career in Democratic circles—like Sinema and Manchin prior—is now over. But the future is still bright if he ever wants to hop over to Fixed Noise.
SOURCES
- KKTV
- Jared Polis on Facebook
- NBC News
- UCS.org
- CNN
