Donald Trump is demanding the release of a prominent far-right conspiracy theorist and former state elections official who is serving a nine-year jail sentence after she was found guilty of crimes connected to a nationwide scheme to overturn election results in states Trump lost in 2020.
He threatened “harsh measures” against the state of Colorado if officials refuse his command.
“FREE TINA PETERS, a brave and innocent Patriot who has been tortured by Crooked Colorado politicians, including the big Mail-In Ballot supporting the governor of the State,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Thursday.
“Let Tina Peters out of jail, RIGHT NOW. She did nothing wrong, except catching the Democrats cheat in the Election,” he added. “She is an old woman, and very sick. If she is not released, I am going to take harsh measures!!!”
Peters is among the only officials who have been convicted of crimes stemming from far-right plots to illegally reverse Trump’s loss to Joe Biden in 2020, using positions of power to amplify bogus claims of fraud and launch spurious investigations into voting machines and software.
Because she was tried in state court, Trump cannot order her release or issue a pardon. In May, he ordered the Department of Justice “to take all necessary action” to get her out of jail.
Peters, a former Mesa County clerk, was accused of breaching the county’s elections systems during a 2021 security update to prove her unfounded fraud claims. She was accused of helping a man gain access to secure areas of her office using someone else’s security badge to covertly copy a Dominion Voting Systems hard drive — the contents of which were shared with pillow salesman and conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell.
She later unsuccessfully ran for Colorado secretary of state in 2022, coming in second in a Republican primary election.
Last year, she was found guilty of three felony counts of attempting to influence a public servant, one felony count of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, one misdemeanor count of official misconduct, one misdemeanor count of violation of duty in elections, and one misdemeanor count of failure to comply with the secretary of state.
Peters has continued to promote baseless claims of election fraud and supports Trump’s ongoing false narrative that the 2020 election was “rigged” and “stolen” from him.
After she pleaded for leniency during her sentencing hearing last year, the judge presiding over her case called her a “charlatan” who “betrayed” her oath to public service.
“You’re no hero, you abused your position, and you’re a charlatan who used and is still using your prior position in office to peddle a snake oil that’s been proven to be a snake oil time and time again,” Judge Matthew Barrett said at the time.
“I’m convinced you’d do it all over again if you could,” he added. “You are a privileged person. You are as privileged as they come. You used that for power and fame.”
Colorado’s Democratic Attorney General Jena Griswold called Trump’s commands an “embarrassment.”
“Donald Trump and Tina Peters are election-denying criminals who put their need for power ahead of the American people,” she wrote. “Trump’s feeble attempts to put pressure on the justice system to re-write history is an embarrassment. … While he keeps digging himself lower and lower to free a criminal convicted by a jury of her peers, I will continue to uphold the law and our free and fair elections.”
Trump escalated his specious crusade against election administration this week with a threat to “end” mail-in voting before 2026 midterm elections, with the fate of the balance of power in Congress at stake.
The president — whose false and inflated claims about early voting span more than a decade — called to “lead a movement” to “get rid of” mail-in voting and the use of voting machines that process ballots, which would radically change how voters participate in elections and could disenfranchise tens of thousands of people.
“We’re going to start with an executive order that’s being written right now by the best lawyers in the country to end mail-in ballots because they’re corrupt,” Trump said in the Oval Office this week.
Trump cannot legally end state and local rules for election administration, though White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt suggested this week that the president is pressing Republicans in Congress to change federal law.
