Trump Pardons “Election Denier” Tina Peters, but State Officials Aren’t Releasing Her

After 10 months of attempts to convince Colorado’s judicial officials to release her, President Donald Trump stepped in and pardoned “election denier” Tina Peters himself. But she isn’t likely to be released immediately — if at all.

Trump made the announcement Thursday afternoon in a Truth Social post:

Democrats have been relentless in their targeting of TINA PETERS, a Patriot who simply wanted to make sure that our Elections were Fair and Honest. 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 “Crime”

Peters is serving a nine-year prison sentence after a jury found her guilty of giving outsiders access to Mesa County, Colorado, voting equipment. “Peters was accused of sneaking Conan Hayes, a purported computer expert, into her office in 2021, using someone else’s security badge so that he could copy Dominion Voting Systems hard drives,” according to mainstream reports. She was convicted of seven charges total, four of them felonies, including three counts of attempting to influence a public servant.

Peters was thrown in prison in October 2024. Her lawyer, Peter Ticktin, said in a recent a letter that his client has been attacked three times by other prisoners. Kari Lake, who has alleged election fraud in her campaign for offices in Arizona, and who has also stood by Trump’s assertion that the 2020 election was stolen from him, is concerned that Peters may not last much longer. “She’s a woman who’s got health problems and I’m afraid if we don’t get her out, she’ll die behind bars,” Lake said later on Thursday.

Colorado Won’t Release Her

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold responded to Trump’s pardon with a statement indicating that state officials have no intention of letting Peters out. “Tina Peters was convicted by a jury of her peers for state crimes in a state Court. Trump has no constitutional authority to pardon her. His assault is not just on our democracy, but on states’ rights and the American constitution,” Griswold said.

This is likely why the Federal Bureau of Prisons wrote to Colorado officials last month asking that they transfer Peters to federal custody. Gov. Jared Polis (D) denied the request.

Peters gave an interview to TNA on August 16, 2024, just weeks before she was jailed. (Her interview begins at about 29:00.) She said she had proof of collusion to steal votes between election-machine maker Dominion, the secretary of state, and even other countries:

The secretary of state and Dominion voting systems — who now we know have been colluding … not only in Colorado but other states and other countries — have been colluding using these machines and other electronic means to steal the votes. And I mean steal the votes. We have three reports.… The images were taken of the computer system before Dominion Voting Systems and the secretary of state came into my house, my office.… We took an image before they came in, we took an image after they left — and what it showed was they had deleted 29,000 vital election records, there were 36 wireless devices in this computer system, and that there was the ability in there to flip votes in a matter of seconds.

Ticktin filed an amicus brief in support of Peters in May. In December, a federal magistrate judge dismissed Peters’ bid for release while she appealed her state conviction.

Ticktin told The Washington Post that Peters should be released while courts decide if Trump’s pardon is legally binding.  “You don’t keep someone in prison when you don’t know if she belongs in prison or not,” he said. “It could be a year of litigation. You have to let her out.”