Colorado governor says he will grant clemency to Trump-aligned election conspiracy theorist

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said Friday that he will grant clemency to Tina Peters, a former county clerk and darling of election conspiracy theorists who was serving a nine-year prison sentence for allowing unauthorized access to voting machines after the 2020 election.

Polis, a Democrat, told CNN that he is halving her sentence, meaning she could be paroled within a month after accounting for time already served for aiding efforts to overturn the presidential election.

The Colorado governor said his decision came after Peters acknowledged her wrongdoing in an application for leniency, which was obtained by CNN. POLITICO has not independently reviewed the document.

Polis told CNN he believed Peters’ was unfairly punished for free expression in her comments alleging fraud in the 2020 election.

“I hope that Democrats don’t sacrifice our deeply held belief in free speech because of political expediency or disregard for what people are saying,” Polis told CNN. “There should be no consideration of what we say, how unpopular it is, how inaccurate it is in sentencing or in criminal proceedings.”

Polis’ decision followed months of intense pressure from President Donald Trump, who issued his own symbolic pardon of Peters last year, but cannot grant clemency for violations of state law.

Trump has repeatedly called on Polis to free Peters, and his pressure campaign came as his administration has taken a series of actions to slash funding to and litigate against Colorado. Also in December, Trump vetoed a bipartisan bill meant to bring clean water to the state, the first and only veto of his second term.

Polis told CNN he spoke with Trump privately about Peters’ case, but insisted he granted her clemency after “looking at the merits of the case.”

The Democratic governor, who has occasionally bucked his own party, suggested he was weighing granting Peters clemency in March, after a former Democratic state senator was sentenced to probation and community service after being convicted of similar charges.

“Justice in Colorado and America needs to be applied evenly, you never know when you might need to depend on the rule of law,” he wrote on X.

Peters was convicted on four state felony charges in August 2024 by a Colorado jury after she fraudulently gave a right-wing activist affiliated with MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell access to the Mesa County election system.

She was unrepentant in her sentencing hearing two months later, telling the court that she’d “never done anything with malice to break the law.”

Peters’ conviction was upheld by an appeals court in April, but ruled that the lower court’s decision to impose a nine-year sentence was too harsh.

In a statement issued before Polis’ decision on Friday, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat now running for attorney general, strongly urged Polis not to grant leniency to Peters.

"Peters organized the breach of the election equipment, broke the public trust and attacked the very foundations of our democratic process,” she said. “Her actions are still being used to try to undermine the 2026 election. She should get no special treatment by the Governor, and his statement is shocking and worrisome."

Peters’ case has long attracted the attention of prominent Republicans, including Trump, who falsely argue that former President Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election was fraudulent.

“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,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in December. “Tina is sitting in a Colorado prison for the ‘crime’ of demanding Honest Elections.”