CNN
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President Donald Trump announced Thursday that he will grant Tina Peters a full federal pardon, likely increasing pressure to free the former Colorado secretary from prison even though he cannot overturn the state charges.
“Tina is in a Colorado prison for the ‘crime’ of demanding honest elections. Today I am granting her a full pardon for her attempts to expose voter fraud in the rigged 2020 presidential election,” the president wrote in Truth Social.
Peters, the former Republican secretary of Mesa, Colorado, was convicted last year on state charges for participating in a scheme to breach voting systems to prove Trump’s false claims of massive voter fraud in 2020. She was sentenced to nine years in prison and is serving her sentence at a women’s prison in Pueblo, Colorado.
Peters is currently the only Trump ally in prison for crimes related to attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. She still believes the election was stolen, her lawyers recently told CNN. His lawyers have also expressed concern about his physical safety, telling a judge that his health is deteriorating behind bars.
Trump’s pardon has no legal impact on his conviction or imprisonment. However, the government has been pressuring Colorado authorities to release her or at least transfer her to federal custody, where she could be moved to a more comfortable facility. The Justice Department even intervened to support Peters’ failed attempt to convince a federal judge to release her.
After months of hearings and legal filings, a federal judge in Denver on Monday rejected her federal lawsuit seeking her release, concluding that state courts are the appropriate jurisdiction for her to challenge her conviction.
Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, defended Peters’ conviction in a statement. “No president has jurisdiction over state laws or the power to pardon a person for state convictions. This is a matter for the courts to decide, and we will follow their orders,” he declared.
Polis has previously stated that he will not pardon Peters as part of any compensation agreement.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, a Democrat fighting to uphold Peters’ conviction and keep her in prison, also rejected the pardon in a statement.
“The idea that a president could pardon someone tried and convicted in state court is unprecedented in American law, would be an outrageous departure from what our Constitution requires, and will not stand,” Weiser stated.
With information from Kaitlan Collins of CNN.
