Governor Jared Polis told CBS Colorado on January 8 that he was considering clemency for Tina Peters because he thinks her sentence was “harsh.” Yet on December 11, 2025, Polis wrote in a tweet that she was fairly prosecuted and he intended to wait for the courts to decide whether Trump’s presidential pardon was worth the paper it was written on. Polis wrote,
“Tina Peters was convicted by a jury of her peers, prosecuted by a Republican District Attorney, and found guilty of violating Colorado state laws, including criminal impersonation. No President has jurisdiction over state law nor the power to pardon a person for state convictions. This is a matter for the courts to decide, and we will abide by court orders.”
As Colorado Governor, Polis has the power to confer either clemency or a full pardon on Tina. Clemency can take the form of a sentence reduction of a temporary hold on punishment, while a pardon provides complete forgiveness, and blocks the possibility of a retrial for the same crimes.
Right now, Tina is scheduled to be released from prison in February of 2033.
Estimates before her trial began indicated that based on her convictions, she was eligible for up to 19-22 years in prison, but including her jail sentence at the beginning of her incarceration, Judge Barrett sentenced her to just nine — a middling sentence, not a harsh sentence as Polis believes. She’s also eligible for parole just 3 years from now, at the end of 2028, before she’s even half way done serving her sentence.
Normally, consideration of a pardon is based on a convict’s contrition, rehabilitation and demonstrated genuine commitment to leading a law-abiding life.
Tina has demonstrated anything but that.
Since being incarcerated, Tina has shown absolutely zero contrition about the laws she broke, has never acknowledged the toll that any of her actions took on Mesa County citizens, on election workers state-wide or nationally, or the cost of her actions to Mesa County taxpayers. On September 4, 2025, she wrote on social media, in part,
“I long for the day I can be free to continue to fight for the foundation of our society: Free, fair, transparent elections.” …I’m ready to be released because the midterms are close. I feel like a racehorse held back by the starting gate. We don’t have much time. We cannot allow the continued selection of governors, secretaries of state, attorneys general, and fraudulent passage of blils [sic] and laws because of the voting machines I exposed. I want to finish the job we started.”
On October 30, 3025, she wrote, in part:
“My case is one of many examples of how the power of a captured government can be turned against the people. What they have done to me will become a precedent that can be used against every other American, just as the attacks on our great
will be remembered for generations to come as the embodiment of evil gone unchecked.”
Tina remains remorseless and defiant and has completely failed to acknowledge her crimes.
Tina continues to market herself as a hero of the election denier movement and rake in cash from her duped followers.
She still maintains an active website in which she declares herself a “political prisoner.” She has yet another website that asks people to donate to her personal expenses. Even from prison she maintains a page on GiveSendGo.com in which she requests donations, promotes her misleading “documentary,” Selection Code, claims her imprisonment is “unjust” and says that she was imprisoned for “simply following the law and doing her job as Mesa County Clerk.” She still has a website through which she sells a huge assortment of Tina Peters-as-Hero swag, like T-shirts, tote bags, mugs, cell phone covers, dog hoodies and fleece throws, that feature her face superimposed over an American flag and framed by the words “Patriot*Whistleblower*Truth Teller.”
She has a national following, and is now a right wing extremist cult hero.
If and when she is released from prison, she will be welcomed with open arms by conspiracy theorists and extremists with big megaphones — some of whom promote violence — like Steve Bannon, Mike Lindell and Joe Oltmann, and will quickly start back up where she left off. She will take advantage of her connections to start raising funds to promote her lies about election fraud and will quickly stir up trouble for elections and election workers across the country all over again — something particularly dangerous in advance of the November, 2026 elections, which Trump is already openly working to rig in favor of Republicans.
Her prosecution will be all for naught, taxpayer money down the drain, and she will be a bigger menace than ever to the elections infrastructure of the entire country.
Want to tell Gov. Polis what you think of his consideration of granting clemency for Tina?
Contact Gov. Polis and tell him what you think about the possibility of his granting Tina clemency by emailing Governorpolis@state.co.us, calling the Governor’s office at (303) 866-2471, or snail-mailing Gov. Polis at
Gov. Jared Polis
State Capitol Building
200 E. Colfax Ave., Rm. 136
Denver, CO 80203.
Fuck these morally rotten right-wingers. They’re all hopelessly lacking in integrity. Peters is a lying slimeball of a criminal.
Whatever bribe Pres. Epstein-Trump has offered Polis, Coloradans won’t benefit. As I told Polis’s office, “the minute Polis gives in to Our Dear Leader-for-Life, he will resume his infantile stream of insults.”
I hate the whole idea of this but I also can see weighing an undeserved pardon against the number of people in the state who may be badly affected by Trump’s retribution on blue states. If Polis could get back federal funding already lost and regain services for lots of people who really need then, or preserve the scientific work done in the state, I can sort of see that as justice, too, for those people. Or maybe this is a talking point to get the state further along in court cases. Strange times.
I understand that our state has been shorted by the regime. But Dear Leader threatens, lies, promises, then reneges, and is emboldened to harm others. The biggest, brashest three year old bully in the guilded playpen.