This story was first published at Colorado Newsline.
DENVER | Democrats in the Colorado Legislature are urging Gov. Jared Polis to reject a clemency petition from Tina Peters, the former Mesa County clerk and Trump ally convicted for her role in an election security breach.
“We urge you not to empower those who seek to undermine our elections and our Republic by providing them with a figurehead to rally around and near assurance that, when you tamper with our elections, you will escape justice,” the members of the House and Senate Democratic caucuses wrote in the Wednesday letter.
It is unusual for members of the Legislature to weigh in on a clemency petition in such a way. Every statehouse Democrat signed the letter.
It comes after mounting pressure for Polis to commute Peters’ sentence, including from far-right figures and President Donald Trump, who gave Peters a symbolic pardon in December. Polis indicated on social media last week that he was open to clemency for Peters, comparing her to a former state senator who was sentenced to probation for one of the same felony charges.
“This is the context I am using as I consider cases like this that have sentencing disparities,” Polis wrote.
Peters, an election conspiracist who spread the falsehood that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against Trump, was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2024 for helping to facilitate a security breach in the elections office she oversaw as Mesa County Clerk and Recorder. She has since appealed her conviction, but the state court has not yet issued a decision. During that hearing, the appellate judges expressed skepticism about the fairness of Peters’ sentencing.
The Denver Post reported that Polis plans to delay his clemency decision until after the court has a ruling.
That’s the pathway Democrats urged in their letter.
“The resolution to those issues should be handled by the judicial branch,” they wrote. “It is our understanding that such a review is underway with further information being sought by the court, and we urge you to allow that process to advance and for the judicial system alone to handle review of any further actions in this case.”
They also urged Polis to think of the repercussions of granting clemency to an election denier.
“We would be remiss if we did not express strong concern about the impact of Ms. Peters’ crimes in fueling election conspiracy theories that undermine the integrity of our elections system as a whole. We fear that any clemency or other sentence reduction on your part will further embolden these conspiracies and those who propagate them,” they wrote.
“As he has previously said, clemency applications are being accepted until April 3 to be considered, and he continues to consider hundreds of pending applications,” Polis spokesperson Eric Maruyama wrote in an email.
They also wrote that sentence forgiveness should be reserved for people who have taken accountability for their crimes and show remorse, which they said Peters has not done. In a radio interview this week, Peters’ lawyer John Case said “anyone has second thoughts about what they’ve done and in that respect has remorse.” Case also called Peters a martyr.
Attorney General Phil Weiser, Sen. Michael Bennet and Rep. Jason Crow, all Democrats, have spoken against possible clemency for Peters.
“Tina Peters is a convicted felon. She was found guilty, by a jury of her peers, for her actions to undermine a free and fair election in Colorado. She has shown no contrition for what she did, and she has not accepted responsibility for it,” Crow said in a statement last week. “It would be wrong to let Tina Peters off for her crimes.”
Other Colorado officials who have urged Polis not to grant clemency to Peters include Attorney General Phil Weiser; Dan Rubinstein, the Republican district attorney who oversaw Peters’ trial; Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold; and the bipartisan Colorado County Clerks Association.
Tina Peters has done nothing to suggest she is independently contrite for her actions, in fact, she has done otherwise. She acts like she is a celebrity for her actions. Polis has already demonstrated he knows nothing about the reason for clemency. He reduced the truck driver, Rogel Aguilera-Mederos’, sentence way down from over 100 to 10 years after his reckless actions killed 4 people. Clemency should be reserved for people being held for exorbitant periods of time for relatively harmless actions, not reckless disregard for life. In the current environment for elections, Peters, who was supposed to guard against a breech of voters data, invited criminals into a building to view and take exactly the data she was to protect! When I was in school, taking business law, I remember a principle that called for people who occupy an office of responsibility, or those who hold themselves to be experts in their field to be held to a higher standard than a regular person. Just because Peters disagreed with the election’s outcome or because she believed a sore loser’s complaints, is no reason to violate her oath, and certainly no reason for her celebrity. Polis must not weigh into this morass! Let the courts finish their work!