The lawyers in the room Saturday at Community College of Aurora weren’t having any of Gov. Jared Polis’ talk about convict Tina Peters being punished with too much prison for just her crazy talk protected by the First Amendment.
“Tina Peters abused her office and undercut election integrity and engaged in public corruption,” Boulder DA Michael Dougherty told both a live and virtual audience during a Democratic primary election candidate forum in Aurora. “She deserves every day of the prison sentence.”
Dougherty was joined by fellow Democratic Colorado attorney general candidates David Seligman and Hetal Doshi during the day-long Democracy Fest candidate forum held and moderated by Brother Jeff Fard and the Sentinel, with me joining Fard at the mic. The event drew primary candidates for House districts 9, 41, 42 and two Arapahoe County commissioner district races.
The day was broken up by a half-hour stopover with three Democratic attorney general candidates. Secretary of State Jena Griswold was unable to join.
The three who came all delivered fiery homilies covering a wide range of statewide injustices that each candidate promised to shoulder against daily if elected to the job in November.
All the fevered banter of protecting fraud victims, mistreated immigrants and running defense against a lawless Trump administration sounded like coffee talk compared to the steely gazes and sharp voices that came with their thoughts on Polis granting clemency to MAGA cultist Tina Peters, convicted of a variety of election fraud charges and sentenced to nine years in prison.
Polis has framed his decision as a principled defense of free-speech rights, insisting Peters’ nine-year sentence improperly considered her conspiracy-riddled rhetoric and election denialism. Polis has cited an appeals court decision that found much the same, sending the case back to the Mesa County district court that convicted her for an adjustment to her sentence.
Polis, for a reason he hasn’t disclosed, didn’t wait for that result and ended her jail term last week, creating a nuclear meltdown among statewide Democrats and even a vote of censure.
The governor made the call two days after the end of the legislative session, limiting any substantive action by lawmakers.
On Friday, Peters took to social media, returning to her conspiracy rants, resuming the free speech that the lawyers in the big room at Community College of Aurora on Saturday said is akin to yelling “fire” in a theater.
“No matter how hard people like Jenna Griswold and Phil Weiser try to cover up what was done to the people of Colorado, I will keep speaking the truth,” Peters said in a May 22 post on her X account. “And if (Democrats) are this afraid of mercy being shown to one whistleblower, the public should ask what they are still trying so hard to hide.”
Throughout Saturday, every Democratic candidate verbally or literally shook their fist at Polis. The Democratic attorney general candidates delivered red-hot opening arguments in a case they say won’t be going away.
Seligman gave a gritty response, suggesting the Legislature should reconvene to investigate impeachment if evidence shows Polis acted under pressure from President Donald Trump, which Polis has denied.
Seligman balked at Polis’ recent comments in his defense and said Peters wasn’t convicted for eccentric beliefs. She was convicted because she abused her office, compromised election equipment and fueled a national movement built on lies about stolen elections, he said.
The issue, Seligman said, is that her conduct went far beyond just her speech.
Her conspiratorial rants helped weaponize election conspiracy theories against public servants across America. Election workers have faced threats, harassment and intimidation ever since.
Dougherty, a longtime advocate of criminal justice reform, hammered that point with clenched-jaw force.
Colorado prisons are filled with nonviolent offenders who don’t have presidential allies, cable-TV-news defenders or political leverage at the State Capitol, he said.
Because Peters became a MAGA celebrity, she got extraordinary treatment, Dougherty said.
He accused Polis of strategically waiting until the Legislature adjourned before announcing the commutation, effectively insulating himself from immediate political retaliation.
In my more than four decades of professionally watching the Colorado Politics Show, there’s never been a shortage of inter-party skirmishes, but I’ve never seen Democrats so eager to pull the pin on a political grenade like the one Polis is holding.
Doshi administered the sharpest prosecutorial perspective on Saturday.
As a former federal prosecutor, she framed the Peters commutation as part of a larger pattern in America’s criminal justice system that regularly sees sympathy and second chances flowing disproportionately toward politically connected, white and white-collar defendants while others receive no comparable mercy.
She called Polis’ intervention “an absolute betrayal” — not only of election workers, but of jurors who heard the evidence and of a justice system that never got the chance to complete its appellate process.
Doshi said she believes Polis inserted his personal, non-legal judgment into a process where experienced judges, prosecutors and jurors had already spoken.
Griswold wasn’t at the CCA event, but she continued her daily blistering response in an email statement.
No one in Colorado has spent more time confronting election denialism than the secretary of state, who dealt directly with the Mesa County chaos that Peters orchestrated.
She called the Polis clemency grant “an affront to our democracy” that would “validate and embolden the election denial movement.”
Griswold has repeatedly pointed out that the damage created by Peters went far beyond her endless crazy talk. Her actions cost Mesa County nearly $1 million in replacement voting equipment.
And while Polis keeps insisting the real issue was sentencing fairness and First Amendment protections, Griswold and the other Democratic attorney general candidates repeatedly said her speech wasn’t the crime, but her conduct was.
Unsatisfied with just harsh words, Seligman raised the impeachment specter. Dougherty demanded broader sentencing scrutiny and accountability. Doshi argued for respecting the integrity of juries and appellate courts. Griswold emphasized aggressive protection of election systems and election workers.
From the AG candidates and about a dozen others from the Aurora area, the backlash isn’t fading. It’s metastasizing, the lawyers in the room said in their prognosis.
No one I heard from on Saturday expects it to be anything but fatal.
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