Colorado Governor’s Justification for Tina Peters Commutation Draws Scrutiny Over Misleading Claims
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis granted clemency last week to former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, cutting her prison sentence in half — but several of the claims he made while defending that decision have drawn sharp criticism from prosecutors, election officials, and members of both parties for being false or misleading.
Peters, who was convicted of conspiring with allies connected to 2020 election-denial efforts to illegally copy voting system software in 2021, is set to be released from state prison within two weeks following the commutation. Her original nine-year sentence had already been thrown out by the Colorado Court of Appeals, which found the trial judge had improperly weighed Peters’ protected speech about elections as part of her punishment. Polis, a term-limited Democrat, said the resulting 4½-year commuted sentence was “tough but fair.”
Polis Claims Peters’ Case Was Unrelated to 2020 Election — Prosecutors Disagree
Much of the governor’s public rationale centered on distancing Peters’ criminal conduct from the broader effort to challenge the 2020 presidential election results. In televised interviews, Polis argued that Peters’ crimes involved a 2021 local municipal election and had “nothing to do” with President Trump’s 2020 fraud claims.
While technically accurate that Peters was never charged with manipulating 2020 vote totals, that framing omits significant context established at trial. Evidence presented to the jury showed Peters worked with associates of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell — a prominent figure in the 2020 election-denial movement — in an effort to find evidence that voting machines had been compromised in prior elections.
Dan Rubinstein, the Republican Mesa County prosecutor who brought the case, pushed back directly on Polis’ characterization. “She wasn’t specifically trying to prove that the vote count from 2020 was wrong,” Rubinstein said. “But she was looking for evidence with the machines, systemically, that the 2020 election results were invalid.”
The Colorado Court of Appeals ruling that Polis repeatedly cited as justification for the commutation also undercut his framing. That ruling noted Peters attended official meetings in 2021 about alleged 2020 election fraud and found that she sought to help Lindell’s associates build a case for election fraud — even as the court agreed her actual beliefs were constitutionally protected speech.
False Claims About Certification and Compromised Systems
Polis made a separate and more straightforward error when he claimed multiple times during a televised interview that Peters, as county clerk, “certified Biden won” the 2020 election. He repeated the claim three times, presenting it as evidence that Peters had faithfully performed her duties before later going astray.
That claim is false. Peters was the Mesa County clerk — a jurisdiction where Trump defeated Biden by roughly 28 percentage points, 63% to 35%. Her certification authority covered only her county’s results, not the statewide outcome. She certified Trump’s Mesa County victory, not Biden’s statewide win.
A spokesman for Polis later clarified that Mesa County’s certified results were included in Colorado’s statewide tally, which Biden carried — but that is a far different claim than the governor’s repeated assertion that Peters personally certified a Biden victory.
Polis also claimed that Peters’ crimes “compromised” nothing in her office. That assertion conflicts with the trial record and the conduct underlying her conviction, which involved the unauthorized copying of sensitive election system software.
Colorado’s attorney general called the governor’s rationale “mind-boggling and wrong as a matter of basic justice.” The district attorney who prosecuted the case said Polis had “misunderstood” key facts of the conviction.
Peters, for her part, issued a statement saying she was “sorry” for past mistakes and for misleading state election officials. She has not publicly acknowledged that Biden won the 2020 presidential election, and her social media activity continues to include debunked fraud claims.
What Comes Next
Peters is expected to be released from Colorado state prison within two weeks under the terms of the commutation. The Mesa County case has drawn renewed national attention following the clemency decision, with prosecutors and election security advocates warning the commutation sends a troubling message about accountability for election interference. No further legal challenges to the commutation have been announced as of this report.