November 26, 2025 09:36 AM UTC

Trump's Attempt To Rescue Tina Peters And His Conscience Has Failed

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• by: Colorado Pols

Last night, 9NEWS’ Kyle Clark broke news that will greatly relieve county clerks in both parties who have been begging Gov. Jared Polis to decline the Trump administration’s request to transfer former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters from the state prison, where she is serving as nine year sentence for her scheme to defeat election system security and allow an outsider with false credentials to steal data, into federal custody–from which she would likely either be moved to a “Club Fed” environment a la Ghislaine Maxwell or released entirely. Peters is the last person in prison anywhere in America on charges stemming from Donald Trump’s refusal to accept the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, and as readers know, Trump has threatened Colorado with “harsh measures” if Peters isn’t released from state custody. Unlike the January 6th insurrectionists and coup plotters, Trump has no power to spring Peters with his own signature.

After a period of silence from Gov. Polis that can now be happily attributed to building suspense, the answer to Trump from Colorado is no:

The convicted former Mesa County clerk will remain in state custody after the Colorado Department of Corrections (CDOC) said Tuesday night that it would not respond to a Department of Justice request to take Tina Peters into federal custody.

“Requests to transfer inmates from the Colorado Department of Corrections emanate from the state, and not from other entities. The Department is not currently seeking any transfer,” said Alondra Gonzalez, a spokesperson for CDOC…

The CDOC response comes after Colorado officials petitioned Democratic Gov. Jared Polis last week not to transfer Peters to federal custody after facing pressure from the Trump administration to do so, a strategy her supporters have proposed to free her from prison.

In a related development getting its pants on after the lie spread halfway around the world, the Grand Junction Sentinel reports that rumors Peters was put in “solitary confinement” as some kind of retaliation for being a political prisoner are, you could have guessed it, unfounded:

A spokesperson for the Department of Corrections said that although Peters was removed from the general population of the La Vista Correctional Facility, where she is serving an eight-year, nine-month sentence, she was not placed in solitary confinement…

Because, you see,

“Offender Peters was never in solitary confinement as that has not existed in the Department since 2015,” [Pols emphasis] Colorado Department of Corrections Marketing and Communications Lead Christian Andrade said in an email.

Although the facts that led to Peters’ conviction on multiple felony counts are clear and easy to understand, Peters’ supporters pay little attention to those details, much more focused on the baseless election fraud conspiracy theories that drove Peters to a conspiracy of her own to produce evidence in support of Trump’s belief that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Peters’ crimes failed to produce such evidence, but that was just a side note in the courtroom where only Peters’ misconduct was on trial. Peters’ defense was funded in large part by high-profile election conspiracy theorists Patrick Byrne and “MyPillow Guy” Mike Lindell, and we have speculated in this space that this was in part due to a sense of guilt from these men over Peters’ legal plight–as we have about Trump’s campaign to free Peters since retaking office.

Whether any of them in fact possess a conscience is of course its own matter for debate.

It is unlikely that this will be the last word on the issue, and we’re waiting to see what Trump’s retaliation will be to being refused. For the Republican county clerks and Republican prosecutor who put Peters away, this decision is a critical reaffirmation against an assault on their integrity by their own President. Peters was convicted for her own misconduct, but due to the context of her motives the case has always been bigger than Peters individually. Tina Peters did what she did because she believed what Trump falsely said about the 2020 election.

Unfortunately for Peters, the harder Trump rages against what’s left of his conscience, the more important for America it becomes that Peters serve her sentence. This is equally true as Peters’ allies make gruesome death threats against Colorado’s governor and other elected officials while demanding her release.

Our little state is once again holding the line for something bigger than Tina Peters, and bigger than Colorado. This case is now a proxy battle for everything we hold dear as Americans: democracy, state’s rights, the integrity of sworn public office, all of it.

So we’d better win.