December 15, 2025 11:48 AM UTC

Leading Colorado GOP Lawyers Trash Fake Tina Peters Pardon, But Not Trump

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• by: Colorado Pols

9NEWS’ Spencer Soicher reached out to prominent legal experts in Colorado on both sides of the aisle for comment on President Donald Trump’s “pardon” of convicted former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters for her crimes in a failed plot to prove Trump’s baseless contention that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, and got back the same answer without partisan distinction:

George Brauchler, Republican, Douglas County District Attorney: “Bonkers. The idea that a sitting president, for the first time that I can think of in American history, tries to exercise an executive power that’s pretty well specified in terms of its limitations in this area, wants to expand it to free someone, anyone. Well, that genie can’t be put back in the bottle. I could foresee a civil lawsuit or some type of habeas action in federal court where the federal court, on federal grounds, found some way to intervene, but I’d be stretching to think what that is.”

Troy Eid, Republican, former U.S. Attorney for Colorado, appointed by George W. Bush: “The Constitution is very clear on this. If you look at the text, it says, ‘he,’ meaning the president, ‘shall have power to grant pardons for offenses against the United States,’ and that means a federal crime. I think, really, what it is more than anything is that it’s simply the president can’t do anything, so he’s trying to symbolically stand with Tina Peters.”

The Republican prosecutor who saw Peters convicted after a years-long investigation and the testimony of Peters’ own deputies and fellow Republican elected officials, DA Dan Rubinstein, obviously agrees:

“I don’t think anybody believes that the president has the authority to pardon Ms. Peters. I’m not even sure the president believes that he has that. It has no effect in that the president has no authority to pardon a state conviction.”

DA George Brauchler is the most partisan Republican as well as the most perpetually online of any of the attorneys 9NEWS interviewed for this story. This isn’t the first time that Brauchler has refused to rubber-stamp Trump’s abuses of power. Just after the January 6th, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol against certification of Trump’s defeat in 2020, Brauchler called for their prosecution in terms as strong as any Democrat. But then as today, there has always been one critical detail missing from Brauchler’s calls for law and order, usually delivered with a side of contempt for Democrats he considers to be soft on the issue.

That would be Donald Trump’s name. Brauchler’s willingness to criticize Trump’s lawless actions in the abstract apparently does not extend to directly criticizing Trump for being lawless. This artificial differentiation between lawlessness and the individual responsible for it is necessary in order to remain a loyal Republican in the Trump era. It’s the only way a guy like Brauchler can look at himself in the mirror while still claiming to uphold the principles of law and order that have formed the basis of Brauchler’s entire career in public service.

What happens if Peters’ supporters and Trump’s allies show up at the prison in Pueblo? Will she be freed?

Brauchler: “Attica, I don’t know. I mean, that’s all I can think of.” [Pols emphasis]

This is a sitting Republican district attorney speculating about a Republican President of the United States starting a prison riot to free an imprisoned criminal.

How is this happening? How does it make sense? And how can any Republican, especially a Republican prosecutor, stand by and let this happen in their name?

Unprecedented doesn’t do this situation justice. Brauchler’s two-faced cowardice is downright otherworldly.