Former Election Clerk Tina Peters Released From Prison

Tina Peters, the former Colorado election clerk jailed for lying to state authorities, was released from prison on June 1.

“It’s been quite the ordeal, but I really want to thank God for His faithfulness and for getting me through it,” Peters said in an interview with Steve Bannon shortly after her release.

“I still have a fight to clear my name and bring out the truth of why they came after me the way they did.”

Peters served less than two years of her nine-year sentence. President Donald Trump issued her a pardon in December, but a court ruled that because her convictions were state-level, that authority rested with Colorado’s governor.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis did not issue a pardon. On May 15, he commuted her sentence, paving the way for her release. In his clemency letter to Peters, the governor said that he thought she deserved prison for her crimes but that he felt that nine years was “an extremely unusual and lengthy sentence for a first time offender who committed nonviolent crimes.”

Peters’s conviction stemmed from a 2021 incident in which she lied about Gerald Wood being a state employee to obtain security credentials for him to witness the state’s upcoming election software update. Wood was not a government worker; he was part of a team of private citizens concerned about election fraud.

Peters then gave those credentials to software technician Conan Hayes, who posed as Wood to witness the update in his place. Hayes also made a copy of the election software server before and after the update.

After data from those copies were posted online, the state investigated.

A jury in 2024 convicted Peters of multiple charges, including “three counts of attempt to influence a public servant and one count each of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, violation of duty, [and] first degree official misconduct.”

On April 2 this year, the Colorado Court of Appeals upheld her conviction but ordered that she be resentenced because the judge improperly placed weight on Peters’s skepticism about 2020 election fraud.

“There are many things in my mind that are crystal clear about this case. You are no hero,” Mesa County Judge Matthew Barrett said during her sentencing. “You abused your position, and you’re a charlatan who used, and is still using, your prior position in office to [peddle] a snake oil that’s been proven to be junk time and time again. In your world, it’s all about you.”

The appeals court ruled that those comments were tantamount to punishing the former clerk for her speech, a violation of her First Amendment rights.

“Her offense was not her belief, however misguided the trial court deemed it to be, in the existence of such election fraud; it was her deceitful actions in her attempt to gather evidence of such fraud,” the appeals opinion stated.