Former election clerk Tina Peters released after Trump pressure campaign

Tina Peters, a former Colorado official convicted of allowing election machine tampering, has been released from state prison following a pressure campaign by United States President Donald Trump.As Peters left state prison on Monday, Colorado’s Secretary of State Jena Griswold issued a statement expressing opposition to her release.“It sends a dangerous message about accountability for those who would attack elections,” Griswold wrote.“Peters’ release also will embolden the election denial movement; since the grant of clemency, she has continued to spread election falsehoods and conspiracies.”Peters is a Trump supporter, and during the 2020 presidential race, she was part of an election denial movement that rejected Trump’s loss to Democrat Joe Biden as fraudulent.In a bid to prove that false claim, Peters allowed an unauthorised member of the public to access local electronic voting systems and copy their hard drives. She was a county clerk for Mesa County, Colorado, at the time.She was ultimately sentenced to nine years in state prison for participating in the security breach.But Trump and his allies have held her up as an example of political persecution.Last November, the Trump administration issued a blanket pardon to those involved in 2020 election denial efforts. The following month, he also granted a pardon to Peters specifically, though she had been charged with no federal crime.Federal clemency does not apply to state-level charges, though, and Trump pressured Colorado to drop her conviction.Last month, Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, granted Peters clemency, calling her nine-year sentence disproportionate.“The crimes you were convicted of are very serious and you deserve to spend time in prison for these offences,” Polis wrote in a statement. “However, this is an extremely unusual and lengthy sentence for a first time offender who committed non-violent crimes.”Still, the decision was considered controversial, with Democrats, local officials and government watchdog groups calling Polis misguided.“We are furious, disgusted, and deeply disappointed,” Matt Crane, the head of the Colorado County Clerks Association, a group that advocates for municipal clerks, said after the clemency decision.Many critics have pointed to Peters’s lack of remorse about her actions.Immediately after release, for instance, Steve Bannon released an interview with Peters on his podcast, where she repeated unsubstantiated claims about election fraud.“I see these elections taking place in real time. You know, the Mamdanis, the Virginia governor, Spanberger, and then what’s going on in California and Texas and Maine, just all over the country,” Peters said, listing places where Democrats have either won elections or made headway.“I know that the Democrats are going to cheat, and no one is really addressing the problem that I spent my time in prison as retribution for. And that was exposing the election machines that allow the votes to be flipped.”She added that she had written letters to Trump thanking him for helping her.Her remarks quickly prompted backlash, including from several Democratic candidates for governor, who are looking to succeed Polis.“Tina Peters is out of prison and already spreading the same false claims about Colorado elections that led her to commit four felonies in the first place — all in service of Trump’s Big Lie,” said state Senator Michael Bennet, one of the candidates.“That’s not what remorse looks like.”