President Donald Trump is going to bat for the “elderly” former Colorado elections clerk who was convicted of tampering with voting machines in a failed attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 election win.
Tina Peters, 70, is nearly a decade younger than Trump, 79, but the president argued in a Wednesday Truth Social post that she should be released from jail because of her advanced age.
“The SLEAZEBAG Governor of Colorado, Jared Polis, refuses to allow an elderly woman, Tina Peters, who was unfairly convicted of what the Democrats do, cheating on Elections, out of jail!” Trump wrote. “She was convicted for trying to stop Democrats from stealing Colorado Votes in the Election.”
Peters was very much not convicted of stopping Democrats from stealing votes.
The former MAGA clerk from Mesa County, Colorado, was found guilty in September 2024 of seven criminal counts—including four felony charges—for letting Trump’s allies illegally access the county’s election system after Trump falsely claimed Biden had “stolen” the election from him.
The court was told she had turned off security cameras and allowed an associate of MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, one of the leading conspiracy theorists who set out to “prove” Trump had won the 2020 election, to access confidential voting data, which she then leaked.
Colorado wasn’t even in play for Trump in 2020, but the case made Peters a martyr and a cause celebre for MAGA.
During a contentious hearing in October of last year, Colorado trial court Judge Matthew Barrett sentenced Peters to nine years in prison, saying she was “as defiant a defendant as this court has ever seen.”
“I’m convinced you’d do it all over again if you could,” he said, adding that her goal all along had clearly been to “obtain power, a following and fame.”
Even after she was indicted, Peters ran for Colorado secretary of state—and lost—and continued pushing conspiracy theories about voter fraud.
The Trump administration has repeatedly tried to intervene in the case, despite not having any authority over her case. The president can only pardon defendants convicted of federal crimes, not state crimes.
In March, Peters filed a long-shot application for a writ of habeas corpus challenging her imprisonment on constitutional grounds and saying she should be released while she appeals her conviction.
In the filing—which the Department of Justice supported—she said she suffers from health problems, including fibromyalgia, and during her sentencing she told the judge she needed a “magnetic mattress” to relieve her symptoms.
The federal Bureau of Prisons requested on Nov. 12 that Peters be transferred to federal custody to serve her sentence, The Washington Post reported.
It’s not clear why the transfer was requested, but the Trump administration could make Peters’ jail time much more comfortable if she were in federal custody.
Over the summer, the administration transferred Jeffrey Epstein’s associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for abusing and trafficking young girls, to a low-security prison camp after she met with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche and said positive things about Trump.
Maxwell has since been given custom meals, exercise perks, and even access to a therapy puppy.
Reached by the Daily Beast, the prisons bureau declined to comment on why it asked Colorado to transfer Peters to federal custody, or on which facility she would sent to if the request were approved.
Democratic Gov. Polis has so far refused to direct the Colorado Department of Corrections to approve the move, leading to Trump’s latest Truth Social tantrum.
“She was preserving Election Records, which she was obligated to do under Federal Law,” Trump wrote. “She has now served more than one year in jail, and has eight years to go. On top of everything else, she is a cancer ‘survivor.’ This lightweight Governor, who has allowed his State to go to hell (Tren de Aragua, anyone?), should be ashamed of himself. FREE TINA!”
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