On Friday afternoon, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis announced clemency for 44 individuals, including 35 pardons and 9 commutations. One, however, stood out.
According to a press statement from the Democratic governor, Polis agreed to commute the sentence of Tina Peters, a prominent election denier whose nine-year prison sentence will be cut short, and who will now go free after five years behind bars.
Peters didn’t just embrace Donald Trump’s lies and conspiracy theories in the wake of his 2020 election defeat — she also acted on them, using someone else’s security badge to allow a Mike Lindell associate to access county election equipment.
The apparent point of the endeavor was to leak election machinery data in pursuit of a conspiratorial plot.
Not surprisingly, Peters was caught and indicted. She pleaded not guilty, but after she and her attorney struggled to present a compelling defense, a Colorado jury convicted her, finding her guilty of three counts of attempting to influence a public servant, one count of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, first-degree official misconduct, violation of duty and failing to comply with the secretary of state.
Ahead of sentencing, Peters showed no remorse. A judge ultimately sentenced her to nine years behind bars.
Now, she’ll go free, thanks to a Democratic governor who commuted her sentence because, as Polis argued, Peters was a nonviolent, first-time offender.
That’s true, though that doesn’t make Polis’ decision any easier to justify. Peters was convicted of felonies in response to her efforts to undermine democracy because of conspiracy theories that didn’t make any sense. She was put in a position of public trust, which she chose to abuse.
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What’s more, this isn’t a situation in which the convicted felon came to see the error of her ways. She never apologized for her crimes, and her lawyers were still in the process of challenging her conviction — a legal process the governor previously said he would allow to play out before intervening.
Trump’s role in this process is difficult to overlook. Indeed, the president has spent his second term not only demanding Peters’ release, but he also threatened Colorado with “harsh measures” unless the state agreed to release Peters, whom he claimed had been “tortured by Crooked Colorado politicians.”
In the months that followed, the administration did, in fact, take steps to punish the Rocky Mountain State, raising concerns that the governor would commute her sentence, not to advance the cause of justice, but to placate a president who was abusing the powers of his office.
In an interview Friday afternoon, Polis told The New York Times his commutation was not an attempt to placate Trump. Whether the president nevertheless sees the governor’s move as appeasement, encouraging him to pursue similar abuses going forward, remains to be seen. Watch this space.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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