Colorado’s governor Jared Polis commutes sentence of Tina Peters, 2020 election denier
Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, announced on Friday that he has decided to commute the sentence of Tina Peters, a former county clerk in the state who was convicted of plotting to examine voting machines under her control after the 2020 election to search for evidence the election had been rigged against Donald Trump.
In a local TV interview, the governor said that he had decided to commute her sentence to four-and-a-half years, making her eligible for parole next month.
Polis told the local TV anchor Kyle Clark: “She committed a crime. What’s an issue here is how long the sentence is.”
“I agree with the appeals court that in the sentencing hearing, the judge incorrectly looked at and considered her bizarre viewpoints, her speech, and held her speech against her,” he added.
Polis also read a statement from Peters, a conspiracy theorist who has described herself as a political prisoner, in which she said: “I made mistakes, and for those, I’m sorry. Five years ago, I misled the secretary of state when allowing a person to gain access to county voting equipment. That was wrong. I have learned and grown during my time in prison, and going forward, I will make sure that my actions always follow the law, and I’ll avoid the mistakes of the past.”
The governor also clarified that he never considered pardoning Peters since she showed no remorse.
“I don’t think that she’s remorseful for the opinions that she has or for belief in conspiracies,” Polis said. “Her beliefs are her beliefs. I vehemently disagree with much of what she has to say, certainly her conspiratorial beliefs.”
The governor said that the way to rebut those false claims was “disputing her incorrect information and data. It’s not to lock somebody up because they believe something that is not only unpopular and incorrect, but also conspiratorial and potentially dangerous.”
In recent months, Trump has repeatedly demanded that Peters be released from jail, in social media posts and interviews in which he gave an entirely false account of the election security breach she committed and was convicted of in 2024. The president repeatedly claimed that Peters had caught people cheating, which is not true. She breached election security in search of evidence of fraud in the voting machines used in 2020, but failed to find any evidence.
Key events
US Department of Justice plans to seek indictment former Cuban President Raúl Castro – reports
The US Department of Justice is preparing to seek an indictment against Cuba’s former president, Raúl Castro, three people familiar with the matter told the Associated Press on Friday.
A criminal indictment could form the basis for a re-run of the Trump administration’s raid on Venezuela to arrest its then president, Nicolás Maduro, after criminal charges were filed against him.
Donald Trump has repeatedly said in recent months that military action against the Caribbean nation could be imminent. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, whose parents emigrated from Cuba to the US before the Cuban revolution, was photographed on board Air Force One this week in the same grey Nike Tech tracksuit Maduro was wearing when he was captured and flown to New York in January.
One of the people told the AP that the potential indictment is connected to Castro’s alleged role in the 1996 shootdown of four planes operated by a Miami-based exile group, Brothers to the Rescue. Raúl Castro was his brother Fidel’s defense minister at the time.
Tina Peters to be released 1 June, Colorado governor’s commutation letter says
Tina Peters, a former Colorado county election official convicted of breaching election machine security to search for evidence that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, will be released on parole on 1 June, according to a letter from Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis.
“I am commuting your sentence by granting you a limited commutation such that your total sentence, inclusive of time in County Jail and the Department of Corrections, is commuted to 4 years and 4.5 months, and you shall be released on parole effective June 1, 2026, with terms and conditions of parole to be set by the Parole Board,” Polis wrote to Peters on Friday.
“The crimes you were convicted of are very serious and you deserve to spend time in prison for these offenses. However, this is an extremely unusual and lengthy sentence for a first time offender who committed nonviolent crimes,” Polis also told Peters in the commutation letter.
He went on to say that “the principle highlighted by the Colorado Court of Appeals in your case that, ‘…the First Amendment generally prohibits punishing someone for their protected speech.’”
Polis added that he agreed with the appeals court finding that “comments about Peters’s belief in the existence of 2020 election fraud” from the trial judge who sentenced Peters “went beyond relevant considerations for her sentencing. 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 governor signed off the letter to Peters with the same formulation he used in dozens of other letter he issued on Friday: “This commutation will change your future. It is up to you to make the most of this opportunity. Good luck to you.”
Colorado’s top election official says freeing Tina Peters ‘will validate and embolden the election denial movement’
Jena Griswold, Colorado’s top election official, denounced governor Jared Polis’s decision to commute the sentence of Tina Peters, the Republican former county election official who was convicted of four felonies by a jury in heavily Republican Mesa County for breaching her own election equipment in 2021 in search of evidence that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump.
“This clemency grant to Tina Peters is an affront to our democracy, the people of Colorado, and election officials across the country,” Griswold said in a statement. “The Governor’s actions today will validate and embolden the election denial movement, and leave a dark, dangerous imprint on American democracy for years to come.”
The secretary of state’s office also explained the background to the case:
In 2021, then-Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters compromised her county’s voting equipment trying to prove conspiracies. Secretary Griswold took swift action when discovering the incident, including decertifying the county’s voting equipment, working with Mesa County commissioners to remove Peters from election oversight, appointing a former Republican Secretary of State to oversee the election, and then leading the nation’s first law on insider threats.
Peters’ actions cost Mesa County nearly one million dollars in replacement equipment.
Colorado Democrats running for governor denounce current governor’s decision to free Tina Peters
Senator Michael Bennet, a Colorado Democrat who is running to be the state’s next governor, is not a fan of the current governor’s decision on Friday to commute the sentence of Tina Peters, a former country election clerk who breached voting machine security after the 2020 election to look for evidence of fraud that the election was stolen from fellow Republican Donald Trump.
“I vehemently disagree with Gov. Polis’s decision to commute Tina Peters’ sentence,” Bennet wrote on social media. “She broke the law, undermined our elections, and was convicted by a jury of her peers. With Trump continuing to attack Colorado, we must stand strong for our institutions and the rule of law.”
Phil Weiser, Colorado’s attorney general who is also a Democratic candidate for governor, was even more forceful, calling the decision “mind-boggling and wrong as a matter of basic justice”.
“She was convicted by a jury and sentenced for tampering with election equipment and undermining our elections. The judge imposed a reasonable sentence based on her criminal conduct, she has shown no remorse for her crimes, and now the governor is taking this unwise and unprecedented step of releasing her from prison early,” Weiser said in a statement.
“Caving in to this president will only lead to more abuse from the bullying Trump administration. Today is a sad day for Colorado and the rule of law,” he added.
Who is Tina Peters, only public official jailed for trying to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss?
So who is Tina Peters, the Republican whose jail sentence was commuted on Friday by Colorado’s governor, Jared Polis?
As our colleague Sam Levine explained in March:
Peters was the county clerk in western Colorado’s Mesa county in 2020 and allowed an unauthorized person to use a security badge and access her county’s voting equipment. Passwords and other sensitive information related to the county’s election equipment later became public and was used by election deniers to try to question the 2020 election results.
In 2024, a jury found Peters guilty of three counts of attempting to influence a public servant, conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, first-degree official misconduct, violation of duty, and failure to comply with the secretary of state. She was sentenced to nine years in prison.
Donald Trump has repeatedly urged Polis to pardon Peters as part of a continued effort to spread false information about the 2020 election. Earlier this year he issued a federal pardon for Peters, which had no bearing on her case because she is convicted of state crimes…
Peters’s case has been a cause celebre among Trump and supporters because she remains the only person incarcerated for attempting to overturn the 2020 election after Trump issued sweeping pardons to those involved in the January 6 riot and aides who assisted with the false elector scheme.
Polis suggested in March that he was considering some form of clemency for Peters, after a Trump issued a stream of threats to withhold funds from Colorado
Writing on social media then, Polis compared Peters’s case to that of a former state senator, Sonya Jaquez Lewis, who was also convicted of four felonies, including an attempt to influence a public official. Lewis was sentenced to probation and community service. Lewis’s charges came from forged letters she submitted from staff as part of a legislative inquiry into whether she mistreated aides.
“It is not lost on me that she was convicted of the exact same felony charge as Tina Peters – attempting to influence a public official – and yet Tina Peters, as a non-violent first time offender got a nine year sentence,” Polis wrote on X. “Justice in Colorado and America needs to be applied evenly, you never know when you might need to depend on the rule of law. This is the context I am using as I consider cases like this that have sentencing disparities.”
Colorado’s governor Jared Polis commutes sentence of Tina Peters, 2020 election denier
Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, announced on Friday that he has decided to commute the sentence of Tina Peters, a former county clerk in the state who was convicted of plotting to examine voting machines under her control after the 2020 election to search for evidence the election had been rigged against Donald Trump.
In a local TV interview, the governor said that he had decided to commute her sentence to four-and-a-half years, making her eligible for parole next month.
Polis told the local TV anchor Kyle Clark: “She committed a crime. What’s an issue here is how long the sentence is.”
“I agree with the appeals court that in the sentencing hearing, the judge incorrectly looked at and considered her bizarre viewpoints, her speech, and held her speech against her,” he added.
Polis also read a statement from Peters, a conspiracy theorist who has described herself as a political prisoner, in which she said: “I made mistakes, and for those, I’m sorry. Five years ago, I misled the secretary of state when allowing a person to gain access to county voting equipment. That was wrong. I have learned and grown during my time in prison, and going forward, I will make sure that my actions always follow the law, and I’ll avoid the mistakes of the past.”
The governor also clarified that he never considered pardoning Peters since she showed no remorse.
“I don’t think that she’s remorseful for the opinions that she has or for belief in conspiracies,” Polis said. “Her beliefs are her beliefs. I vehemently disagree with much of what she has to say, certainly her conspiratorial beliefs.”
The governor said that the way to rebut those false claims was “disputing her incorrect information and data. It’s not to lock somebody up because they believe something that is not only unpopular and incorrect, but also conspiratorial and potentially dangerous.”
In recent months, Trump has repeatedly demanded that Peters be released from jail, in social media posts and interviews in which he gave an entirely false account of the election security breach she committed and was convicted of in 2024. The president repeatedly claimed that Peters had caught people cheating, which is not true. She breached election security in search of evidence of fraud in the voting machines used in 2020, but failed to find any evidence.
Jeanine Pirro threatens to ‘aggressively prosecute parents’ of teens who violate DC curfew
At a news conference on Friday, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, and former daytime television star, Jeanine Pirro announced a crackdown on so-called “teen takeovers” in Washington and said that her office would “aggressively prosecute parents” if their children are found to violate the district’s curfew for minors.
Pirro’s office lacks the authority to prosecute children, with limited exceptions for some violent crimes, but said a local law gives her the power to prosecute parents.
Washington’s curfew for under-18s is 11pm on weeknights and midnight on weekends, but new legislation could impose an 11pm curfew on weekends and allow the local police chief to declare special 8pm curfew zones in certain areas.
The announcement came as federal officials promised a surge of forces from federal agencies and the national guard to police Washington DC during celebrations of the nation’s 250th anniversary, including a mixed martial arts fight at the White House on Donald Trump’s 80th birthday next month.
“We are surging police and military to secure the capital for America 250,” Trump’s chief domestic policy adviser, Stephen Miller, posted on social media. “Criminals will have no safe quarter.”
Pirro’s threat might sound familiar to viewers of her daytime television show, Judge Pirro, which included an episode in which she scolded the parent of a child and suggested that the should be charged with a crime for not stopping her 13-year-old daughter from having sex.
Here’s a recap of the day so far
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Steve Cohen, the lone House Democrat from Tennessee, announced that he would not seek re-election after his district was redrawn in the state’s new congressional map. “This is by far the most difficult moment I’ve had as an elected official,” Cohen, who has served in the US House since 2007, told reporters on Capitol Hill on Friday. “I don’t want to quit. I’m not a quitter. But these districts were drawn to beat me.” The new map, passed by Tennessee’s GOP-dominated legislature last week, splits up the ninth district and funnels Black voters in the Memphis area into three different constituencies.
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After Cohen announced that he would not seek re-election to Congress, Hakeem Jeffries praised his colleague’s time in office. “The city of Memphis, the Congress and the nation are better because of Steve’s commitment to making a difference,” the top House Democrat said of Cohen.
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Thousands of US stock trades surfaced in Donald Trump’s ethics filing this week. Trump disclosed at least $220m in financial dealings in the securities of dominant American companies this year, including Microsoft, Meta Platforms, Oracle, Broadcom, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs, as first reported by Reuters. A spokesperson for the Trump Organization told the Guardian that the president, his family and the Trump Organization do not play a role in selecting, directing or approving specific investments made in his name.
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Henry McMaster, South Carolina’s Republican governor, signed an executive order ordering a special redistricting session ahead of the midterm elections. The Friday session will focus on whether to redraw the state’s map to essentially get rid of the majority-minority district that Democrat currently James Clyburn represents. However, a number of South Carolina Republicans fear that mid-decade redistricting would actually weaken GOP voting power in newly drawn districts.
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Lebanon and Israel have agreed to a 45-day extension of their ceasefire, after two “productive” days of talks hosted by the US, according to state department spokesperson Tommy Pigott. In a statement, he added that the state department will “reconvene the political track of negotiations” on 2 June and 3 June.
US state department says Lebanon and Israel agree to a 45-day ceasefire extension
Lebanon and Israel have agreed to a 45-day extension of their ceasefire, after two “productive” days of talks hosted by the US, according to state department spokesperson Tommy Pigott.
In a statement, he added that the state department will “reconvene the political track of negotiations” on 2 June and 3 June.
“We hope these discussions will advance lasting peace between the two countries, full recognition of each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and establishing genuine security along their shared border,” Pigott said.
Trump pushes endorsement for Letlow in Louisiana Senate primary
Ahead of Louisiana’s US Senate primary tomorrow, the president posted on Truth Social on his way back from China to repeat his support for Republican congresswoman Julia Letlow.
“She is a TOTAL WINNER!” Trump wrote on social media. “She has my Complete and Total Endorsement, and will never let you down!”
The president announced his backing for the representative earlier this year as a hardline challenger to Senator Bill Cassidy, the incumbent who is one of three sitting Republicans who voted to convict Trump during his second impeachment trial.
Cassidy, who also chairs the Senate health committee, has drawn the ire of the president, and has been critical of the administration’s Make America Healthy Again (Maha) agenda. Although Cassidy cast a deciding vote to confirm Robert F Kennedy Jr as Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary, he has since questioned many of his policy decisions.
Letlow is also facing another known entity in the Louisiana primary – the state’s treasurer John Fleming.
While the Senate primary will still take place on Saturday, after Louisiana lawmakers voted to pass a new congressional map that would eliminate one of the state’s two majority-Black House districts this week. If the state’s lower chamber lawmakers pass the map, the House race now stands to be an open primary on 3 Novembe, where all US House candidates, regardless of party affiliation, would be on the ballot in Louisiana for voters in their district.
A reminder that the Republican governor, Jeff Landry, suspended the state’s House primary elections after the supreme court gutted a key section of the Voting Rights Act.
Dharna Noor
Supreme court Justice Samuel Alito is resisting climate advocates’ calls for him to sit out a major case that could benefit the fossil fuel industry.
In a statement to NBC news, a spokesperson for the high court said that “his recusal is not required”.
“Justice Alito does not have a financial interest in any party” involved in the case in question, the spokesperson told the outlet.
The pushback came one day after a coalition of environmental advocacy organizations and progressive watchdog groups called on the Senate judiciary committee to investigate Alito’s financial ties to oil companies, noting that the justice’s most recent financial disclosure showed he had holdings in ConocoPhillips, Phillips66 and five other oil and energy companies, and also has sums invested in a Vanguard fund in which Exxon is the third-largest holding.
“His irregular recusal practice in oil and gas industry-related cases is undermining public confidence in the impartiality of the Court,” reads the letter, whose signatories included the Center for Biological Diversity, the Revolving Door Project and scores of other progressive groups.
Alito did not recuse himself from a case slated to be decided in the court’s next term. It focuses on a bid by energy companies ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy to find that federal law prevents subnational governments from filing lawsuits against oil and gas companies for the climate-warming effects of their products.
The supreme court in February agreed to take up the case brought by the oil majors Suncor Energy and Exxon. Alito weighed in on the decision.
But two years earlier, had recused himself from considering a petition brought by the same companies in the same lawsuit. The court rejected the companies’ request to weigh in on that petition. The court did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment.
