Tina Peters, the former clerk convicted of participating in a scheme to chase election conspiracy theories promulgated by President Donald Trump, was released from prison Monday after the president successfully pressured Colorado\u2019s Democratic governor into commuting her sentence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Peters\u2019 release was confirmed by the Colorado Department of Corrections. The state agency said it would have no more information about the 70-year-old inmate. Her sentence was shortened by Gov. Jared Polis last month after Trump waged a lengthy pressure campaign against the governor and his state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Peters served less than a quarter of her nine-year sentence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Peters was the first local election official to be charged with breaching security after the 2020 election. She sneaked in an outside computer expert affiliated with My Pillow Chief Executive Mike Lindell \u2014 who himself denied that Trump lost the White House in 2020 \u2014 and the person copied the county\u2019s Dominion Voting Systems computer server as it was updated in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Peters then joined Lindell onstage at a \u201ccybersymposium\u201d that promised to reveal proof that the election was rigged. Video and photos of the computer system upgrade, including passwords, were posted online. The move stoked false claims that voting machines were manipulated to steal the election from Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Peters was convicted in 2024 of attempting to influence a public servant, conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, violation of duty and other crimes by jurors in Mesa County, a Republican stronghold that supported Trump. An appeals court upheld her conviction in April but ordered Peters to be resentenced because, it said, the judge who sent her to prison wrongly punished her for speaking out about election fraud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump had championed Peters\u2019 case, but because she was convicted under state law, he did not have the power to pardon her. Instead, the president pressured Polis to do so, lambasting him on social media and disinviting him to a White House meeting with other governors. The Trump administration also announced plans to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado and relocated the U.S. Space Command to Alabama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Polis commuted Peters\u2019 sentence on May 15. In a letter, he wrote that although Peters was convicted of serious crimes and deserved to spend time in prison, the sentence was \u201cextremely unusual and lengthy\u201d for a first-time nonviolent offender.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, on Monday released a statement warning that the release will \u201cembolden the election denier movement\u201d and adding that, since the clemency announcement, Peters \u201chas continued to spread election falsehoods and conspiracies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n