In 2024, District Judge Matthew Barrett excoriated Tina Peters at her sentencing hearing, noting the disgraced former Colorado election clerk showed no remorse during her trial for having tampered with the voting machines she had sworn to secure.
“I am convinced you would do it all over again if you could. You’re as defiant as any defendant this court has ever seen,” Barrett told her in handing down a nine-year sentence. “You are no hero. You abused your position and you’re a charlatan.”
Mere hours after her release Monday following clemency from Gov. Jared Polis (D-Colo.), Peters proved Barrett right. Without a shred of contrition, the convicted felon sat for an interview with Steve Bannon, where she repeated the same tired conspiracy theories that landed her in jail in the first place.
“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,” Peters said. “And that was exposing the election machines that allowed the votes to be flipped.”
Countless lawsuits, audits and recounts have failed to substantiate or provide even a shred of evidence of any illegal voting activity that would have affected the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. Trump lost by more than 7 million votes.
The lie that voting machines were tampered with to skew the election outcome in favor of President Joe Biden was also exhaustively scrutinized in court. Dominion Voting Systems, one of the companies falsely accused by Trump and his allies, hit Fox News with a $1.6 billion defamation suit. Fox ultimately settled the suit for $787 million.
In a letter to Peters explaining his decision to grant clemency, Polis specifically said she appeared to have acknowledged her wrongs. “Importantly, your application demonstrates taking responsibility for your crimes, and a commitment to follow the law going forward,” he wrote. “This commutation will change your future. It is up to you to make the most of this opportunity.”
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold slammed Polis for the decision. “This grant of clemency sends a dangerous message,” she wrote in an op-ed published days before Peters’ release. “And it risks leaving a lasting mark, not just on Colorado but on the broader effort to defend free and fair elections. It is more important now than ever that we strongly and ardently protect the nation’s democratic institutions.”
