PUEBLO, Colo. — Former Mesa County Elections Clerk Tina Peters was released from a Colorado state prison Monday after Gov. Jared Polis granted her plea for clemency and commuted her sentence amid pressure from President Donald Trump.
The Colorado Department of Corrections (CDOC) handed out a news release to news media organizations gathered outside the La Vista Correctional Facility in Pueblo announcing Peters had been processed for release.
The CDOC said it would not provide additional details regarding Peters' residential placement, reporting schedules or travel logistics.
Shortly after her release, Peters spoke publicly for the first time on Steve Bannon's War Room.
"Even though Governor Polis reduced my sentence from nine years to four and a half years, I still have a fight to clear my name and bring out the truth of why they came after me the way they did, so it's still a long road," Peters said during their interview with Bannon.
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In an interview with Peters' defense attorney Peter Ticktin, he said Peters faces a "typical" parole and her future in Colorado is uncertain.
"There's a lot of people that she loves that are in Colorado, but at the same time, Colorado is, let's just say, one of the least safe places that she can be there. There are people that have been worked up, that could be radical, that could just do something really stupid. So we just want to make sure that she's safe," Ticktin said.
He said while Peters focuses on her health and family, their sights are set on overturning the convictions.
"The Supremacy Clause, the lack of due process, the pardon given by President Trump, and a juror issue," Tickin said as far as the grounds for their appeal with the Colorado Supreme Court. "It's already filed, and now we're waiting for an answer brief to be filed by the prosecutor."
Peters, 70, a member of the Republican Party, spent 20 months at La Vista Correctional Facility in Pueblo — roughly 18% of her original Oct. 3, 2024 sentence of nine years.
The former elections clerk was convicted on Aug. 12, 2024 of first-degree official misconduct, violation of duty, failure to comply with requirements of the secretary of state, conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, and three counts of attempt to influence a public servant.
Prosecutors said Peters, who was elected clerk of Mesa County in 2018, copied hard drive images of election software in 2021, which ended up online and being discussed by Peters and others at conspiracy theorist and pillow salesman Mike Lindell’s South Dakota symposium.
According to prosecutors — who argued during her trial that Peters deceived employees so she could work with Lindell to become famous — the 70-year-old used someone else’s security badge to give an expert affiliated with the MyPillow chief executive access to a Dominion Voting Systems election computer.
In April, a Colorado appeals court upheld Peters' conviction but ordered her to be resentenced, saying the judge wrongly punished her for speaking out about election fraud.
► 'You are a charlatan': Watch the moment a judge sentenced Tina Peters to nine years in prison:
Trump has championed Peters' cause, who amplified the president’s baseless claims that mass fraud caused his 2020 election loss. Because the 70-year-old was convicted under state law, he did not have the power to pardon her.
On Monday, Peters alluded to having the impression she could have been released even earlier.
"I'd been promised so many times 'You'll be out in two weeks, two weeks, two weeks,' even even my crew have done a song called Two Weeks," she said in her interview with Bannon, "You get your hopes built up, and then you're dashed, and this has been going on for just shy of two years, and so I really didn't believe it, but I've always had hope."
But not everyone is happy that Peters was released from prison. The commutation has drawn vehement opposition from members of the governor’s own party who voted May 20 to censure him.
Members of the Democratic Party’s central committee said Peters’ early release "materially harmed the Colorado Democratic Party's institutional credibility.”
In response to his censure, Polis appeared with tape over his mouth during an internal party briefing on Wednesday.
Documents obtained by Denver7 from the Department of Corrections indicate that Peters declined any employment resources offered by workforce centers and indicated she intends to be self employed listing "land management" and "podcast + content creator" as potential companies.
Parole documents obtained by Denver7 show that Peters' parole will last until June 1, 2029 unless ended sooner by the parole board.
That document is below.
Denver7's Danielle Kreutter contributed to this report.