DENVER — Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold is fending off calls from President Donald Trump to release former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters from a Colorado prison.
Trump called Peters a “political prisoner” in a Monday night post on Truth Social, adding that he was “directing the Department of Justice to take all necessary action” to get Peters out of prison.
In a statement released Tuesday, Griswold accused the president of “weaponizing the Department of Justice.”
“Tina Peters is a criminal who compromised her own voting equipment to try to prove Trump’s Big Lie. Trump is weaponizing the Department of Justice. We cannot allow him to rewrite history or use his lies to create two tiers of justice for the American people,” Griswold said.
In August, Peters was found guilty of using someone else’s security badge to give an expert affiliated with My Pillow chief executive Mike Lindell access to the Mesa County election system and deceiving other officials about that person’s identity.
A state judge sentenced Peters in October to nine years behind bars after rebuking her for being defiant and continuing to press discredited claims about rigged voting machines.
Trump’s justice department is already reviewing her case to see if her prosecution was "oriented more toward inflicting political pain than toward pursuing actual justice.”
However, Colorado has maintained that the federal government has failed to provide evidence of potential wrongdoing.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
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