By Steve Gorman and Keith Coffman
DENVER, May 15 (Reuters) - Colorado's governor granted clemency on Friday to former county elections clerk Tina Peters, who was convicted of illegally tampering with voting machines in pursuit of false claims the 2020 White House race was stolen from President Donald Trump.
Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, effectively commuted Peters' nine-year jail and prison term to time already served and ordered her released on parole effective June 1, writing in his clemency
letter that he found her original sentence to be unjustly harsh.
"The crimes you were convicted of are very serious and you deserve to spend time in prison for these offenses," Polis wrote. "However, this is an extremely unusual and lengthy sentence for a first time offender who committed nonviolent crimes."
Polis said he agreed with the reasoning of a Colorado appeals court decision last month overturning Peters' original sentence but keeping her conviction intact.
In that ruling the appeals court held that the trial judge had imposed an excessive punishment based on Peters' protected speech - namely her expressed claims of election fraud - rather than considering her criminal conduct alone.
The three-judge appeals court panel had ordered the trial judge to re-sentence Peters, but Polis acted first.
In a CBS News interview, Polis said two co-conspirators in the case had received far more lenient sentences.
The Colorado County Clerks Association immediately denounced Polis' commutation, saying it undermined the rule of law.
"We are furious, disgusted, and deeply disappointed," the group's executive director, Matt Crane, said in a statement on behalf of the association.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, a fellow Democrat running to succeed the term-limited governor, likewise decried Peters' clemency as "mind-boggling and wrong."
HIGH-PROFILE ELECTION DENIER
Had she lost her bid for clemency, Peters, 70, would not have been eligible for release until November 2028.
Peters, a Republican, was an outspoken supporter of Trump's baseless claims that he lost his bid for a second term in the 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden because of widespread voter fraud.
Peters was clerk of Mesa County when she was indicted in 2022 following a security breach at her office that led to voting equipment passwords getting posted on a right-wing blog. She denied wrongdoing but was convicted in 2024 on seven charges, including three counts of attempting to influence a public servant. The case drew national attention and raised her profile as one of the nation's most prominent 2020 election deniers.
Polis, in his clemency letter, embraced the Colorado appeals court's ruling that the trial judge had imposed a gratuitously stiff sentence because Peters refused to disavow her claims of a stolen 2020 election.
In ordering Peters to be re-sentenced, the appeals court panel cited the trial judge's comments referring to her as a "charlatan" who continued to peddle "snake oil that's been proven to be junk time and time again."
Polis said he agreed with the appeals court that those remarks demonstrated the judge was unfairly holding Peters' views against her in deciding her punishment, in violation of her constitutional rights to free expression.
Trump pardoned Peters in December in a move that was considered symbolic since Peters was not in federal custody. Polis told CBS he had not heard from Trump, "nor do I expect to hear from the president."
Peters posted an image of her clemency letter on her X account.
(Writing and reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Keith Coffman in Denver and Daphne Psaledakis in Washington; Editing by Michelle Nichols, Bill Berkrot and Tom Hogue)
