President Donald Trump’s administration appears to believe that general rules don’t apply. Whether it's disappearing undocumented immigrants, shooting US citizens and deploying the National Guard against them, capturing the leader of a sovereign nation, or threatening to take control of Greenland, Trump’s reach appears limitless.
But despite the bravado, there is one situation that, so far, Trump has been unable to bend to his will: the case of Tina Peters, a former election clerk in Mesa County, Colorado, who became a hero in the election denial community after she used another person’s credentials to facilitate an associate watching a software update of her county’s election management system.
Peters has served roughly 14 months of a nine-year prison sentence, and figures in the election denial community like former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and disgraced former national security adviser Michael Flynn have been campaigning for her release ever since. Over the last few months, Trump has joined in, seemingly pressuring the state of Colorado to release Peters.
Unlike the nearly 1,600 January 6 prisoners Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of on his first day in office, the president cannot pardon Peters because she was convicted on state rather than federal charges—though this didn’t stop Trump issuing a “pardon” on Truth Social last month. Nevertheless, Trump is now conducting an increasingly intense pressure campaign against Colorado and its Democratic governor, Jared Polis, whom Trump has called a “sleazebag” and a “scumbag” for refusing to release Peters.
