President Donald Trump repeated his demand for Tina Peters to be released from prison and threatened “harsh measures” if she remains detained.
Peters, 69, is a Colorado election clerk convicted of tampering with voting machines after the 2020 presidential election. She is serving a nine-year sentence in La Vista Correctional Facility.
“FREE TINA PETERS, a brave and innocent Patriot who has been tortured by Crooked Colorado politicians, including the big Mail-In Ballot supporting the governor of the State,” Trump posted to Truth Social on Thursday morning.
“Let Tina Peters out of jail, RIGHT NOW.”
State audits confirmed the accuracy of Colorado’s 2020 election, finding no evidence of fraud and verifying that machine vote counts matched the markings on paper ballots.
Trump, who said Peters “did nothing wrong” and accused the Democrats of electoral cheating, added: “She is an old woman, and very sick. If she is not released, I am going to take harsh measures!!!”
Shelby Wieman, press secretary for Colorado Governor Jared Polis, told Newsweek in a statement that their office is “focused on fixing the disaster created by President Trump” and Republican Congressmembers from Colorado through H.R. 1, also known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Wieman said the act “created a $1 billion budget shortfall in Colorado by letting big corporations dodge nearly $1 billion in taxes they owe to Colorado.”
“We appreciate the President’s awareness and recognition of Colorado’s wildly popular ability to vote by mail, which is safe, secure, and has led to record turnout for Coloradans of every party,” Wieman told Newsweek.
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Who Is Tina Peters?
Peters has become a symbol for election denial movements that continue to cast doubt on the integrity of U.S. elections, despite a lack of evidence and repeated court rejections of such claims.
Trump’s public push for her release adds political pressure to a legal case involving serious breaches of election security. In March, he directed the Department of Justice to review Peters’ case and intervene to secure her release.
The former Mesa County clerk was elected to the position in 2018 and initially focused on administrative improvements. But Peters later aligned herself with efforts to challenge the legitimacy of the 2020 election results.
“Tina Peters is a criminal who compromised her own voting equipment to try to prove Trump’s Big Lie,” Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said in a previous statement, responding to an earlier Trump call for Peters’ release.
“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.”
What Did Tina Peters Do?
In 2021, Peters facilitated unauthorized access to her county’s voting systems, seeking to uncover evidence of alleged election fraud. This breach led to sensitive election data being leaked online.
She had allowed a county security card to be misused, granting access to the Mesa County election system to an individual connected to MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, another prominent figure in the election denial movement.
Peters was found guilty of seven of 10 charges at a 2024 trial: Three counts of attempting to influence a public official, conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, official misconduct, violation of duty, and failure to comply with an order by the secretary of state.
The jury acquitted her on three other charges: Conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, criminal impersonation, and identity theft.
Peters was sentenced to nine years in prison, making her the first election official in the U.S. convicted of criminal charges related to efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Update, 8/21/25, 5 a.m. ET: This article was updated with a comment from Polis’s office.
Update 8/21/25, 9:35 a.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information.
