Donald Trump wants another criminal back on the streets.
The president on Thursday morning called for Tina Peters — a convicted felon currently serving a nine-year sentence for crimes related to her effort to prove the 2020 election was fraudulent — to be released from prison, threatening “harsh measures” if the state of Colorado doesn’t comply with his demand.
“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 wrote on Truth Social. “Let Tina Peters out of jail, RIGHT NOW. She did nothing wrong, except catching the Democrats cheat in the Election.”
“She is an old woman, and very sick,” the president added. “If she is not released, I am going to take harsh measures!!!”
Peters, a former clerk in Mesa County, Colorado, was convicted last year on seven charges related to a plot to grant unauthorized individuals access to county voting machines, as part of efforts to prove an unfounded conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was rigged against Trump. Peters was also arrested in 2022 for attempting to kick a cop serving a search warrant in connection with allegations that she had illegally recorded a court hearing for one of her deputies involved in the election security breach.
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold responded to Trump’s call for Peters to be released in a statement provided to Rolling Stone. “Donald Trump and Tina Peters are election-denying criminals who put their need for power ahead of the American people,” she wrote. “Trump’s feeble attempts to put pressure on the justice system to re-write history is an embarrassment. While he keeps digging himself lower and lower to free a criminal convicted by a jury of her peers, I will continue to uphold the law and our free and fair elections.”
Griswold supported the ultimately unsuccessful effort to keep Trump’s name off Colorado election ballots, citing the 14th Amendment, which prohibits insurrectionists from holding office, and Trump’s role in fomenting a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (The conservative-dominated Supreme Court let Trump off the hook, while gutting the 14th Amendment.)
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Rolling Stone reported last year that Griswold saw a 600-percent spike in threats in the wake of the state’s lawsuit to keep Trump off the ballot, and that she even needed extra security as she gave birth later in the year.
The president’s call to release Peters comes as he works to tilt the scales of democracy ahead of the 2026 midterms. On Monday, he announced an unconstitutional effort to eliminate mail-in voting across America, and Wednesday night he celebrated the state of Texas gerrymandering its electoral map in order to give Republicans additional seats in the House of Representatives. “Big WIN for the Great State of Texas!!!” he wrote, adding that “more seats equals less Crime, a great Economy, and a STRONG SECOND AMENDMENT. It means Happiness and Peace.”
Trump’s concern for crime doesn’t apply to his supporters, of course. One of his first acts as president was pardoning the rioters who stormed the Capitol to try to keep him in office — including those who assaulted law enforcement. Peters is a felon, but because, like the rioters, her crimes were committed in service of Trump’s push to subvert the results of a democratic election, the president believes she is a “brave and innocent Patriot,” and is threatening retribution unless she is set free.
From Rolling Stone US
