Though legal experts say President Donald Trump’s pardon for Tina Peters carries no legal weight, her lawyers have invoked it to launch new efforts to secure her release from a Colorado prison.
These include a visit to the prison and a letter to Andre Stancil, executive director of the Colorado Department of Corrections. But one of her lawyers, John Case, disavows a threat among some of her supporters to break Peters out of prison.
Peters, the 70-year-old former Mesa County clerk, is incarcerated at La Vista Correctional Facility in Pueblo. The Republican was convicted by a Mesa County jury for her role in a security breach of her own election equipment that was part of an effort to find evidence that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. A judge in October 2024 sentenced her to nine years in prison.
Case visited La Vista Correctional Facility on Friday, the day her legal team obtained a copy of the pardon, Case said.
“At the doorway were three armed corrections officers wearing camos instead of the usual dark blue uniform, and I hadn’t seen these gentlemen before,” Case said during an interview with Newsline.
He presented the pardon and asked for Peters’ immediate release. A person who identified herself to Case as Melissa Smith, deputy executive director of operations of the Department of Corrections, came out and read to him from a typewritten statement, Case said.
“The gist of it was that Colorado, the prison, is not going to release Tina Peters because President Trump’s pardon is not valid,” he said.
Smith then asked him to leave.
Case said he assumes the group of men in camouflage “has something to do with Tina.”
“She told me that there’s a detail of four of them that accompany her wherever she goes,” he said.
Newsline asked the Department of Corrections and the office of Gov. Jared Polis for comment but had not received a response by the time of publication.
Trump has repeatedly demanded that Colorado officials release Peters, threatening “harsh measures” if they refuse. On Dec. 12, Trump released a signed pardon for Peters for “those offenses she has or may have committed or taken part in related to election integrity and security.”
Presidential pardons have universally been understood to apply only to federal crimes, not state crimes.
“One of the most basic principles of our constitution is that states have independent sovereignty and manage our own criminal justice systems without interference from the federal government,” said Phil Weiser, Colorado’s Democratic attorney general, in a statement earlier this month, adding the pardon “will not hold up.”
Peters’ legal team, while acknowledging that the validity of a pardon for state crimes has never come up in an American court, argues that the Constitution’s references to the United States apply to the individual states as well as the country as a whole, and that Trump has the right to pardon Peters since, in making copies of election system data, she was performing a required federal duty.
There is no credible evidence that the 2020 election results were compromised or that Peters’ prosecution, which was led by a Republican district attorney, were flawed.
State officials have rebuffed other efforts by the Trump administration to free Peters from state prison. In recent weeks, they refused to relinquish Peters to the administration after the Federal Bureau of Prisons requested that the state transfer Peters to federal custody.
Case blasted messages on social media in which supporters of Peters say they’ll break her out if the state does not release her by Jan. 31.
“US MARSHALS & JANUARY 6ERS PATRIOTS WILL BE STORMING IN TO FREE TINA!!” one post says.
“Some really irresponsible people have been posting on social media that there’s going to be a violent attempt to remove Tina from prison, and Tina and her legal team condemn this message,” Case said. “Tina has never advocated violence and never been guilty of violence, so this is just completely irresponsible.”
Peter Ticktin, a Florida-based attorney who also represents Peters, has said the Trump administration could be justified in deploying military units to free Peters if Colorado is found to be violating federal law.
In an email to Stancil, Case said the prison’s refusal to release Peters on Dec. 12 was “categorically unlawful.”
Peters has appealed her conviction, and the pardon might have bearing on her case before the Colorado Court of Appeals, Ticktin told Newsline last week. Oral arguments in the case are scheduled for Jan. 14.
To read more stories from Colorado Newsline, visit www.coloradonewsline.com.
