Democratic Governor Commutes Sentence of Election Denier

Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Tina Peters, one of the few election deniers to actually face consequences for criminal conduct related to the 2020 election, will be a free woman in less than two weeks’ time. Rather than receiving leniency from a fellow election-denying MAGA leader, Peters’ freedom will be thanks to a Democratic politician who should know better, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis. Last week, Polis tried to quietly announce that he had commuted her nine-year prison sentence, but the news immediately caught fire. Polis is being eviscerated for his decision, which was made after years of pressure from President Donald Trump. Worse yet, Polis has singlehandedly set a dangerous precedent for other states attempting to stave off a president unafraid to bully his perceived opponents into oblivion. Plus, it sends the signal that there will be few consequences for election officials who abuse their power to support Trump’s election denialism when the United States is just six months away from a consequential midterm election cycle. Peters is the former county clerk and recorder of Mesa County, a bright-red pocket of Colorado, and in 2024 she was convicted of four felonies after a Colorado jury found her guilty of allowing an unauthorized computer expert—who turned out to be an associate of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell—to gain access to her county’s election software. She was sentenced to nine years in prison, but after Polis’ commutation, Peters is expected to be released on June 1, having served less than two years behind bars for her crimes. Polis had been weighing whether to commute Peters’ sentence for some time now, and was waiting to see how an appeals court would handle the case. When a panel of three judges, each appointed to the bench by Trump during his first term, ruled in April that Peters’ sentence was overly severe and that the 2024 trial court judge had improperly violated her free speech rights, Polis had his opening. Even after local Colorado officials tried to persuade Polis to keep Peters behind bars, including the Republican county district attorney who prosecuted her, the governor decided to go his own way. When asked to explain why he chose to commute Peters’ prison sentence, he told CNN that though he believed she held strange beliefs, “We don’t punish people in this country for having strange beliefs,” then argued that “the place to resolve those differences is by debate, by discourse, by arguing with her, with by disputing her, not for keeping her behind bars simply because of what she believes or says.” Contrary to what Polis implied, a jury did not choose to convict Peters because of her words. They did so because of her actions, which included attempting to influence a public servant, conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, official misconduct, and failure to comply with the secretary of state. “It is pretty clear that [Peters] did this not really out of any personal conviction that the election system was incorrect, hacked, or crooked, but the judge essentially concluded she had done so because she’s a suspicious, self-promoting charlatan,” Frank Bowman, a former federal prosecutor and pardon expert, told me. “I think it was a very bad judgment on the part of Gov. Polis to commute her sentence.” Despite an avalanche of criticism for Peters’ commutation, Polis is doubling down on his decision. “I think this will be remembered fondly,” he claimed at a legislative recap event at the University of Denver on Tuesday. “I’m a bold person, I’m going to do things that I think are right, and that’s why people put me here. They want me to do things that I think are right.” In this instance, Bowman does not believe Polis was right, nor was the appeals court that ruled to vacate Peters’ nine year sentence. The judge who initially presided over her case made no mention of Peters’ speech, or that he felt she honestly believed the election lies she was spewing. Quite the opposite, the judge concluded Peters made every effort to undermine the integrity of U.S. elections and the public’s trust in our institutions. “That’s an absolutely appropriate reason to impose a lengthened sentence on this woman, and the fact that the court of appeals somehow concludes this is a violation of Peters’ First Amendment rights is really quite hard to accept. It just isn’t that,” Bowman said. Why did Polis do it, then? He claimed that it had nothing to do with Trump and that Peters will remain a convicted felon, but Trump’s pressure campaign against Polis took the form of direct harm against the citizens of Colorado. Four months ago, Polis’ office acknowledged as much, noting how two major disaster relief requests were denied and a bill that would have allowed the state to complete a clean water pipeline project was vetoed. “In the last month alone, the Trump administration has threatened over $1 billion in funding for Colorado,” the January press release stated. Yet, Polis has insisted that his decision to commute Peters’ sentence did not come with any expectations, let alone demands, to regain federal funding for his state. It must be an uncanny coincidence, then, that the president has been fixated on releasing Peters for some time now, publicly pushing for her pardon and even issuing a purely ceremonious presidential pardon for her, since Trump doesn’t hold the power to pardon those convicted at the state level. Polis “is a Democrat to be sure; on many issues, a demonstrably liberal one,” Bowman said. “But on the other hand, if you look at his political positions, he’s libertarian, and has taken a lot of positions that are very much out of step with the normal liberal orthodoxy. He’s infuriated mainstream Democrats for years on all sorts of issues.” Ironically, Bowman explained that Peters’ commutation is even at odds with Polis’ own criminal justice policies, which have been in line with conservatives’ favored law-and-order approach and caused a major backlog in Colorado’s prison system. Making Peters’ commutation even worse is the fact that Vice President J.D. Vance suggested on Tuesday that she would be eligible for the highly dubious $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” slush fund Trump’s Department of Justice just established. “The general message is that the people who tried to undercut the validity of the 2020 election are not guilty of anything. They are, in some weird, twisted way, sort of international heroes,” Bowman said. “I think Polis contributes to that narrative by issuing a commutation in this case.” We hope you learned a thing or two from this edition of Executive Dysfunction, and if you enjoyed reading it, please consider supporting our legal journalism by becoming a Slate Plus member! Elsewhere in Jurisprudence On this week’s Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern dive into the legal battle over mifepristone, the medication that can be used for abortion care. The episode explains how Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito wrote furious dissents when the majority of the court agreed to issue an emergency order blocking the 5th Circuit’s nationwide ban on telehealth medication abortion. The conversation later brings in Ilyse Hogue, writer, activist, and former NARAL president, to understand how the medication-abortion fight is inextricably linked to voting rights. On this week’s Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern dive into the legal battle over mifepristone, the medication that can be used for abortion care. The episode explains how Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito wrote furious dissents when the majority of the court agreed to issue an emergency order blocking the 5th Circuit’s nationwide ban on telehealth medication abortion. The conversation later brings in Ilyse Hogue, writer, activist, and former NARAL president, to understand how the medication-abortion fight is inextricably linked to voting rights. On the Amicus bonus episode, Mark discusses how a federal judge in Rhode Island called out the Trump administration for its blatant judge-shopping in order to get its desired outcome in a slew of cases. In discussion with Madiba Dennie, deputy editor of Balls and Strikes and author of The Originalism Trap, the conversation unpacks how Justice Department lawyers tried to subpoena a Rhode Island hospital for the medical records of children undergoing gender-affirming care by choosing a Texas-based judge to enforce the subpoena. On the Amicus bonus episode, Mark discusses how a federal judge in Rhode Island called out the Trump administration for its blatant judge-shopping in order to get its desired outcome in a slew of cases. In discussion with Madiba Dennie, deputy editor of Balls and Strikes and author of The Originalism Trap, the conversation unpacks how Justice Department lawyers tried to subpoena a Rhode Island hospital for the medical records of children undergoing gender-affirming care by choosing a Texas-based judge to enforce the subpoena. Slate’s Alexis Romero wrote about the continued fallout from the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais decision, which most recently involved the high court throwing out two lower-court decisions from Mississippi and North Dakota where voters had sued over allegations of illegal racial discrimination in congressional map-drawing. Romero explains how the Supreme Court is essentially treating Callais “as a stand-in for principles that the justices either did not discuss in that case or flat-out claimed to reject.” Slate’s Alexis Romero wrote about the continued fallout from the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais decision, which most recently involved the high court throwing out two lower-court decisions from Mississippi and North Dakota where voters had sued over allegations of illegal racial discrimination in congressional map-drawing. Romero explains how the Supreme Court is essentially treating Callais “as a stand-in for principles that the justices either did not discuss in that case or flat-out claimed to reject.” Texas-based U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor struck again this week, this time issuing a stunning order that demanded a Rhode Island Hospital send him the sensitive medical records of minors who received gender-affirming care. Mark explains how O’Connor’s behavior in this case was an “extreme abuse of power that verges on impeachable misconduct.” Equally at fault is the Trump administration, which specifically brought this issue to Texas knowing that O’Connor has invited Republicans to shop their cases to his court. Texas-based U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor struck again this week, this time issuing a stunning order that demanded a Rhode Island Hospital send him the sensitive medical records of minors who received gender-affirming care. Mark explains how O’Connor’s behavior in this case was an “extreme abuse of power that verges on impeachable misconduct.” Equally at fault is the Trump administration, which specifically brought this issue to Texas knowing that O’Connor has invited Republicans to shop their cases to his court. Thank you for reading Executive Dysfunction! We’re thrilled to be in your feeds and will be back with more dysfunction analysis next week.