On Friday afternoon, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed a piece of paper that sends Tina Peters home on June 1.
Minutes later, President Donald Trump posted “FREE TINA!” on Truth Social.
Peters, the Republican former Mesa County clerk sentenced to nine years for letting an associate of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell into a secure room with her county’s Dominion voting equipment, will walk after roughly 600 days inside. Polis cut her sentence in half. He emphasized the order wasn’t a pardon. The felony stays on her record because, he said, she broke the law. He sent her home anyway.
For Democrats and election officials, it landed at the end of three weeks they had spent watching things fall.
Tina Peters, like Trump, kept trying to portray herself as the victim at trial. The trial court judge obliterated this offensive lie and compared her, a woman of extreme privilege, to the types of people who usually are charged with crimes. This is the real Tina Peters: pic.twitter.com/PvduY4ziaW
— John Jackson (@hissgoescobra) May 16, 2026
Three weeks
On April 29, the Supreme Court issued a 6-3 opinion in Louisiana v. Callais that undermines Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The decision raised the burden on plaintiffs in racial gerrymandering cases to a level civil rights groups have called nearly impossible to meet.
Within days, Tennessee carved up a majority-Black district in Memphis and Gov. Bill Lee signed a 9-0 Republican map into law. Louisiana postponed its congressional primary so lawmakers could redraw the map, expected to eliminate one or both of its majority-Black districts. Alabama petitioned to lift a court order that requires it to keep a second majority-minority district. The CNN redistricting tracker now shows Republicans drawing as many as 17 new winnable districts for the midterms. Democrats have drawn five, all in California.
On May 8, the Virginia Supreme Court overturned the state’s redistricting ballot measure that would have given Democrats an edge in four House districts. 1.6 million Virginians had approved it on April 21. Barack Obama and Eric Holder had publicly backed it. The court ruled that legislative Democrats did not follow the proper procedure when rushing the referendum to the ballot.
Then came Friday.
What Trump did to Colorado
For months before the commutation, Trump had been working Colorado from every angle.
He called Polis a “Scumbag Governor.” He pulled Polis’s invitation to a White House governors meeting. He repeatedly called Peters “elderly” and “sick.” He threatened harsh measures if she was not released.
Then the measures came in pieces. Federal funds to the state were cut. FEMA denied Colorado disaster aid for wildfires and flooding for the first time in 35 years. The administration moved to break apart Boulder’s National Center for Atmospheric Research. It pulled U.S. Space Command from Colorado Springs and sent it to Huntsville, Alabama. It tried, and failed, to seize Peters into federal custody.
Polis, who leaves office in January, has long played the iconoclast inside his own party. He has opposed Trump on tariffs and on immigration. He has applauded other parts of the agenda, including the Department of Government Efficiency cuts. The Peters case may be the one historians remember.
He said in his final year as governor, he wanted to lean into the value of mercy and give people a second chance.
The pushback
With the news that @GovofCO just granted clemency to Tina Peters, justice has been once again perverted, and this time by a DEMOCRAT desperate for Donald Trumps adoration.
Congrats Jared Polis. I bet you get invited to the WH now pic.twitter.com/CnSasLbWkC
— Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@AdamKinzinger) May 15, 2026
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, the Democrat Peters admitted misleading in 2021, said it was “a dark day for democracy.” She warned the commutation tells anyone willing to attack elections on Trump’s behalf that there won’t be consequences.
Matt Crane of the Colorado County Clerks Association said the commutation “signals that it is open season on our election and election officials.”
Former Gov. John Hickenlooper said Peters was “guilty as sin and a disgrace to Colorado.” Attorney General Phil Weiser, whose office helped prosecute her, called it “a sad day for Colorado.” Sen. Michael Bennet said “lawlessness only breeds more lawlessness.” Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubinstein, the GOP prosecutor who built the case against her, said she received “special treatment that ordinary defendants would never” get.
Peters’ own statement said she had made mistakes and misled the Secretary of State. It was the first time she had said so since her August 2024 conviction.
Within hours, her supporters at Gateway Pundit framed the apology as a coerced confession Peters had to give to secure her freedom from Colorado’s “corrupt system.” Peters’ social media boosted a post Tuesday from radio host Wayne Allyn Root calling on Trump to “INVADE COLORADO” to free her.
What June 1 looks like
Peters’ release date is sixteen days away. Her felony conviction stays on her record. The Mesa County voting equipment she compromised cost nearly one million dollars to replace. County officials said Peters’ fraud claims led to a slew of death threats against election workers.
The Voting Rights Act is still narrowed. The Virginia map is still gone. Space Command is still in Alabama. The election workers who got the death threats are still at their desks.
On June 1, Tina Peters walks out the gate.