Trump pardons Tina Peters, Colorado clerk in stop-the-steal case

On December 5, 2025, President Donald Trump signed a pardon for Tina Peters, the former Mesa County, Colorado clerk and 2020-election denier. Peters was convicted in 2024 on multiple Colorado state charges — attempting to influence a public servant, conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, first-degree official misconduct, violation of duty, and failing to comply with Secretary of State guidance — for a 2021 breach in which she allowed an unauthorized outsider into a secure room to copy hard drives from Mesa County's Dominion voting machines, in service of the "stop the steal" effort to find evidence of fraud in the 2020 election. She was sentenced to nine years in state prison in October 2024.

The pardon proclamation, announced by Trump on Truth Social on December 11, sweeps broadly: it covers "those offenses she has or may have committed or taken part in related to election integrity and security during the period from January 1, 2020 through December 31, 2021" — a grant covering both possible federal charges and any future federal action against her. But federal pardons cannot reach state crimes, and Peters remains in Colorado state prison. Colorado appellate judges have rejected her attempts to use the pardon to compel release. Trump has separately pressured Colorado officials to free her, and the Justice Department had earlier in 2025 filed an unusual "statement of interest" in support of her habeas petition for release from state custody. The pardon is the most direct presidential endorsement to date of conduct undertaken in service of the 2020-election-was-stolen narrative.