President Trump announced Thursday that he has granted a pardon to Tina Peters, the former Mesa County, Colorado, clerk who is serving a nine-year state sentence for allowing unauthorized access to county voting machines. Legal experts and Colorado officials immediately pushed back, saying a presidential pardon is understood to apply only to federal offenses and does not erase state convictions.
Trump posted his decision on Truth Social, arguing Peters had been targeted by Democrats and portraying her as a supporter of election integrity. Peters, who ran for Colorado secretary of state, has promoted unfounded claims that voting machines were tampered with in 2020.
Peters was convicted in state court last year on seven counts, including multiple counts of attempting to influence a public servant and a count of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation. Prosecutors say that in 2021 Peters and others carried out a scheme to allow an unauthorized person to access Mesa County voting machines; photos from the equipment later appeared online. She was sentenced in October 2024. At sentencing, Judge Matthew Barrett called Peters a “charlatan” and said she showed unusual defiance. Peters has denied intentional wrongdoing and told the court she never acted with malice.
Colorado officials decried the pardon as beyond presidential authority. Secretary of State Jena Griswold said Peters was convicted by a jury in state court and that a president has no constitutional power to pardon state crimes. Attorney General Phil Weiser called the notion that a president can pardon a state conviction unprecedented and inconsistent with the Constitution. Gov. Jared Polis noted Peters was prosecuted by a Republican district attorney in a Republican county and said presidential power does not extend to state law.
Earlier this week, a federal magistrate judge denied Peters’ request to be released while she appeals her conviction. The Federal Bureau of Prisons asked Colorado to transfer Peters to federal custody, prompting objections from state officials and calls for Gov. Polis to refuse the transfer.
Peters’ lawyer, Peter Ticktin, filed a letter arguing the president may have authority to pardon her and acknowledged the question has not been litigated. After the pardon announcement, Ticktin thanked Trump and said Peters should be released while courts sort out the legal impact of the presidential action on her state conviction.
Constitutional language limits the president’s clemency power to offenses against the United States, a formulation that is widely interpreted to exclude state crimes. Legal scholars and state leaders say there is no precedent for a presidential pardon wiping out a state conviction, and they expect legal challenges.
The move follows other interventions by Trump involving allies tied to his false 2020 election fraud claims: he has offered clemency to some Jan. 6 defendants and in recent weeks granted pardons to individuals accused in various state cases tied to efforts to overturn the 2020 result, including alternate electors and Rudolph Giuliani. CBS News reached out to the White House for comment.