1. United States
2. Colo.
3. Letter

I'm writing again to ensure that you are aware of how important this is to the vast majority of Coloradans. Any clemency for Tina Peters would be indefensible on the facts, disastrous on the politics, and humiliating for Colorado. She is not merely a convicted criminal serving time for serious conduct tied to the breach of election equipment. She also managed to create another disciplinary incident while already in prison. Video from the January altercation shows Peters grabbing another inmate by the neck and pushing her during a scuffle inside La Vista. Even though the Department of Corrections later found her not guilty of assault, it still found her guilty of an unauthorized absence violation arising from that same incident. That matters. It shows that even while serving a sentence, under heightened scrutiny, at the center of a national pressure campaign, she still ended up violating prison rules and generating fresh chaos. That should end the conversation. Clemency is supposed to be reserved for extraordinary circumstances that show mercy would serve justice. Tina Peters has shown the opposite. She has shown contempt for rules, contempt for institutional boundaries, and a continuing inability to conduct herself within even the most basic limits of lawful authority. Rewarding that behavior would not be compassion. It would be surrender dressed up as discretion. Donald Trump has already tried to bully Colorado into releasing her, even though he has no authority to pardon a state conviction. He has publicly demanded her release, and his political movement has treated her like a martyr. Colorado has already absorbed the damage from that pressure campaign. Granting clemency now would recover nothing. It would not restore lost leverage, repair the damage done to this state, or protect a single Coloradan. It would only prove that enough external pressure can make Colorado cave. You need to shut this down completely. No commutation. No clemency. No soft language suggesting the door is still open. Tina Peters committed serious crimes against the integrity of Colorado’s elections, and even in prison she continued to demonstrate the kind of conduct that makes mercy look absurd. If you release her, the message to Trump and every other authoritarian bully is simple: attack Colorado hard enough and eventually Colorado folds.