Trump being urged to intervene in Tina Peters case, sources say

By Kaitlan Collins, Marshall Cohen, CNN

(CNN) — Fresh off of pardoning a slew of allies who helped him try to overturn the 2020 election, President Donald Trump is being strongly encouraged to intervene in the conviction of Tina Peters, according to several people familiar with the matter.

Peters, the former Republican clerk of Mesa, Colorado, was found guilty last year on state charges of participating in a scheme that hoped to prove Trump’s false claims of mass voter fraud in 2020. She was sentenced to nine years in prison and is serving her sentence at a women’s prison in Pueblo, Colorado. However, because she was found guilty on state charges, Trump cannot outright pardon her — that power belongs to Colorado’s Democratic governor. But that hasn’t stopped her allies from trying to get her out of prison.

One of the people making the biggest push internally on her behalf is Ed Martin, who is serving as the pardon attorney at the Justice Department after he failed to get enough support to serve as the US attorney in Washington.

Martin has continued to advocate for relief for Peters in recent weeks, several people familiar with the push told CNN, even though it is extremely unusual for the Justice Department to intervene in a state case this way. The department has already involved itself in a long-shot federal case, known as a habeas petition, that Peters filed in March, and urged a federal judge to free her from state prison while she appeals her conviction. That matter is still pending, but a decision is expected this year.

Martin has worked behind the scenes, over the objections of some of his colleagues, to find a way to grant relief for Peters. Responding Sunday to a post about the case on X, Martin wrote, “We are working on it!”

During her sentencing hearing, Peters continued to argue that the 2020 election was rigged against Trump. Colorado state Judge Matthew Barrett told Peters that he was convinced she was not apologetic for her behavior and “would do it all over again if you could.”

“You are no hero,” Barrett told her. “You abused your position and you’re a charlatan.”

After Trump lost in 2020, Peters got involved with other right-wing activists who tried to prove Trump’s fraud claims by allegedly breaching voting systems in Colorado, Michigan, Georgia and other states. They were acting based on false information, including from Trump’s own lawyers, that the 2020 results were rigged against him by machines belonging to Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic.

Peters was indicted by a Republican prosecutor and convicted by a jury in her ruby-red county of felonies tied to a data breach in Mesa related to the scheme.

Trump has since publicly threatened “harsh measures” against Colorado if Peters isn’t freed and has called her an “innocent political prisoner.”

He has criticized Colorado Gov. Jared Polis and state Attorney General Phil Weiser, both Democrats. Polis has said he won’t pardon Peters as part of any quid-pro-quo deal.

From the La Vista Correctional Facility — a medium-security women’s prison in Pueblo — Peters has continued her advocacy through messages to her allies that they post on social media on her behalf. Last month, she directed her outrage at the Justice Department.

“Where is everybody? I did what I was supposed to do” to “legally” expose supposed voter fraud in 2020, Peters wrote, adding, “The President has demanded my release four times… why is the DOJ defying Trump’s demands? Get off your a**es and get me out!”

Peters has apparently latched onto an idea recently floated by those on the right that the Justice Department can move her from state prison into a more comfortable federal facility, because she needs protection as a witness in a potential federal probe into supposed 2020 voter fraud.

To that end, her attorneys have claimed they have critical new evidence about the 2020 election.

They have used her habeas petition to publicize new depositions that they took over the summer, supposedly of anonymous Venezuelan informants who said Dominion and Smartmatic machines can rig American elections — the same false claim that Trump, Peters and other election deniers have peddled since November 2020.

But at a recent hearing, Federal Magistrate Judge Scott Varholak ruled that the depositions weren’t admissible in the habeas case. He also observed that “we’ve seen neither hide nor hair” of the Justice Department in the months after DOJ officials participated an April hearing about its unorthodox intervention in Peters’ case.

One of Peters’ lawyers, Patrick McSweeney, previously told CNN that Peters hasn’t had any direct contact with Trump from behind bars, but she has heard about his desire to get her out, and “she appreciates the president’s interest in her case, which is unusual for him to be involved in an individual matter.”

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This story has been updated with additional reporting.