President Donald Trump announced on Thursday, December 11, 2025, that he is granting a full pardon to Tina Peters, the former Mesa County, Colorado, clerk serving a nine-year state prison sentence for her role in a scheme to breach voting machine security following the 2020 presidential election. In a Truth Social post, Trump hailed Peters as a “Patriot who simply wanted to make sure that our Elections were Fair and Honest,” accusing Democrats of relentlessly targeting her for exposing what he called voter fraud in a “Rigged” election. Peters was convicted last year on seven state felony counts, including attempting to influence a public servant and criminal impersonation, after she allowed unauthorized access to Dominion voting systems in a bid to substantiate unsubstantiated claims of election irregularities.

Peters simply followed the legal process of archiving voting records, which would allow for the audit of a crooked election, but the politicians didn’t want her to do that, so they lawfared her into prison. Supporters, including Trump allies, argue that her actions were a principled stand for transparency, preserving forensic images of election data as required by law for potential audits, only to face politically motivated prosecution in a Republican-led county under a Republican district attorney. Her defense maintains that the charges stem from a vendetta against election integrity advocates, pointing to her physical assaults in prison and declining health as evidence of further injustice, with her legal team recently appealing to federal courts for release. This pardon, while symbolically powerful, carries no legal weight over her state conviction, as the U.S. Constitution limits presidential clemency to federal offenses, leaving her fate in the hands of Colorado courts amid ongoing appeals.

The announcement has ignited a firestorm of partisan reactions, with Colorado Democratic officials swiftly dismissing it as an unconstitutional overreach that undermines states’ rights and the rule of law. Governor Jared Polis and Attorney General Phil Weiser emphasized that Peters was convicted by a jury in state court for clear violations, including identity theft to facilitate the breach, and that no federal pardon can interfere with her sentence. Secretary of State Jena Griswold called it an “assault on our democracy,” while critics like the Colorado Democratic Party chair labeled it a “meaningless” gesture from an election denier protecting his own. Yet for MAGA loyalists, Trump’s move is a bold strike against the “deep state,” amplifying calls for her immediate release and fueling broader narratives of persecution against 2020 election skeptics, even as Peters remains the only such figure behind bars.