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Tina Peters, the former Mesa County clerk who spent roughly two years of a nine-year sentence behind bars for a security breach involving her own elections office, spent part of her Tuesday in the Oval Office. A photo posted by President Trump shows Peters standing behind the Resolute Desk, flanked by flags, looking considerably cheerier than she did during her incarceration, where she did occasional video interviews from her cell block.
Trump marked the occasion with a Truth Social post, with the all-caps “FREE TINA!” he’s used to demand her release since she was convicted. Trump credited himself with springing her from prison, although Colorado Gov. Jared Polis ultimately made the controversial decision to issue Peters a commutation on May 15 despite pleas from his own party.
Trump’s post went in several directions, expressing sympathy for the allegedly harsh treatment Peters faced while incarcerated in a medium-security prison in Pueblo County and then ranting about “rigged” processes in the 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost.
truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/116840714775652406
Trump’s assertions about Colorado’s voting machines and mail-in ballots haven’t held up in any courtroom, including the one where a Mesa County jury convicted Peters in 2024.
The president has spent months demanding Peters’ release since he retained office last year. After the Trump Administration pressured the state of Colorado, Polis started to publicly consider the idea before pulling the trigger this summer. Trump, who issued a “symbolic” pardon of Peters months before, has been taking a victory lap since, claiming credit for Peters’ release.
And 30 days after she was sprung from La Vista Correctional Facility in Pueblo, Peters was in the Oval Office.
Peters posted her own celebratory photo and message on X from the West Wing Colonnade. Paired with Trump’s post, the Oval Office visit seems a bit like a vindication rally instead of what it actually was: a sanctioned outing under state supervision.
Peters isn’t simply a free woman doing free-woman things while she visits the president in Washington, D.C. Since being released on June 1 under Polis’s commutation, she’s on parole and subject to a parole order, which 9News’ Kyle Clark obtained and posted online upon her release.
Condition 2 of that order requires Peters to “establish a residence of record” and explicitly bars her from leaving “the state paroled to without permission of the Community Parole Officer.”
X.com/realtinapeters
Colorado DOC regulation 250-16 says leaving the state requires a parolee to have a completed travel permit and gain approval from a community parole officer and at least one supervisor up the chain, with a maximum 15-day window and no open return dates allowed.
Alondra Gonzalez-Garcia, director of communications for the Department of Corrections, tells Westword that Peters did indeed seek and receive clearance for the trip.
“She does have permission to go. I was able to confirm,” Gonzalez-Garcia says.
According to DOC regulations, there isn’t a strict statutory cap on the number of times a parolee can apply for a travel permit, so don’t expect this to be the last time you see Peters appearing out of state with MAGA luminaries.
Peters’ criminal convictions
Peters was the Mesa County clerk in 2021, when she allowed an associate of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell into a secure room to copy her county’s Dominion voting system data, in pursuit of proof for Trump’s 2020 election fraud claims. That proof never materialized, and a jury convicted Peters in 2024 on four felonies and three misdemeanors. The sentencing judge told her she was “no hero” and “a charlatan” who would do it all again given the chance before giving her a nine year sentence.
A state appeals court upheld that conviction in April of this year but tossed the sentence itself, ruling the judge had improperly considered her protected speech in issuing it.
Before a resentencing hearing could happen, Polis commuted Peters’ sentence to four and a half years, after a year of public pressure from Trump that included threats of “harsh measures” against the state. Polis’s commutation drew immediate condemnation from the Colorado Secretary of State, the Attorney General’s Office, the bipartisan County Clerks Association and the Republican district attorney who prosecuted her.
Polis was formally censured by his own party, a symbolic move that keeps him from speaking at or being honored at Democratic Party events through the end of his term. He leaves office in January, unclear if he’ll attempt to continue a career in Democratic politics.
Meanwhile, Peters is in the spotlight she’d always aspired to, posing with the commander-in-chief.
