‘FREE TINA PETERS!’ Trump Slams ‘Communist Persecution’ of Convicted Election Clerk, Demands DOJ Release Her
Larry Robinson/The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel via AP
President Donald Trump ordered the Department of Justice to “take all necessary action” to help free former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who is serving a nine-year sentence in Colorado for breaching election equipment security in a bid to uncover voter fraud.
Peters, a vocal supporter of Trump’s claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, was convicted in August on seven counts, including multiple felonies, after she facilitated unauthorized access to secure county voting machines. Neither she nor her supporters have ever produced evidence that the equipment was tampered with or that voter fraud occurred.
Trump took to Truth Social on Monday to attack Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser and call on the DOJ to free Peters, who he called a “hostage”:
Radical Left Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser ignores Illegals committing Violent Crimes like Rape and Murder in his State and, instead, jailed Tina Peters, a 69-year-old Gold Star mother who worked to expose and document Democrat Election Fraud. Tina is an innocent Political Prisoner being horribly and unjustly punished in the form of Cruel and Unusual Punishment. This is a Communist persecution by the Radical Left Democrats to cover up their Election crimes and misdeeds in 2020. The same Democrat Party that flies to El Salvador to try to free an MS-13 Terrorist, is cruelly imprisoning, perhaps for life, a grandmother whose brave and heroic son gave his life for America. Colorado must end this unjust incarceration of an innocent American. I am hereby directing the Department of Justice to take all necessary action to help secure the release of this “hostage” being held in a Colorado prison by the Democrats, for political reasons. FREE TINA PETERS, NOW!
Notably, Peters was initially investigated, charged, and convicted by a Republican district attorney in her native Mesa County — pulling from a heavily Republican jury pool. DA Dan Rubinstein, who prosecuted the case, told Colorado media in September 2024, “What I would like is for everybody to understand that there is nothing political about this case to me. To me, this is simply: an elected official broke the law, and an elected official is being held accountable for breaking the law. Obviously, I’m not looking to charge people in my own party.”
In March, a DOJ filing in federal court on Peters’ behalf cited “reasonable concerns” about her prosecution relating to “abuses of the criminal justice process.”
At that time, Weiser blasted the intervention as a “grotesque attempt to weaponize the rule of law” and called the move “a naked, political attempt to threaten or intimidate either this Court or the attorneys that prosecuted this matter.”
He added that the federal statement “cites not a single fact to support its baseless allegations that there are any reasonable concerns about Ms. Peters’ prosecution or sentence, or that the prosecution was politically motivated in any way.”
Weiser’s office did not immediately respond to Trump’s latest attack, but the AG has previously said there’s “not a single fact” suggesting Peters’ prosecution was politically motivated.
