AURORA  | Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis on Friday granted clemency to former GOP Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, whose prison sentence for election-related crimes was commuted after she was convicted in 2024 of breaching voting equipment in her county.

The move came after President Donald Trump for months pressured Polis to release Peters and even unsuccessfully tried to use the pardon powers of the presidency to get Peters out of prison.

The clemency prompted immediate outrage from Democrats and voting rights and election transparency advocates.

“The Governor’s actions today will validate and embolden the election denial movement, and leave a dark, dangerous imprint on American democracy for years to come,” Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said in a statement. 

Polis announced 35 pardons and nine commutations on Friday, calling the clemency power “a serious responsibility” that can “change lives” and offer “a second chance for someone who has made grave mistakes.”

Under the governor’s order, Peters will be eligible for parole effective June 1, with terms and conditions to be set by the Colorado Parole Board.

“Tina Peters knowingly broke the law, undermined our elections, and was rightfully convicted by a jury of her peers. I vehemently disagree with Governor Polis’s decision to commute her sentence,” Colorado Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet said in a statement. Bennet is a Democratic candidate for governor. Polis is term limited. “Lawlessness only breeds more lawlessness. With President Trump continuing to attack Colorado, we must do everything we can to stand strong for our institutions and the rule of law.”

Peters, a former county clerk in western Colorado, was convicted by a Mesa County jury in 2024 on charges tied to a 2021 security breach involving election equipment.

Peters was found guilty of four felonies and three misdemeanors, including attempts to influence a public servant and conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation.

Griswold said Peters’ actions led Mesa County to spend nearly $1 million replacing voting equipment. Peters was sentenced in October 2024 to nine years in prison, according to Griswold’s office.

Griswold also said that the Colorado Court of Appeals upheld Peters’ convictions in April but ordered that she be resentenced.

David Seligman, executive director of the advocacy group Towards Justice and a candidate for Colorado attorney general, also condemned the commutation. He accused Polis of yielding to pressure from Trump, who he said had called for Peters’ release and threatened to withhold federal funding from Colorado.

“The governor’s commutation of Tina Peters is an outrageous corruption of how our justice system is supposed to work,” Seligman said in a statement.

Democrats in the Colorado Legislature urged Polis in March to reject a clemency petition from Peters, according to reports by Colorado Newsline.

“We urge you not to empower those who seek to undermine our elections and our Republic by providing them with a figurehead to rally around and near assurance that, when you tamper with our elections, you will escape justice,” the members of the House and Senate Democratic caucuses wrote in a March letter. Every statehouse Democrat signed the letter.

Trump has championed the case of Peters, a 70-year-old former county clerk who was sentenced to nine years behind bars after being convicted in a scheme to make a copy of her county’s election computer system.

In April, a Colorado appeals court ordered Peters to be resentenced because it said the judge who sent her to prison wrongly punished her for speaking out about election fraud, a decision praised by Polis. The court upheld her convictions though.

Peters has been serving her sentence at a prison in Pueblo after being convicted in 2024 by jurors in Mesa County, a Republican stronghold that supported Trump.

Peters snuck in an outside computer expert, an associate of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, to make a copy of her county’s Dominion Voting Systems election computer server as state officials updated it in 2021. After Peters joined Lindell onstage at a “cybersymposium” that promised to reveal proof of election rigging, video and photos of the upgrade, including passwords, were posted online.

Peters was convicted of state, not federal, crimes, which put her beyond the reach of Trump’s pardon power that he used to free those convicted of crimes for the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the U.S. Capitol. But the president still championed her cause.

Trump has lambasted both Polis, calling him a “Scumbag Governor,” and the Republican district attorney who prosecuted her, Daniel Rubinstein, for keeping Peters in prison. He has referred to Peters, as “elderly” and “sick.” Earlier this year, Trump uninvited Polis from a White House meeting with governors over the case.

The president said Colorado was “suffering a big price” for refusing to release her. His administration has been choking off funds, ending federal programs and denying disaster aid. It also announced the dismantling of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado and relocated the U.S. Space Command to Alabama.

Peters’ lawyers have said her health has declined in prison. Peters, who had part of her right lung removed in 2017, started coughing frequently after the prison’s heating system was turned on for the winter and has had trouble sleeping on her mattress because of chronic pain from fibromyalgia, her lawyers said.

In January, Peters was involved in a scuffle with another inmate but was found not guilty of assault following a prison disciplinary hearing, Colorado Department of Corrections spokesperson Alondra Gonzalez-Garcia said. Peters was found guilty of being in a location without authorization.

The federal Bureau of Prisons tried but failed to get Peters moved to a federal prison. But in January, Polis said he was considering granting clemency for Peters, calling her sentence “unusual and harsh“ for a first-time, nonviolent offender. In March he repeated those arguments in a lengthy post on the social media platform X.

“Justice in Colorado and America needs to be applied evenly,” Polis wrote.

Along with Peters, Polis granted commutations to Joseph Aguayo, Matthew Aldaz, Eugene Gilbert, Conrad Harrell, Brandin Kreuzer, Mondo Moralez, Richard Sandbom and Wendell Weaver. The governor also issued pardons to 35 people, including Louise Almanzan, Tomas Arellanes, Denise Barber, Shawn Bishop and Justin Young.

— The Associated Press contributed to this story.

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