There is a critical difference between a U.S. president squabbling with leaders from a state and the president directing the machinery of the federal government to punish that state.

If the allegations made public last week in the media are true, the Trump administration exposed yet another treacherous abuse of its power.

At the center of this fight is former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, whose political saga has become a national cause célèbre among some Trump supporters and MAGA cult members.

But the basic legal facts of that drama should not be obscured by the politics.

Peters was convicted of breaking the law. She’s a felon. And the laws she broke were state laws, not federal laws, as the Sentinel and numerous Colorado media have repeatedly reported.

Her prison punishment was the responsibility of the Colorado criminal-justice system, not the federal government and not President Donald Trump.

The White House had no authority to dictate how Colorado should handle her state sentence.

That never stopped Trump, who publicly pined for Peters’ release, threatened over it and eventually had a tantrum over Peters being held accountable for her crimes, linked to his own lies and distortions about his lost 2020 presidential election.

A CPR News report of this latest transgression, as first reported by the Denver Post, describes an shocking sequence of events. After Colorado refused to move Peters to a federal prison so that Trump could release her, and Colorado officials rebuked Trump’s useless clemency declaration for her, a White House official emailed leaders at five federal agencies on Dec. 15, 2025, asking them to discuss “immediate actions” their departments could take regarding Colorado.

The call was described as a way to ensure federal grants and support for Colorado were “in line with administration priorities,” CPR and the Post reported.

Some grants to Colorado were canceled in the days that followed the White House missive.

That’s not a trivial allegation piled on top of endless other allegations of malfeasance and corruption linked to Trump and his administration. Federal agencies exist to administer laws and programs, usually created by Congress. These agencies are not created to serve as the president’s political enforcement squad against states that refuse his demands.

If there were ever an argument against running the government like a personal business, Donald Trump is the poster boy.

Aurora Congressperson Jason Crow made clear last week how serious this is by labeling it an “illegal retribution campaign.” 

Illegal is the keyword here.

Bennet accurately told CPR that Trump clearly weaponized “the federal government to punish Colorado.”

All of the Democratic members of Congress in Colorado have called for an investigation by inspectors general and demand that all emails and evidence be preserved to facilitate such a probe.

Even Colorado GOP Rep. Jeff Hurd has made clear how serious the allegations are and how compelling the evidence is so far.

“We do not know all the facts yet,” Hurd told CPR, but he said, “federal power cannot be used for political retaliation.” If federal agencies were directed to punish Colorado, he said, it “crosses a serious line.”

Trump has repeatedly sought ways to disparage and cause problems with the Centennial State during his two administrations.

Colorado voters have never come close to approving his presidential bids, and he almost did not have his name on the 2020 presidential ballot when a dispute at the state Supreme Court was settled by the higher U.S. Supreme Court.

Trump was successful in taking the headquarters for Space Command away from Colorado before he was voted out of office in 2020 and then reversed a Biden administration reversal when he resumed office in 2025. Trump spitefully cited Colorado’s mail-in voting when announcing the decision to move Space Command headquarters from Colorado Springs to Huntsville, Alabama. 

Political machinations like that are far from rare across history, but they’re nothing like this new White House brand of extortion.

A bipartisan panel of members of both the House and Senate should investigate. The administration should absolutely preserve and produce the records of the Dec. 15 call.

The inquiry should also establish whether decisions involving Space Command, environmental transportation grants, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, SNAP funding and disaster declarations were also just other political retaliation stunts.

President Trump swore to honor the Constitution. That oath does not come with an exception for how he handles his political enemies.

If the evidence ultimately establishes that Trump directed federal agencies to punish Colorado because state officials refused his political-buddy demands, that would represent a profound abuse of presidential power and certainly grounds for impeachment.

Colorado, and the rest of the nation, deserves the truth, which it won’t get from Trump. 

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