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Photo: Hyoung Chang/Denver Post/Getty Images

Four days after he threatened to use powers he did not have to shut down voting by mail and the use of voting machines nationwide, Donald Trump demanded the release of convicted voting-machine tamperer Tina Peters of Colorado in a Thursday morning Truth Social rant:

FREE TINA PETERS, a brave and innocent Patriot who has been tortured by Crooked Colorado politicians, including the big Mail-In Ballot supporting the governor of the State. Let Tina Peters out of jail, RIGHT NOW. She did nothing wrong, except catching the Democrats cheat in the Election. She is an old woman, and very sick. If she is not released, I am going to take harsh measures!!!

This wasn’t a coincidence. For one thing, Colorado is a blue state that uses voting machines and provides universal access to mail ballots. For another, Tina Peters is one of the rare 2020 election deniers who has actually been convicted by a jury of felony crimes and incarcerated. So in the fun-house mirror of MAGA-land, she’s a martyr to the Cause and an Innocent Patriot.

In reality, Peters is a serial fabulist who throughout her brief career (she was elected to one term as Mesa County clerk in 2018 and ran unsuccessfully for secretary of State in 2022) has constantly promoted unfounded conspiracy theories. The felonious stunt for which she was convicted involved unauthorized access to her county’s election machines to secure data, which was then leaked to election denier Mike Lindell. She’s been something of a walking, talking scandal for her fellow Republicans; the prosecutor in her criminal case was an elected Republican. While sentencing Peters, Colorado judge Matthew Barrett focused on her incorrigibility:

State District Court Judge Matthew Barrett told Peters on Thursday: “You are no hero.”

“You’re a charlatan who used and is still using your prior position in office to peddle a snake oil that’s been proven to be junk time and time again.”

Since Peters is a state, not federal, offender, Trump can’t pardon her like her ideological cousins the J6 Patriots. But he can and has sought to intervene in her case. In May, he fired off an even more unhinged Truth Social post that (after spraying Colorado Democrats with all sorts of unrelated venom) announced he was directing the Justice Department to support her efforts to get sprung from prison via a habeas corpus hearing (results are still pending):

So this is an old Trump grievance being harnessed to his new effort to undermine trust in election administration in advance of the 2026 midterms, which could seriously interfere with the power binge he’s been undertaking this year. Unfortunately for the credibility of his argument, Colorado offers a particularly weak case of 2020 election-stealing. Joe Biden carried the state by a 55 percent to 42 percent landslide. For that matter, the “radical left” attorney general Trump attacked in May was also elected by a landslide in 2022, even as Democratic governor Jared Polis defeated election denier Heidi Ganahl by an even larger landslide.

Trump, of course, has been known to diverge dramatically from reality in his “election-theft” fables, notably his periodic claims that he would carry California in a fair fight. His treatment of Tina Peters as a poor old gray-headed patriot being persecuted by communists is unsurprising and probably a sign of much worse to come in his crusade to convince his supporters that he and his party literally can’t lose.

Why Trump Wants Election-Denying Felon Tina Peters Released

Why Trump Wants Election-Denying Felon Tina Peters Released