Tina Peters asks Colorado appeals court to order her release after Trump pardon
Attorneys for Tina Peters this week asked the Colorado Court of Appeals to order that the former Mesa County clerk “must be released from custody forthwith” following the signing of a pardon document by President Donald Trump earlier this month.
Trump does not have the power to pardon Peters, who was convicted in state court and is now serving a nine-year sentence in state prison for her role in a breach of her office’s election systems, part of an attempt to find evidence of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. But her attorneys pursued a presidential pardon anyway, expressing hope that the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court will rewrite the centuries-old legal doctrine of dual sovereignty in criminal proceedings.
Peters’ motion, the latest in a series of attempts by her attorneys and allies in the election conspiracy theory movement to force her release from state custody, was filed on Dec. 23 in her pending case before Colorado’s second-highest court, where she has appealed her August 2024 conviction, arguing that her imprisonment violates her First Amendment right of free speech. Peters has separately petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus in federal court, while Trump’s Department of Justice has formally requested her transfer to federal custody, a request the state has rejected.
The new filing asks the Colorado Court of Appeals to “enter an order indicating that it lost jurisdiction and finding that … the Pardon which was issued on Dec. 5, 2025, was effective and vitiated the convictions against Tina Peters in the State of Colorado.”
https://coloradonewsline.com/briefs/tina-peters-appeals-court-pardon/
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