President Donald Trump signed a formal pardon for Tina Peters, according to Peter Ticktin, her Florida-based attorney, who shared the pardon document with Newsline on Friday.
The document, which appears to be dated Dec. 5, says it grants “a full and unconditional pardon” for “those offenses she has or may have committed or taken part in related to election integrity and security during the period January 1, 2020 through December 31, 2021.”
The pardon applies to Peters’ conviction on state charges, Ticktin said. The charges related to Peters’ role in a 2021 security breach when she was the Mesa County clerk.
Presidential pardons have universally been understood to apply only to federal crimes, not state crimes. Reports about Trump’s claim to have pardoned Peters, announced on social media Thursday, characterized it as empty or “symbolic.”
“Trump’s pardon has no legal impact on her state conviction and incarceration,” according to CNN.
But Ticktin says the pardon is the tool he needs to compel Colorado to free Peters.
“She didn’t commit any federal offenses,” Ticktin said in an interview with Newsline. “The only thing that she could be pardoned on are state offenses, because that’s all that are out there.”
Peters, 70, is incarcerated at La Vista Correctional Facility in Pueblo. The Republican was convicted by a Mesa County jury for her role in a security breach of her own election equipment that was part of an effort to find evidence that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. She was sentenced in October 2024.
Claims that the election was fraudulent or compromised have been debunked by elections officials, experts, media investigations, law enforcement, the courts and Trump’s own campaign and administration officials.
Ticktin applied to the Trump administration last month for a pardon. He followed up last week with a letter to Trump in which he detailed his argument that Trump has the power to pardon Peters. He says the Constitution’s references to the United States apply to the individual states as well as the country as a whole, concluding that the president “has the power to grant a pardon in any of the states of the United States.”
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, said Thursday the state will abide by whatever courts order concerning the pardon. But he said Trump lacks pardon power in Peters’ case.
“Tina Peters was convicted by a jury of her peers, prosecuted by a Republican District Attorney, and found guilty of violating Colorado state laws, including criminal impersonation,” he said in a statement. “No President has jurisdiction over state law nor the power to pardon a person for state convictions.”
Ticktin expects the Trump administration to submit the pardon to the Colorado Department of Corrections, which is likely to refuse to release Peters, he said. The pardon then might have bearing in the Colorado Court of Appeals, where Peters has appealed her conviction.
“If the pardon counts, the appeal has to stop,” Ticktin said. “The appeal’s over. It becomes moot.”
Ultimately he expects the matter to reach the U.S. Supreme Court, where a 6-3 conservative majority has sided with Trump at an unusually high rate.