President Donald J. Trump on March 9, 2026. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok/Flickr)
In August 2025 — roughly seven months into his second presidency — Donald Trump threatened Colorado officials with "harsh measures" if they didn't release former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters from prison, where she was serving time for criminal charges related to her efforts to overturn 2020's presidential election results. Now, newly revealed e-mails, according to MS NOW's Steve Benen, shed light on the steps Trump took to punish the State of Colorado for Peters' incarceration.
Highlighting one of Benen's August 17 opinion columns in a post on X, formerly Twitter, journalist Kyle Griffin notes, "Emails revealed in court: As Trump publicly condemned Colorado for incarcerating convicted felon and election denier Tina Peters, the White House organized an urgent 'brainstorm call' with five federal agencies — with the goal of exploring ways to curtail federal support to Colorado. The next day, federal agencies announced they were canceling hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants for Colorado projects."
Benen, in his column, points out that the "degree to which" Trump "was serious" about punishing Colorado because of Peters "is still coming into focus."
"The New York Times reported, late last week, for example, that as Trump publicly condemned the Rocky Mountain State for incarcerating a convicted felon, the White House organized an urgent 'brainstorm call' with five federal agencies, with the goal of exploring ways to curtail federal support to Colorado," Benen explains. "The meeting, evidently, was a success — at least as far as the administration was concerned."
Trump's "assault against the Democratic-run state," Benen observes, ranged from cutting off transportation funds to taking "steps to dismantle a renowned science lab in Colorado."
"But while the pattern is not new, what is new is the newly disclosed document: We're now aware of an e-mail, sent by White House special assistant Emily Underwood just days after the president published a series of messages related to Peters, which reinforces rather obvious suspicions that the administration's campaign against Colorado was not a mere coincidence: Team Trump set out to punish the state, and then took a variety of steps to execute that plan ... It's worth emphasizing that the gambit — what was effectively an extortion plot, hatched by the White House against an American state — proved effective."
Benen continues, "In mid-May, Polis succumbed to pressure and announced his commutation for Peters, a convicted felon who illegally tried to use her office in pursuit of pro-Trump election conspiracy theories. But the fact that the scheme worked doesn't make it any more defensible."
