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Court judge's gavel resting on an election ballot.

Colorado corrections department not in talks with feds over Tina Peters prison transfer

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Sara Wilson
(Colorado Newsline)

The Colorado Department of Corrections has not received a request from the federal Bureau of Prisons to move Tina Peters from state prison into a federal facility, despite reported calls from advocates and government officials to do so.

Peters, the former Republican clerk for Mesa County, was found guilty last year on state charges for orchestrating a plan to breach her office’s secure election systems in order to find evidence of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. She was sentenced to nine years in prison and is incarcerated in a state facility in Pueblo.

Since then, right-wing political figures have repeatedly called for her release. Most recently, that included Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who appealed to President Donald Trump on X to “free Tina Peters” following the president’s pardons over the weekend to dozens of people connected to the effort to overturn the 2020 election. Ed Martin, the U.S. pardon attorney, replied “We are working on it!” to a Sunday night post on X about Peters and her potential release.

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Then-Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters at her primary election watch party at the Wide Open Saloon in Sedalia on June 28, 2022. Carl Payne - Colorado Newsline

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The president can only issue pardons, however, to people with federal convictions.

Others, including longtime Trump ally Steve Bannon, have floated the idea of transferring Peters from a state prison to a federal facility. A conservative website, Just the News, reported last week that the Office of Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche sent an email to the head of the Bureau of Prisons to research how Peters could be transferred to a federal prison and send a request to Colorado for a transfer into federal custody.

A partially redacted copy of the email shared by Just the News showed an unidentified DOJ official ordering the BOP to “explore any and all avenues within BOP’s authority to seek and request” Peters’ transfer to a federal facility.

Colorado Newsline was unable to independently verify the existence of that email.

But CDOC has not received any written request from the BOP about the issue, according to department spokesperson Alondra Gonzalez.

Any transfer of someone incarcerated in a state prison to another jurisdiction, Gonzalez said, is initiated by the state, not an outside entity.

“This process is typically reserved for complex cases involving significant, long-term safety and security needs,” she wrote in an email. “This protocol requires a formal assessment by a multidisciplinary team and a multi-step internal review. Any such transfer must be reviewed and formally approved before any incarcerated individual can be referred to another jurisdiction.”

In an interview with Bannon Monday, Martin said the Trump administration had been “fighting for two months to figure out a path on Tina Peters.”

“We did it in a way that puts the right kind of pressure on them,” Martin said. “If you’re Colorado … if the feds say you want something, you change your tune.”

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, a Democrat, said in a statement that he would oppose any effort to transfer Peters.

“Tina Peters is in state prison because she committed crimes that put the safety of our elections at risk. She was prosecuted and convicted by a jury of her peers for illegally tampering with our election system and violating her duty,” he said. “There is no basis for the Bureau of Prisons to request a transfer of her custody. Any scheme to prevent her from being held accountable under Colorado law is outrageous.”