Colorado officials are bracing themselves for an all-out “battle” against President Donald Trump as they seek to get ahead of the president’s pledge to pardon Tina Peters, a former county clerk who was jailed in connection with the efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, The New York Times reported Saturday.
“This is so far beyond the pale,” said Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, a Democrat, the Times reported Saturday. “No one has thought to do this because it is so clearly against our constitutional system of government.”
Peters was convicted on several felony charges after ordering the surveillance cameras monitoring voting machines in Mesa County, Colorado, to be turned off, and allowing Conan Hayes – an entrepreneur, former professional surfer and fierce supporter of Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was “stolen” – to have unauthorized access to voting machines.
While Trump has pledged to pardon Peters, who is serving a nine-year sentence, Colorado officials and Democrats are now bracing themselves for a major legal confrontation with the president.
“We are ready to go before a court on this,” Weiser said. “Our position is as strong and clear as any constitutional case I can imagine.”
Peter Ticktin, an attorney for Peters, said that Trump was committed to freeing Peters, and suggested the president may go as far as to intervene with federal law enforcement officers should Colorado officials continue to defy him.
“For all I know, the president may send a marshal to the prison to have her released,” Ticktin said Friday.
For Colorado officials, however, they voiced their own commitment to opposing Trump’s pledge to pardon Peters, with Weiser declaring the pardon held “no legal merit,” and Jena Griswold, the Democratic secretary of state for Colorado, calling it an act of “desperation.”
