Former Colorado election clerk Tina Peters’s legal team is intensifying pressure on President Donald Trump to pardon her, a move that puts the White House in a complicated position.

A federal judge on Monday declined Peters’s bid to be released from prison on bond while an appeals court considers her challenge to a 2024 conviction on charges of election interference in 2020. 

The same day, a letter that Peters’s attorney recently sent to Trump was publicly circulated, reviving her request for a presidential pardon and outlining a number of additional safety and health hurdles she said she has faced in jail while serving the first year of her nine-year sentence. 

But while Trump has publicly advocated Peters’s release and sought to transfer her to federal custody, a pardon is more convoluted. 

Presidential pardons are traditionally reserved only for federal cases. The former Mesa County clerk was convicted on state charges, and her appeal is still working through the Colorado courts.  

Peters’s legal team, led by Peter Ticktin, believes language in the Constitution allows for presidents to issue pardons for state convictions. It is his position that the Supreme Court should consider the matter.

Over the weekend, Ticktin ramped up pressure on the White House to intervene in his client’s case in a lengthy letter stating Peters had been repeatedly attacked while in prison, and is being held in conditions dangerous to her health.

Peters’s request to be transferred to “a safe unit” has been denied by authorities six times “without a valid reason,” the attorney wrote. Peters, 70, is currently being held with one other cellmate in the smallest cell of her unit that was formerly used “for a washing machine and dryer,” he continued, adding that “only 1 of the 2 cellmates can stand at a time.” 

“About 6 months ago, Mrs. Peters was threatened with harm. Her life was threatened by a group of inmates, to stab her and to kill her. This was reported to the FBI and DOJ, which had agents interview her. She was moved to a different unit. In the new unit, she was attacked by other prisoners 3 times in different locations where guards had to pull inmates off of her,” Ticktin wrote. 

“Lately, she has been required to take drug tests in the evening, when she otherwise would have been sleeping. That process takes hours during which she mostly was required to sit on cold cement. This was while enduring a chronic cough which was similar to the cough she had before surgery for lung cancer where a third of one of her lungs was removed in 2016. Yet, all she was given was an X-ray. Moreover, she has 3 places in her spine which are degenerative, and the prison refuses to provide a mattress more than 2 inches thick even though the prison possesses 40 mattresses which are 4 inches thick and stored and not used. The area also has black mold to which she is exposed,” he continued. 

The letter stood by claims Peters is innocent, and denied court findings that the former elections clerk lacked credible evidence when she believed that the election systems were interfered with to help then-candidate Joe Biden win the presidency, and that she acted out of bounds by providing unauthorized information about Mesa County’s election systems to a GOP-affiliate. 

Trump thus far has increased pressure on Colorado’s Democratic governor to grant Peters an early release, but has not attempted to grant her a pardon. 

“The SLEAZEBAG Governor of Colorado, Jared Polis, refuses to allow an elderly woman, Tina Peters, who was unfairly convicted of what the Democrats do, cheating on Elections, out of jail!” the president said in a message to Truth Social earlier this month. “She was convicted for trying to stop Democrats from stealing Colorado Votes in the Election. She was preserving Election Records, which she was obligated to do under Federal Law.” 

On Monday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Scott Varholak rejected Peters’s bid to be released while her case plays out in appeals. Peters had brought the request through a habeas petition, which allows a person in state custody to challenge their imprisonment in federal court. 

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“Ms. Peters raises important constitutional questions concerning whether the trial court improperly punished her more severely because of her protected First Amendment speech,” Varholak wrote. “But because this question remains pending before Colorado courts, this Court must abstain from answering that question until after the Colorado courts have decided the issue.”

The Washington Examiner reached out to the White House and DOJ for comment, but did not receive a response.

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