President Donald Trump on Thursday night said he would issue a pardon for former Colorado county clerk Tina Peters, who was convicted on state charges of tampering with voting machines following the 2020 election.
The measure is a largely symbolic one — there is a “strong consensus among legal experts” that the president cannot pardon someone for state offenses, according to the American Bar Association.
Trump’s move comes just days after Peters’ lawyer, Peter Ticktin, directly appealed to Trump by floating a novel legal theory: The president is allowed to pardon anyone.
“The question of whether a president can pardon for state offenses has never been raised in any court,” Ticktin wrote in a nine-page letter to Trump on Sunday, pleading with the president to make the case.
The president downplayed Peters’ crimes in a missive Thursday night on Truth Social, claiming that her prosecution was spearheaded by Democrats and that she was simply “demanding Honest Elections.”
“Democrats have been relentless in their targeting of TINA PETERS, a Patriot who simply wanted to make sure that our Elections were Fair and Honest,” Trump wrote.
Peters was charged in 2022 and convicted in late 2024 on charges of tampering with voting machines in an effort to perpetuate false claims about the 2020 presidential election. She is currently in a Colorado state prison serving a nine-year sentence, while awaiting the outcome of her appeal of that state conviction.
A federal judge on Monday rejected her bid to be released during her appeal process.
Historically, the interpretation of the Constitution only permits the president to issue pardons for federal crimes and those within Washington, D.C.
But in a letter to the White House on Sunday, Ticktin made the argument that the Founding Fathers would have wanted to empower the president above state governments — and urged the administration to take the novel legal theory to the Supreme Court.
“It does not make sense that they intended to give the individual states the power to circumvent the President’s power to pardon. The matter of Tina Peters is a perfect example of how the power of the President is being circumvented,” Ticktin wrote.
“By charging Mrs. Peters with collateral state offenses, the State of Colorado believes that it can operate in the shadows of the President, where the light of his authority does not extend,” Ticktin continued. “This could not have been what the founders envisioned.”
“The President of the United States has the power to grant a pardon in any of the states of the United States,” he concluded.
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