President Donald Trump has issued a lot of shocking pardons and commutations that would have been unthinkable under other presidents, whether it’s every participant in the January 6 riot, the drug-trafficking former president of Honduras, or the comically guilty former Congressman George Santos.
But in all of those cases, Trump has at least been unquestionably allowed to pardon them. That is not the case with a pardon he announced Thursday.
In a Truth Social post on Thursday, Trump announced that he has issued “a full Pardon for her attempts to expose Voter Fraud in the Rigged 2020 Presidential Election” to Tina Peters. Peters, per Axios, was the county clerk in Mesa County, Colorado, and proponent of Trump’s election fraud lies.
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Per the Washington Post, Peters was accused of “helping to secretly copy Dominion Voting Systems hard drives by sneaking Conan Hayes, a former professional surfer and purported computer expert, into secure areas of her office in 2021 using someone else’s security badge.” She was later convicted of several crimes, including four felonies, and was sentenced to 8.5 years in prison.
However, because Peters was convicted in state and not federal court, she is therefore not eligible to be pardoned by the president, whose authority only extends to the federal criminal justice system. Therefore, Peters will not be freed, and will not have her record wiped clean.
“No President has jurisdiction over state law nor the power to pardon a person for state convictions. This is a matter for the courts to decide, and we will abide by court orders,” Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said this week, per Axios.
JUST IN: Trump says he’s pardoned Tina Peters, but that may not save her from prison https://t.co/tDDEXJ35qv
— Axios (@axios) December 12, 2025
“The idea that a president could pardon someone tried and convicted in state court has no precedent in American law, would be an outrageous departure from what our constitution requires, and will not hold up,” Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said upon the news of the “pardon.”
The Trump Administration has floated the idea that Peters could be pardoned because her crimes had a “nexus to a federal election,” but there’s no reason to think such an argument would ever fly in court.
Just last week, admin sources were telling me about internal “discussions” on whether @realDonaldTrump could purportedly pardon Tina Peters because her state-level conviction has a nexus to a federal election.
This does look like a tacit admission that he can’t do it. pic.twitter.com/zAZII337Oe
— Andrew Feinberg (@AndrewFeinberg) November 23, 2025
Photo courtesy of the Political Tribune media library.
