Tina Peters isn’t a household name. But she has been a cause célèbre in right-wing circles, particularly this week amid a Donald Trump clemency spree. Peters, a former election official in Mesa County, Colorado, is currently serving a nine-year sentence for allowing an election denier to gain unauthorized access to the county’s voting machines following the 2020 election—which, echoing Trump’s conspiracy theories, Peters insisted was marred by fraud. To Marjorie Taylor Greene and the other MAGA figures who have championed her cause, she’s something of a government hostage. As Kari Lake put it Monday, “She saw something criminal in Colorado elections and chose to do something as her job required.”

Calls of “Free Tina Peters” are a distillation of Trump’s approach to criminal justi

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