It comes as no surprise that Tina Peters’ first stop after being released from prison was to appear on Steve Bannon’s YouTube podcast.
It’s also no surprise that she took the time in celebrating her early release — which came due to Jared Polis’ ill-advised commutation of her sentence — to tell Bannon, a well-known Trump whisperer, that she knows Democrats will “cheat” in the mid-term elections this November.
She didn’t say how she knows this, just that she knows.
Here’s the money quote: “I see these elections that are taking place in real time: the Mamdanis, the Virginia governor — Spanberger — and then what’s going on in California and Texas and Maine — just all over the country. And I know that the Democrats are going to cheat, and no one’s really addressing the problem that I spent my time in prison as retribution for, and that was exposing the election machines that allow the votes to be flipped.”
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I guess she came to these conclusions about recent elections while studying the relevant voting machine algorithms from her prison cell.
But no matter. As Polis said, Peters has the right to say whatever dimwitted thought comes to mind, thanks to our freedom of speech, as guaranteed in the First Amendment.
Polis is right about that. The problem, in the case of Tina Peters, is that he’s wrong about everything else.
And Peters is busily making sure we understand how wrong he is, telling Bannon she was a victim of “retribution” and she has to “fight to clear my name and bring out the truth for why they came after me the way they did.” Does that sound like the remorse that Polis insisted he needed before granting clemency?
Let’s start with the reasoning behind Polis’ decision to grant the commutation. In his latest attempt to justify himself, Polis recently wrote a lengthy Substack post, in which among other claims, he compared his decision to other unpopular defenses of free speech.
He even invoked the rights of Nazis who wanted to march in 1977 in Skokie, Illinois — a largely Jewish community with thousands of Holocaust survivors residing there. The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) controversially defended the Nazis based on their free-speech rights. The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, affirmed the Nazis’ right to peacefully march, no matter how ugly and offensive and hurtful it would be. That is the cost of free speech, which we must be willing to pay. In the end, they called off the march anyway.
Polis wrote, as someone, he notes, who is Jewish and gay: “I personally despise the thought of Nazis marching down the streets of Skokie, or of Denver. But, and this is deeply uncomfortable, I believe they have the right to do so, as long as those demonstrations are peaceful. Because to have a truly liberal democracy requires that right.”
Skokie was an extreme test of free-speech rights, defending the rights of those whose speech is so ugly that it must be condemned at every turn — unless you believe, of course, that there are “very fine people on both sides.”
Tina Peters is not an extreme test. She’s in line with the president and with the great majority of the MAGA cultists who support him. Mentioning the cases together is what I find offensive.
As Polis has always conceded, Peters committed serious crimes for which she deserved to be punished. But apparently Polis doesn’t think that Peters’ crimes — having been convicted of organizing a security breach of Mesa County’s voting machines in order to, uh, prove that Donald Trump should have won the 2020 elections — were all that serious.
Polis notes that she was a first-time felon who committed a nonviolent crime. And yet, her nonviolent crime did great violence to our elections systems, as virtually every Democratic politician in Colorado has said while condemning Polis’ move.
We should remember that nobody ever arrested her for saying nutty things. They arrested her, tried her and a jury of peers convicted her for her betrayal of Mesa County citizens, whose votes she was elected to safeguard, by allowing an outsider to copy and publicly share voting machines’ hard drives.
That is serious. Very serious. And that’s why she got nine years. But because Judge Matthew Barrett scolded her during sentencing about her spread of election-conspiracy lies, a state appeals court ruled her sentence was affected, in part, by Peters’ nutty speech on such theories. They sent the case back to the same judge for resentencing.
Polis said he wouldn’t wait for the ongoing case to take its course because it could take years to resolve. He didn’t mention that if the case took years to resolve, it would be because Peters would continue to appeal.
I’m no legal expert, so I’m not going to argue the merits of the court’s opinion. But I will argue that when Barrett called her a “charlatan,” that didn’t necessarily mean he was doing so to justify her sentence.
He said it, I’m guessing, because Peters is a charlatan. And as a warning to others who might follow her lead.
But what do we call Polis at this moment? How about a bad-faith actor? Let’s go back to Polis’ remorse standard for clemency. He said many times remorse was a must. And yet, in Peters’ appeal for clemency, she showed as little remorse as possible, saying only that her actions were “wrong” and that “Going forward, I will make sure my actions always follow the law, and I will avoid the mistakes of the past.”
I’m sure Polis is smart enough to know she lied. But lying was apparently OK if it allowed Polis to act on his conscience, however misguided it might be.
Here’s what to he wrote to Peters, telling her of his decision to cut her sentence in half, thereby freeing her from prison, about her supposed contrition:
“Importantly, your application demonstrates taking responsibility for your crimes, and a commitment to follow the law going forward. For these reasons, I am commuting your sentence.”
And on her first day out of prison, she said she planned to appeal her conviction, presumably because she believes herself innocent. And she said that she was sent to prison as “retribution.” In other words, she took no responsibility for her crimes.
As I write this, Polis hasn’t yet addressed Peters’ post-release statements. I don’t know if he will. They have to be pretty embarrassing to the governor. It also has to be pretty embarrassing to Polis that, upon announcing his plan to grant clemency to Peters, Trump released $40 million in funding to Colorado to purchase water rights.
I’m not saying this is a case of quid pro quo. I’m saying someone might interpret it that way. My guess is that Trump released the funding to make it seem that Polis caved to him, whether he did or did not.
Personally, I don’t think it was a matter of Polis caving, but there is another point I want to make about Polis and Peters.
Speaking at the Colorado Sun’s annual legislative recap, Polis said he thinks his decision “will be remembered fondly,” as if history would take great note of Polis’ decision, which he described as bold.
That was such a delusional thing to say that it overshadowed what he said next, which may be more important.
“The nation needs to have a reconciliation and healing,” he said.
Which leads me to say, huh?
Was he saying he commuted Peters’ sentence, in part, so the nation’s divisions can begin to heal?
What the nation most needs, as Trump continues down the path of authoritarianism, is a return to justice. Trump’s idea of reconciliation is to reward his felonious supporters — also friends and family —with a $1.776 billion slush fund, which he would basically control.
The slush fund — which the Justice Department awarded Trump to settle his suit against the IRS —was so corrupt that even many Republicans in Congress objected, causing Trump to drop the idea altogether.
But that’s just one piece of corruption — and not even the most outrageous — during Trump’s time in office. None of it can be set aside. It must be punished.
Undoing the damage that Trump and his sycophants have done to the U.S. may take, we’re told, a generation — if it happens at all.
But in the great scheme of things, even as Peters is being celebrated by MAGA world as a martyr to the cause, history will remember Peters’ case, if at all, only as a footnote.
Her supporters are pushing for Trump to honor her at the White House or Mar-a-Lago. But, first, her parole officer would have to agree to let her leave the state.
On the other hand, Polis’ grant of clemency — what he insists is his bold defense of free speech — will be remembered, and not fondly, for as long as he stays in the public arena.
And here’s my guess: Every time Peters uses that free speech to remind us she believes she is the victim here, we’ll be reminded how Polis got it all wrong.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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