“Tina is sitting in a Colorado prison for the ‘crime’ of demanding Honest Elections,” Trump said on Truth Social on Thursday. He said he was granting Peters a pardon for “her attempts to expose voter fraud” in the 2020 presidential election.

The president’s stated intention to pardon Tina Peters, jailed for tampering with election machines in 2020, has set off a legal fight over the extent of Mr. Trump’s pardon powers.

Trump granted a full pardon to Tina Peters, former clerk of Mesa County, who was sentenced to prison for "demanding Honest Elections."

President Donald Trump is attempting to claim that he is pardoning Tina Peters, who was sentenced to nine years on state level charges for election tampering.

Peters is serving a nine-year prison sentence in Colorado after being convicted by a state court for tampering with voting machines.

The Trump administration wants driver’s license numbers and the last four digits of social security numbers for all of Colorado’s registered voters, and on Thursday, they sued the Colorado Secretary of State to get it.

Trump's pardon is largely symbolic since Peters, who is now in prison, was convicted of state crimes, which are not shielded by presidential pardon powers. “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 on Truth Social.

Most of Colorado’s independent voters distrust both major political parties and want Republicans and Democrats to be more moderate. They are most concerned about the cost of living and housing, followed by taxes and budget, and politics and polarization.

A federal magistrate judge has rejected a bid by a former Colorado county clerk to be released from prison while she appeals her state conviction for orchestrating a data breach scheme driven by false claims about voting machine fraud in the 2020 presidential race.