After pressure from Trump, Colorado’s governor said he’s considering clemency for Tina Peters, the former election official serving a nine-year state prison sentence for her role in a 2021 voting system breach.

Wednesday, January 14

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After pressure from President Donald Trump, Colorado’s governor said he’s considering clemency for Tina Peters, the former election official serving a nine-year state prison sentence for her role in a 2021 voting system breach. Also in this week’s Eye On The Right: Cleta Mitchell calls Georgia Sec. of State Brad Raffensperger a “lying, cheating scumbag” for not helping Trump steal the 2020 election, anti-voting activists detail how Trump and his MAGA faithful could manipulate the midterms, and more.

Matt Cohen, Senior Reporter



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After pressure and punishment from Trump, Colorado gov. signals possible clemency for Tina Peters

- Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) said ([link removed] ) he’s considering clemency for Tina Peters, the former election official serving a nine-year state prison sentence for her role in a 2021 voting system breach.

- Polis’ openness to clemency for Peters comes after months of escalating retaliation ([link removed] ) from Trump against the state of Colorado — including vetoing bipartisan bills and denying key federal funding — driven by the Peters issue.

- “She got a sentence that was harsh. It was a 9-year sentence,” Polis said in an interview last week. Speaking with CBS Evening News Monday, Polis once again hedged ([link removed] ) when asked if he would pardon Peters. “You look at every case on clemency on the merits,” he said. “You have somebody who is non-violent, first-time offender, elderly. On the other hand, does she take full accountability for her crime?”

Cleta Mitchell: Raffensperger is a ‘lying, cheating scumbag’ because he didn’t help Trump steal 2020

- As the 2026 election ramps up, anti-voting lawyer and activist Cleta Mitchell is still hung up on 2020 — specifically Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s (R) decision to not help Trump “find 11,780 votes” ([link removed] ) and steal the election.

- Mitchell was on Trump’s infamous phone call with Raffensperger where he asked the secretary to find him those votes. Five years later, she is trying to claim the effort represented a righteous crusade against fraud, not an illegal attempt to overturn election results.

- “Thousands of illegal votes listed in the complaint filed with the court,” Mitchell said ([link removed] ) in a recent social media rant, even tagging David Shafer, who was charged for his role in the infamous Georgia fake electors scheme (the case never went to trial). “Raffensperger refused to look at them and the case was not assigned to a judge, so we never could present our evidence. All that was needed was for Raffensperger to sit down with us and compare the data to see the problem / illegal votes. He refused because he wanted the leftwing fake news media to love him.”

Anti-voting activists detail how Trump and his MAGA faithful could manipulate the midterms

- An all-star lineup of election deniers and anti-voting activists on a right-wing podcast this week laid out a range of schemes to help Trump and the GOP prevail in this year’s midterms.

- Some of the speakers — including former Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn, along with conspiracy theorists Jerome Corsi and Garland Favorito — emphasized that it’ll be crucial for the U.S. Department of Justice to enforce Trump’s unconstitutional anti-voting executive order, which in a nutshell would wrest control of voting from the states.

- Other speakers said that federal prosecutors will aggressively pursue and prosecute state and local election officials who don’t comply with whatever decree Trump makes public — which, if true, could set up a constitutional crisis I don’t really want to think about.

- And of course, the conspiracy theories! Favorito — who’s been one of the leading voices spreading conspiracies about voting machines in Georgia in the 2020 election — discussed how his anti-voting group is working to decertify Liberty Voting (formerly Dominion Voting) machines ahead of the midterm elections, on the (false ([link removed] ) ) basis that they’re easy to hack.

Nevada anti-voting group Pigpen Project trains volunteers to flag inconsistencies in voter rolls

- Chuck Muth, who runs the Nevada-based anti-voting group the Pigpen Project, recently hosted ([link removed] ) a “Zoom training” for volunteers to teach them how to use a new online tool for identifying alleged voter roll inconsistencies.

- It’s unclear what the “new web-based tool and system” is that’s being used to train folks to spot potential voter roll flags. But the cottage industry of right-wing apps ([link removed] ) to check registrations to facilitate mass voter purges is not new — though it’s still a huge problem.

- These apps typically pull incomplete data when scouring voter registration information, leading to failed efforts to purge voters based on inaccurate, shoddy data.

- In a blog post ([link removed] ) detailing the training, Muth wrote: “Nevada’s Secretary of State has resisted outside voter roll challenges in the past, making statewide cleanup harder.” The reality is that states — including Nevada — are adept at cleaning their voter rolls, which is one of the reasons why Pigpen Project dropped ([link removed] ) all of their voter challenge lawsuits during the 2024 election cycle.

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