The question is simple enough:
Why would Jared Polis possibly think it’s a good idea — or even a plausible idea — to commute the sentence of Tina Peters, the former Mesa County clerk, now serving a nine-year sentence in state prison?
As we know, Peters was sentenced for causing a serious breach of election security in her county and for undermining the county’s and the state’s (and, not incidentally, the nation’s) concept of free and fair elections?
Let’s take a walk, if you will, through Polis’ headspace and see if we can figure this out.
The easy guess is that Polis is either considering caving to Donald Trump for the usual, uh, pragmatic — or gutless, if you prefer — reasons or that a commutation fits perfectly with Polis’ need to show himself as an independent thinker who is happy to defy conventional wisdom.
You know, the same Polis who refuses to backtrack on his “excited” support for anti-vaxxer, and often anti-science, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the nation’s health secretary. As far as I know, Polis — who is not an anti-vaxxer but is anti-mandates for vaccines — has been the only prominent Democratic politician “excited” about RFK Jr.
I’m not sure what it is — Polis caving to Trump because of the political pressure he has put on Colorado or Polis letting his libertarian freak flag fly or something else entirely. Maybe Polis, who is in his last year as a term-limited governor, really believes that Peters’ sentence is too “harsh” and that he would be showing mercy. I’m sure he believes that it serves no purpose for many older people — even those, like Peters, who are younger than I am — to be in prison.
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SUBSCRIBEI don’t disagree with Polis about those who have already spent long years imprisoned and may no longer be considered dangerous. But, in my view, Peters, who is a little more than one year into her sentence, remains dangerous, and not just for her occasional run of cop-kicking.
Judge Matthew Barrett, who sentenced her, said he believed Peters, the former elections official, would commit the same kinds of election crimes again, if given the opportunity. And for good measure, he called her a “charlatan” and said that “prison is the only place for her.”
What I am sure of is that Polis could hardly pick a more damaging message to Colorado voters than to commute the sentence of an entirely unrepentant Peters, particularly in this time when the American democratic experiment is under such direct, and already disastrous, assault.
While putting in place her scheme and even after sentencing, Peters was among those leading the charge in trying to prove the 2020 election was rigged, even in dead-red Mesa County. She spread the Big Lie and still does, even as Trump takes every opportunity to make the Big Lie his hallmark. I don’t know how he finds the time while attempting to plant his flag — not necessarily our flag — on every available piece of land he can find on a map.
I’d say that for Polis even to consider a commutation at this point sends a most damaging message. Peters has become a cause célèbre for those in MAGA world who still maintain that the 2020 election — the one Trump lost — was rigged. The fact that Peters remains unrepentant also makes her a MAGA martyr, or as The Atlantic once pegged her, “the last MAGA prisoner.”
We know that Trump has already pretended to pardon Peters, knowing full well that the pesky Constitution doesn’t allow presidents to pardon those convicted of state crimes. He did it because Polis, to his credit, wouldn’t pardon her.
But for many watching this play out, a Polis commutation would look like him joining hands, and headspace, with Trump. And why not? I mean, there’s every chance that Peters would be granted parole long before her sentence ends.
What is Polis actually doing when dangling the possibility of commutation, even as he says he has not made up his mind? Does he want the attention? Is that why he dressed up, wearing an un-Polis-like suit and tie, for an interview the other day with CBS News?
Or does he think this stand could possibly help him if he’s actually considering a run for president? (He hasn’t asked for my advice, but seriously? He could never win in a Democratic primary. Could he be planning a run as a shame-on-both-sides independent? Your guess is probably as good as mine, but I’m guessing that Polis will run eventually, somewhere and somehow.)
Or is he on a campaign to show Trump that he’s not, as Trump has called him, a “sleazebag”? Or on a campaign to somehow slow Trump’s continuous assault on Colorado?
A Trump appeasement seems to be the easy answer. But Polis is smart enough to know how well it has worked for those on Trump’s wrong side who have tried to appease him — which is to say, not at all.
I brought up Polis’ headspace, because Polis brought up headspace in his recent Union Station interview with Bari Weiss’ retooled CBS News, which is busily undermining the towering legacies of such CBS greats as Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite.
He told Tony Dokoupil, the new CBS evening anchor: “You can’t give the president headspace on this. You look at every case of clemency on the merits. You have somebody who is nonviolent, a first-time offender, elderly. On the other hand, does she take full accountability for her crime? We don’t look at this in isolation.”
Polis wants us, or Dokoupil anyway, to believe that this is just some other case, and that in his words, there are factors that “work in her favor, some that work against her” and that Trump is not among those factors.
Peters, of course, doesn’t take full responsibility, or even the tiniest amount of responsibility.
And Peters, though her crime was nonviolent in nature, has clearly done violence to the role of protecting democracy, which she was elected to uphold. And she continues to do violence to that role. She said she was trying to protect Colorado and the nation against voting fraud that simply doesn’t exist on any noticeable scale.
She is the fraudster, or at minimum, the dupe of more sophisticated fraudsters — that is, if the word “sophisticated” tracks for someone like Mike “The Pillow Guy” Lindell, with whom Peters was in league.
If you watch the entire two-part interview with CBS, here and here — it’ll only take 10 minutes of your time — you’ll see Polis saying he welcomes federal assistance in looking for fraud as if that is the reason Trump is trying to cut billions of social-service-providing dollars for Colorado and four other blue states. Polis does say Colorado is a low-fraud state, which it is, but goes all-low-key in his criticism of Trump, saying that freezing funding “before they found any fraud (is) inappropriate.”
Of course, it’s much worse than inappropriate. A judge has blocked Trump’s cuts for now, but he is inappropriately attempting to take real food from real children’s mouths.
Polis has said in other interviews that he welcomes ICE to Colorado to root out violent criminals, as if that is ICE’s mission under Trump. I’d say the mission is actually closer to violently rooting out nonviolent migrants.
You spot a trend here?
It’s another example of Polis trying not to take on Trump too directly or too forcefully. Sometimes, he does, but he certainly didn’t take the opportunity in this nationally broadcast interview.
Polis has said repeatedly, and not just in recent interviews, that if he would commute Peters’ sentence, he wouldn’t do it at Trump’s insistence.
Do you believe him now that he continues to consider such a move? More to the point, would you believe him if he actually does, in fact, allow Peters to leave prison early?
If Polis does commute Peters, I’d like to think that his days of winning a majority of Colorado voters would be over.
But maybe — and this is possible — I’m letting Polis take up too much of my headspace.
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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