Trump's fake 'pardon' gives false hope to MAGA hero — now she must finish the rest of her prison sentence
Tina Peters stays in prison, Trump gets a headline, and the Constitution once again refuses to bend to a MAGA fantasy.
In yet another episode of The President Who Thinks the Constitution Is Optional, Donald Trump announced Thursday night that he has issued a presidential pardon to former Colorado elections clerk and MAGA folk hero Tina Peters — a woman convicted of state felonies, which, minor detail, the president has absolutely no authority to pardon.
But why let the law get in the way of a good headline?
Peters, currently serving a nine-year sentence for breaking into her own voting machines to “prove” the 2020 election was stolen, became a martyr in the election-denial universe after a Colorado jury convicted her of tampering, conspiracy, identity theft and other crimes stemming from a harebrained scheme that exposed sensitive election software to the internet. She wasn’t exactly an unknown figure, she was a full-blown symbol of the MAGA “stop the steal” crusade.
Trump, ever eager to reward loyalty regardless of legality, declared on Truth Social that Peters was the victim of “corrupt Democrats” and that he was granting her a “full pardon” for her efforts to “expose voter fraud” — fraud that, for the millionth time, does not exist anywhere outside the imaginations of Trump, his most sycophantic supporters, and the merch tables at CPAC.
There is, however, one tiny, pesky, stubborn obstacle to Trump’s hero moment: the United States Constitution. The president can only pardon federal crimes. Peters was prosecuted by the State of Colorado, making Trump’s pardon about as legally effective as pardoning your neighbor’s cat.
Colorado officials quickly swatted away Trump’s announcement like the constitutional non-event it is. Attorney General Phil Weiser called it an “act of intimidation”, reminding Trump — and, apparently, a significant portion of his base — that presidential clemency “has no bearing whatsoever” on a state sentence. Translation: Thanks for the press release, but she’s not going anywhere.
Even Peters’s supporters seemed momentarily stunned when they realized Trump cannot simply magic-state-convicted felons out of prison. Still, some in MAGA world are already fantasizing about taking this to court in hopes of expanding presidential pardons to state crimes. Constitutional law scholars responded with the approximate enthusiasm of someone being handed a time-share brochure.
Critics note that Trump’s move isn’t about freeing Peters — because he can’t — but about signaling to his loyalists that he’s willing to use the presidency as a shield for anyone who goes to bat for his election conspiracy theories. It’s performative grievance politics dressed up as governance. A legal nullity packaged as salvation. A pardon-shaped balloon filled entirely with hot air.
And the irony? Even if Trump truly wanted to free Peters, he can’t. The Founders anticipated a lot of presidential nonsense, and this week they were proven right yet again.
