Colorado officials reject Tina Peters prison transfer request by Trump administration

Jon Murray and Seth Klamann, The Denver Post on Nov 26, 2025

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DENVER — The Colorado Department of Corrections says it won’t grant the Trump administration’s request to transfer Tina Peters to the federal prison system, characterizing it in a statement as not fitting with the “standard practice” for moving inmates.

The statement was issued Tuesday night after county clerks and other elected officials had called on Gov. Jared Polis in recent days to deny the request from the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The governor’s office has not issued any definitive statements since the DOC received the federal request, causing other officials — including Attorney General Phil Weiser and Secretary of State Jena Griswold — to voice concerns.

The DOC statement suggests federal officials aren’t eligible to request transfers of inmates in state prison under Colorado’s rules.

“The state is the entity that would initiate any transfer request,” DOC spokeswoman Alondra Gonzalez-Garcia wrote in an email. “There is no standard practice for another prison system to request a transfer. The Department is not currently seeking any transfer.”

Asked by The Denver Post if that meant the state had rejected the federal request and that Peters would not be transferred, Gonzales-Garcia responded Wednesday morning: “Yes, that is correct.”

The federal request has been the focus of supportive chatter by allies of President Donald Trump in recent weeks.

Peters, now an inmate at the La Vista Correctional Facility in Pueblo, is serving a nine-year sentence. She was convicted last year on several charges related to providing unauthorized access to voting equipment when she was the elected Mesa County clerk, as she worked with prominent election deniers to try to prove discredited claims that voting machines had been manipulated.

“I am convinced you would do it all over again if you could,” District Judge Matthew Barrett told Peters during her 2024 sentencing hearing. “You’re as defiant as any defendant this court has ever seen. You are no hero. You abused your position and you’re a charlatan.”

Peters has been a prominent supporter of President Donald Trump’s false claims about election fraud in the 2020 election. Since he returned to office, Trump has called repeatedly on Colorado to release her from prison.

Earlier this month, William K. Marshall III, the director of the federal prisons bureau, sent the state Department of Corrections a letter requesting Peters’ transfer. In it, he wrote that a transfer would “allow Ms. Peters to serve her existing state sentence within BOP custody as the conditions that she is currently confined in … are not conducive to the factors involved in her case.”

The full intent behind the letter has been unclear. In a letter to Polis, Weiser and Mesa County District Attorney Dan Rubinstein said granting the request might allow the federal system to “offer a politically connected inmate the comforts of an easier sentence” — or it also could potentially “aid the unauthorized or illegal release of a convicted felon by the federal government.”

A court filing by Peters’ attorneys in federal court last week said she had been placed in solitary confinement after raising concerns about her safety. Her attorneys have claimed her health is deteriorating.