DENVER (AP) — Former Colorado elections clerk Tina Peters is asking the state appeals court to recognize President Donald Trump's pardon of her state convictions as valid.
In a motion Tuesday, Peters' lawyers said the Colorado appeals court no longer has jurisdiction over her case because of a Dec. 5 pardon issued by Trump. They also asked the court to release her from prison because of the pardon.
Peters, the former Mesa County, Colorado clerk, was convicted of state crimes there for orchestrating a data breach scheme driven by false claims about voting machine fraud in the 2020 presidential race. Trump’s pardon power does not extend to state crimes.
In the court filing, Peters' lawyers argued that President George Washington issued pardons to people convicted of both state and federal crimes in the Whiskey Rebellion in 1795. They urged the state appeals court to issue a ruling quickly. The court is set to hear arguments from lawyers in Peters' appeal of her conviction on Jan. 14.
The appeals court ruled Wednesday that lawyers from the state attorney general's office, which is defending the conviction, could respond to Peters’ arguments by Jan. 8.
The office of Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser declined to comment. Weiser previously dismissed it when Trump announced it Dec. 11.
“The idea that a president could pardon someone tried and convicted in state court has no precedent in American law, would be an outrageous departure from what our constitution requires, and will not hold up,” he said in statement then.
If the appeals court rules the pardon isn't valid, one of Peters' attorneys, Peter Ticktin, said she could appeal that issue to the U.S. Supreme Court while the state court continues to consider Peters' appeal of her conviction.
Another Peters attorney, John Case, has asked the state prison system to release Peters based on Trump's pardon but the state refused, according to an email included in the appeals court filing.
Earlier this month, Peters lost a bid in federal court to be released from prison while her state appeal is considered.
Peters claims that the state judge who sentenced her to nine years behind bars violated her First Amendment rights by punishing her for making allegations about election fraud.
During Peters’ October 2024 sentencing, Judge Matthew Barrett called Peters a “charlatan” and said she posed a danger to the community for spreading lies about voting and undermining the democratic process.
Peters was unapologetic and insisted that everything she did was geared toward trying to uproot what she believed was fraud. She claimed her actions were done for the greater good.
Peters was convicted of allowing a man to misuse a security card to access the election system and being deceptive about that person’s identity. The man was affiliated with MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell, a prominent promoter of false claims that voting machines were manipulated to steal the election from Trump.
FILE - Candidate Tina Peters speaks during a debate for the state leadership position, Feb. 25, 2023, in Hudson, Colo. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) — Trump-backed candidate Nasry Asfura won Honduras’ presidential election, electoral authorities said Wednesday afternoon, ending a weeks-long count that has whittled away at the credibility of the Central American nation’s fragile electoral system.
The election is continuing Latin America’s swing to the right, coming just a week after Chile chose the far-right politician José Antonio Kast as its next president.
Asfura, of the conservative National Party received 40.27% of the vote in the Nov. 30, edging out four-time candidate Salvador Nasralla of the conservative Liberal Party, who finished with 39.53% of the vote.
The former mayor of Honduras’ capital Tegucigalpa, won in his second bid for the presidency, after he and Nasralla were neck-and-neck during a weeks-long vote count that fueled international concern.
On Tuesday night a number of electoral officials and candidates were already fighting and contesting the results of the election. Meanwhile, followers in Asfura's campaign headquarters erupted into cheers.
"Honduras: I am prepared to govern," wrote Asfura in a post on X shortly after the results were released. “I will not let you down.”
The results were a rebuke of the current leftist leader, and her governing democratic socialist Liberty and Re-foundation Party, known as LIBRE, whose candidate finished in a distant third place with 19.19% of the vote.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio congratulated Asfura on Wednesday, writing on a post on X: “The people of Honduras have spoken ... (the Trump administration) looks forward to working with his administration to advance prosperity and security in our hemisphere.”
A number of right-leading leaders across Latin America, namely Trump-ally Argentine President Javier Milei, also congratulated the politician.
Asfura ran as a pragmatic politician, pointing to his popular infrastructure projects in the capital. Trump endorsed the 67-year-old conservative just days before the vote, saying he was the only Honduran candidate the U.S. administration would work with.
Nasralla maintained the claim that the election was fraudulent on Wednesday, saying electoral authorities who announced the results “betrayed the Honduran people."
On Tuesday night, he also addressed Trump in a post on X, writing: “Mr. President, your endorsed candidate in Honduras is complicit in silencing the votes of our citizens. If he is truly worthy of your backing, if his hands are clean, if he has nothing to fear, then why doesn’t he allow for every vote to be counted?”
He and others opponents of Asfura have maintained that Trump’s last-minute endorsement was an act of electoral interference that ultimately swung the results of the vote.
The unexpectedly tumultuous election was also marred by a sluggish vote count, which fueled even more accusations.
The Central American nation was stuck in limbo for more than three weeks as vote counting by electoral authorities lagged, and at one point was paralyzed after a special count of final vote tallies was called, fueling warnings by international leaders.
After expressing democratic concern about the lack of results days before, Organization of American States Secretary General Albert Rambin wrote on a post on X on Wednesday that the OAS “takes note” of the results announced and noted it is “closely following events in Honduras”. It also condemned electoral authorities for announcing the results while the final .07% of votes were counted with such razor-thin margins in the election.
For the incumbent, progressive President Xiomara Castro, the election marked a political reckoning. She was elected in 2021 on a promise to reduce violence and root out corruption.
She was among a group of progressive leaders in Latin American who were elected on a hopeful message of change around five years ago but are now being cast out after failing to deliver on their vision. Castro said last week that she would accept the results of the elections even after she claimed that Trump’s actions in the election amounted to an “electoral coup.”
But Eric Olson, an independent international observer during the Honduran election with the Seattle International Foundation, and other observers said the rejection of Castro and her party was so definitive that they had little room to contest the results.
“Very few people, even within LIBRE, believe they won the election. What they will say is there’s been fraud, that there has been intervention by Donald Trump, that we we should tear up the elections and vote again,” Olson said. “But they’re not saying ‘we won the elections.’ It’s pretty clear they did not.” —— Janetsky reported from Mexico City.
Supporters of the National Party celebrate after the National Electoral Council declared presidential candidate Nasry Asfura the winner of Honduras' presidential election in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, Wednesday, Dec. 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Fernando Destephen)
