SEATTLE (AP) — Washington coach Jedd Fisch defended Demond Williams Jr. on Wednesday and downplayed concerns about any fallout from the quarterback's decision to return to the school.
Williams originally announced last week that he was entering the transfer portal, then changed his mind two days later and said he would be back with the Huskies.
According to multiple reports, Washington was prepared to pursue legal options to enforce Williams’ lucrative name, image and likeness contract. Williams’ NIL deal exceeded $4 million, according to ESPN, and his potential departure raised questions about the validity of such contracts.
“The situation was in limbo for 48 hours,” Fisch told reporters in Seattle in his first public comments since Williams' decision. “It wasn’t in limbo for weeks or months. It wasn’t a situation where we were waiting for a mandatory veteran minicamp for a player to arrive.”
Williams announced via social media on Jan. 6 that he would leave the Huskies after his sophomore season, saying, “I have to do what is best for me and my future.”
The decision was met with chagrin from Washington fans and came the same day the school held a celebration of life for Mia Hamant, a goalkeeper for the women’s soccer team who died following a bout with kidney cancer.
Fisch said there are plans for the quarterback to speak with the soccer team this week. Williams has already publicly apologized.
“Over the past week, we’ve certainly found ourselves in the epicenter of college football,” Fisch said in his opening statement. “While there have been many questions, and I’m sure many of you have many questions, I want to start with this: There was no intention to distract from Mia Hamant’s celebration of life.”
Fisch is hopeful Washington fans will forgive Williams in time, adding that it is a “win” to get him back in addition to retaining 60 other players from the Huskies’ roster that produced a 9-4 record last season, capped by a 38-10 win over Boise State in the LA Bowl.
Still, the way Williams’ near departure publicly unfolded raised questions about the messiness of the transfer portal era and the pursuit of NIL money. Fisch offered little by way of solutions in the immediate future, but compared what Williams and Washington underwent to an NFL player sitting out summer workouts.
“I do believe that if we all look at it in the same way of what goes on currently in the NFL, there’s players that talk about contracts,” Fisch said. “There’s players that miss a weekend. There’s players that have held out after they signed, and then shown up three days later for a minicamp. Those guys still get rooted for.”
Fisch acknowledged a need to repair any broken relationships and continue to move the program forward. The Huskies increased their win total by three games from Fisch’s first season (6-7) to his second.
“It’s going to get harder and harder to make bigger jumps, especially when we see what’s going on in this landscape,” Fisch said. “This landscape is insane.”
Fisch, Williams and all involved with Washington’ s football team experienced that firsthand last week. It resulted in Williams putting out public statements and speaking privately with his teammates, according to Fisch.
And now Williams finds himself right where he ended his 2025 season, one in which he completed 69.5% of his passes for 3,065 yards with 25 touchdown passes.
“We really believe that we’re in a great place, and we’re going to get this better and better and better,” Fisch said. “And I tell our team all the time, I see better than I hear. So, the most important thing we can do is build back any trust through our actions, not our words.”
Fisch said that Washington “re-signed” defensive coordinator Ryan Walters, who is fresh off his first season with the Huskies. Walters spent the previous two seasons as Purdue’s head coach, and was reportedly entering the second season of a two-year contract with Washington.
Safety Rashawn Clark, who is coming off a fine freshman season in which he had 21 tackles and two interceptions, will miss spring practices after a postseason shoulder injury, according to Fisch. Clark appeared in the bowl game and had one of his two interceptions, as well as two tackles.
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FILE - Washington head coach Jedd Fisch smiles before an NCAA college football game against Illinois, Saturday, Oct. 25, 2025, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson,File)
FILE - Washington quarterback Demond Williams Jr. warms up before an NCAA college football game against Oregon, Saturday, Nov. 29, 2025, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson,File)
FILE - Washington head coach Jedd Fisch watches from the sideline during the first half of an NCAA college football game against Oregon, Saturday, Nov. 29, 2025, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson,File)
DENVER (AP) — A Colorado appeals panel on Wednesday seemed skeptical that a judge could use former county clerk Tina Peters' insistence on spreading election conspiracy theories as part of the reason to sentence her to nine years in prison for orchestrating a data breach of election equipment.
The three-judge panel was dismissive of many of the arguments made by Peters' attorneys. But they grilled the state's lawyer over the trial judge reciting Peters' false statements about elections in handing down her sentence.
“The court cannot punish her for her First Amendment rights,” Appeals Judge Craig Welling said.
The remarks are significant because President Donald Trump has embraced Peters, who was trying to find evidence of the fraud that he continues to claim, without evidence, caused him to lose the 2020 presidential election. He's threatened Colorado with the loss of federal funding if it does not release her and even issued a pardon of her last month, although she was convicted on state crimes that he cannot erase.
Peters’ lawyers have said Trump does have the authority to pardon her, arguing that President George Washington issued pardons to people convicted of both state and federal crimes during the Whiskey Rebellion in 1795. But that argument did not even come up during oral arguments as they appealed her sentence Wednesday.
A member of her legal team, Peter Ticktin, said they didn’t have time to argue about the pardon during the 30 minutes allotted by the court. But he also said he thinks Gov. Jared Polis will grant Peters clemency, based on his recent comments. Polis, a Democrat, has said he would consider granting clemency for Peters, characterizing her sentence as “harsh.”
The former clerk in Mesa County, in the far western part of Colorado, was convicted of state crimes for orchestrating a data breach of the county's elections equipment, driven by false claims about voting machine fraud after Trump lost his reelection bid. She is serving a nine-year sentence at a state prison in Pueblo after being convicted in 2024 in her home county, a Republican stronghold that supported Trump.
Prosecutors said Peters became fixated on voting problems after becoming involved with activists who had questioned the 2020 presidential election results, including Douglas Frank, an Ohio math teacher, and MyPillow founder Mike Lindell.
Peters used another person's security badge to allow a former surfer affiliated with Lindell, Conan Hayes, to watch a software update of her county's election management system. Prosecutors said he made copies of the system's hard drive before and after the upgrade, and that partially redacted security passwords later turned up online, prompting an investigation. Hayes was not charged with any wrongdoing.
Peters didn't deny the deception but said she had to do it to make sure election records weren't erased. She claims she should not have been prosecuted because she had a duty under federal law to preserve them — a contention that drew sharp skepticism from Wednesday's panel.
Instead, the three judges all expressed concern about District Court Judge Matthew Barrett's statements during Peters' sentencing. He called her a “charlatan” and said she posed a danger to the community for spreading lies about voting and undermining the democratic process.
The courtroom was filled with Peters' supporters, who waited in line for as long as two hours to get a spot inside. Some said “yes, yes” when Judge Lino Lipinsky turned the discussion to her sentence and questioned whether Barrett made a mistake by bringing up Peters’ election conspiracy activism during sentencing.
Senior Assistant Attorney General Lisa Michaels said Barrett was responding to a lengthy presentation Peters had just concluded during the sentencing hearing, repeating the debunked conspiracy theories that she was trying to prove.
“She made it relevant,” Michaels said of Peters. “She had a slideshow. She had pages and pages going on about this.”
Michaels contended that Barrett made clear in the sentencing that he was imposing a sentencing her for the specific crimes she was convicted of at trial. But the elements of one of those, a felony conviction for criminal impersonation, was improperly presented to the jury with language for the misdemeanor version of the crime, another element of her case that alarmed the panel's judges.
Last month, Peters lost an attempt in federal court to be released from prison while she appeals her conviction.
Her lawyers say she also is entitled to at least a new sentencing hearing because Barrett based his sentence partially on a contempt conviction in a related case that the appeals court threw out last year. They also are asking the appeals court to recognize Trump's pardon and immediately set Peters free.
It is unclear when the panel might rule. If it finds problems with the ways Peters was sentenced, it can send the case back for resentencing.
Peters’ release has become a cause celebre in the election conspiracy movement.
Trump has lambasted both Polis and the Republican district attorney who brought the charges, Dan Rubinstein, for keeping Peters in prison. The Federal Bureau of Prisons tried but failed to get Peters moved to a federal prison.
Jake Lang, who was charged with assaulting a police officer during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and was later pardoned by Trump, announced on social media last month that “January 6er Patriots” and U.S. Marshals would storm a Colorado prison to release Peters unless she is freed by the end of this month.
The post included a phone video interview with Peters from behind bars. But a message on Peters' X account said she is not affiliated with any demonstration or event at the prison and denounced any use of force against it.
Associated Press writer Nicholas Riccardi contributed to this report.
Attorney John Case talks to reporters after a hearing to urge a state appeals court to overturn the convictions against former Colorado elections clerk and Donald Trump ally Tina Peters for orchestrating a data breach of her county's elections equipment Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
Attorney John Case, left, talks to reporters after a hearing to urge a state appeals court to overturn the convictions against former Colorado elections clerk and Donald Trump ally Tina Peters for orchestrating a data breach of her county's elections equipment Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
