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Colorado’s attorney general accused the Trump administration on Thursday of waging a “revenge campaign” by choking off funds and ending federal programs over the state’s refusal to accede to the Republican president’s demands to free an imprisoned elections clerk.
President Donald Trump has pushed unsuccessfully for Colorado to release former Mesa County elections clerk Tina Peters, who was convicted in state court of orchestrating a data breach scheme driven by false claims about fraud in Trump’s 2020 election defeat. Trump also wants the state to change its mail-in voting system, which he has claimed gives an unfair edge to Democrats.
As Trump’s demands grew louder in recent months, federal officials issued a string of decisions and orders negatively impacting Colorado, including dissolving a climate research lab, threatening to cut transportation money, withholding funds for needy families and relocating U.S. Space Command to Alabama.
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser sued the administration in October seeking to overturn the Space Command move. On Thursday, the Democrat amended his lawsuit to include other federal changes impacting Colorado — and linking those actions directly to the incarceration of Peters.
Weiser called it a “revenge campaign.”
“The purpose is clear: to coerce Colorado to end mail-in voting and to release Tina Peters from prison. When the threats alone did not work, the Trump Administration followed through, employing various punishments against Colorado for its exercise of sovereign powers,” state attorneys said in Thursday’s filing.
The administration has not yet formally responded to the claims in the lawsuit. A White House spokeswoman declined to say if there was any connection between recent federal spending decisions in Colorado and Peters’ case.
“President Trump is using his lawful and discretionary authority to ensure federal dollars are being spent in a way that aligns with the agenda endorsed by the American people when they resoundingly reelected the President,” spokeswoman Abigail Jackson wrote in an email.
Trump said Thursday in a social media post, “FREE TINA PETERS!”
In a Dec. 31 post calling for Peters’ release, Trump referred to Colorado’s Democratic governor as a “scumbag.” The president also claimed that the state’s mail-in system “makes it impossible for a Republican to win an otherwise very winnable state.”
Experts have said Colorado’s mail in system is safe, secure and legal, and that mail-in voting gives neither party an advantage.
Trump last month issued a symbolic pardon for Peters. His pardon power does not extend to state crimes like those for which Peters was convicted last year and sentenced to nine years in prison.
But the move underscored Trump’s continued efforts to re-cast the 2020 election as stolen from him, though courts around the country and Trump’s own attorney general at the time found no evidence of fraud that could have affected the outcome.
Weiser’s lawsuit asks U.S. District Judge R. Brooke Jackson in Denver to declare that Colorado has been unjustly punished by the administration in violation of the Constitution’s guarantee of state sovereignty.
“I recognize this is a novel request, and that’s because this is an unprecedented administration,” Weiser said during a news conference. ”We’ve never seen an administration act in a way that is so flatly violating the Constitution and disrespecting state sovereign authority.”
Peters is asking a state appeals court to recognize Trump’s pardon as valid. Her attorneys are due in court next week as they seek to overturn her conviction.
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