Colorado Gov. Jared Polis fired two members of his own clemency board this week after they publicly opposed his decision to commute the prison sentence of former Mesa County elections clerk Tina Peters, and revealed internal details about the clemency process to the press.
Azra Taslimi and Hannah Seigel Proff, both members of the governor's clemency board, told CNN they were dismissed after they criticized Polis for overruling the board and shared what they described as secret details about the process with The New York Times. Polis's office confirmed the firings to The Denver Post, The Hill reported Wednesday.
The sequence is worth spelling out. Polis commuted Peters's nine-year sentence in May. His own clemency board objected. Two members went public with their objections. And now those two members are gone.
The Peters commutation has been a slow-rolling embarrassment for Polis inside his own party. Colorado Democrats formally censured the governor over the decision, a rare rebuke from a party apparatus aimed at its own sitting governor. Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, also a Democrat, condemned the move.
When Colorado Democrats censured Polis, it signaled just how badly the commutation fractured the state's left-of-center coalition. Polis justified the decision by saying Peters committed criminal activity but that her right to free speech protected her from an "overly harsh" prison sentence.
That framing satisfied almost no one on his side. And the firings of Taslimi and Seigel Proff have only deepened the rift.
The Hill noted it had reached out to a spokesperson for the governor for comment. No response was reported.
Peters, 70, served as the elected clerk in Mesa County, Colorado. In 2020, she certified election results showing Donald Trump won her county, though Joe Biden carried the county overall. The following year, she allowed a man associated with MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell to copy the county's voter systems, with the stated aim of exposing alleged fraud.
A jury convicted Peters on seven of 10 counts related to her actions. She was sentenced to nine years in prison, a penalty that drew national attention and became a cause célèbre on the right. She served less than a quarter of that sentence before walking free after Polis commuted her sentence.
Hours after leaving prison, Peters doubled down on her claims that Democrats "cheat" in elections. She showed no interest in quiet gratitude or low-profile reentry.
President Trump had urged Polis for months to commute Peters's sentence. The phrase "FREE TINA!" became a fixture in Republican circles. After Polis acted, Trump posted on Truth Social:
"'FREE TINA!' became the rallying cry of the Republican Party over the past two years. Tina Peters just came to the White House to thank me for getting her released from prison in Colorado."
Peters visited the White House earlier this week, a meeting Trump highlighted publicly. The pressure campaign that led to the commutation had been sustained and visible, and it worked.
Whether Polis acted out of genuine belief that the sentence was disproportionate, or because the political cost of resisting Trump's public demands grew too high, remains an open question. Polis framed it as a free-speech issue. His critics, including members of his own party and his own clemency board, saw something else entirely.
The dismissal of Taslimi and Seigel Proff moves the story into different territory. Commuting a sentence is one thing. Firing the people who publicly disagreed with that decision is another.
Clemency boards exist, at least in theory, to provide independent counsel to governors on matters of extraordinary consequence, whether to release someone from a lawfully imposed sentence. When board members object and the governor overrules them, that is his prerogative. When the governor then fires those members for saying so publicly, it raises fair questions about whether the board serves any purpose beyond rubber-stamping the governor's preferences.
The two fired members told CNN they were dismissed specifically for revealing details about the clemency process and for criticizing Polis's decision in comments to The New York Times, which published its report on June 18. What those "secret details" were remains unclear, neither The Hill nor the other outlets cited have fully specified the substance of the disclosures.
Polis's office has not publicly offered its own detailed explanation for the firings beyond confirming them to The Denver Post.
The Peters saga is not the only front on which Polis has drawn fire. The governor has also faced legal challenges on other issues, including from Colorado gun stores suing over a law allowing warrantless searches of sales records. The picture that emerges is of a governor willing to act unilaterally and absorb the political damage, at least until subordinates start talking to reporters.
Peters's case sits at the intersection of two issues that stir intense feeling on both sides: election integrity and political prosecution. Her supporters see a 70-year-old woman who tried to verify the integrity of her county's voting systems and got a nine-year prison sentence for it. Her critics see someone who broke the law, was convicted by a jury, and got sprung by a governor under political pressure.
Both sides can point to facts. Peters was convicted. She did serve time. She was also sentenced more harshly than many violent offenders in the same state. Polis himself acknowledged her conduct was criminal even as he called the punishment excessive.
When Polis first ordered Peters's release on parole, the decision drew immediate and fierce reaction from across the political spectrum. The firings this week suggest the fallout is far from over.
Several questions hang over this story. What exactly did Taslimi and Seigel Proff reveal to The New York Times? How many members does the clemency board have, and do the remaining members share the fired members' objections? Will Polis replace them with appointees less likely to dissent?
And perhaps most pointedly: if a governor can fire board members for disagreeing with him in public, what is the board for?
Polis wanted this story to end when Peters walked out of prison. Instead, he made it worse, first by overruling his own advisors, and now by punishing them for saying so. That is not the conduct of a governor confident in his decision. It is the conduct of one trying to silence the record.
