Polis fires Colorado clemency board members over confidentiality violation

Gov. Jared Polis (D-CO) fired two clemency board members who publicly disclosed their vote against commuting Tina Peters, breaking confidentiality law.

Republican Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters became a cause celebre among Republicans, including President Donald Trump, after she was sentenced to nine years in prison over her conviction in a 2024 plot to tamper with voting machines. Polis controversially commuted her sentence on June 1, outraging many Democrats. Two members of Colorado’s Executive Clemency Advisory Board, a confidential governor-appointed board tasked with advising the governor on commutations and pardons, released an op-ed June 18 in the Denver Post bashing the decision and revealing details about it, resulting in their firing on Wednesday.

In a letter sent to Hannah Seigel Proff and Azra Taslimi, viewed by the Colorado Sun, Polis told the two they were terminated from their positions for violating their confidentiality agreements. The board is subject to an executive order holding that all proceedings and records “shall be confidential and shall be available solely to the Governor and the Governor’s staff.”

“Members of the Executive Clemency Advisory Board are entrusted with access to highly confidential information throughout the clemency process,” Polis wrote in the two letters. “Maintaining the integrity of the clemency review process and preserving the confidentiality of Board deliberations are essential to the Board’s mission and the trust placed in its members. As a result, your continued service on the Board is inconsistent with the requirements of the Executive Order.”

Most damning for the duo was that they revealed the entire board unanimously voted against clemency for Peters twice. Polis went against the advice and gave her clemency.

“Tina Peters was recommended for denial,” they wrote. “Our board voted no. Twice. Unanimously. The governor granted her clemency anyway. The problem is not about Tina Peters’ case in isolation. It is what his decision reveals. That the system bends for some and holds firm against everyone else.”

Though the firings were due to violations of their confidentiality agreement, the move is likely to further embitter Democrats angry over the decision to grant clemency. Even fellow Colorado state officials have deviated on public messaging around the move.

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser (D), who won the Democratic primary this week to succeed Polis, publicly opposed Peters earlier this year. When her appeal was rejected in April, he said her sentence was “fair and appropriate.”

“Whatever happens with her sentence, Tina Peters will always be a convicted felon who violated her duty as Mesa County clerk, put other lives at risk, and threatened our democracy. Nothing will remove that stain,” he said at the time.

Peters visited Trump in the Oval Office earlier this week after her release.