DOJ Opens Probe of Colorado Prisons After Trump Ramps Up Push to Free Election Denier Tina Peters

The Justice Department has launched a sweeping civil rights investigation into Colorado’s statewide prison system. And it’s signaling that the probe is part of President Donald Trump’s effort to free the election denier Tina Peters. 

“Under my direction, the Civil Rights Division has opened an investigation into the entire Colorado prison system following multiple reports of unconstitutional and legally insufficient carceral conditions,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon posted Tuesday. “Prisoners have civil rights.”

The announcement came just days after Trump renewed his public calls to “free” Peters — the former Colorado local election clerk serving a sentence in state prison after being convicted for allowing unauthorized people to access state voting machine software. 

Freeing Peters has become a cause célèbre for many far-right activists. In recent weeks, Steve Bannon and others have called for military intervention or violence to force her release. The Trump administration also has asked Colorado to transfer Peters to federal custody, so far without success.

“FREE TINA PETERS, WHO SITS IN A COLORADO PRISON, DYING & OLD, FOR ATTEMPTING TO EXPOSE VOTER FRAUD IN THE RIGGED 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION!!!” Trump posted on Truth Social last month. 

Shortly after the announcement of the investigation, Dhillon reposted a message on X by former Trump administration official Chad Mizelle that explicitly tied the federal probe to Peters’ incarceration.

“DOJ launches investigation into Colorado prison conditions,” Mizelle wrote. “Thank you, AG Bondi and AAG Dhillon. If Colorado has been treating Tina Peters fairly, then I’m sure there’s nothing to hide.”

Dhillon also reposted a post on X by Rogan O’Handley, a far-right political commentator known online as DC_Draino.

“This is how we FREE TINA PETERS!! Thank you AAG Dhillon,” O’Handley wrote. “Gold Star Mom Tina Peters has civil rights and she is being abused by sadistic Democrats.”

Others on the far right drew the same link.

Jack Posobiec, an alt-right influencer, wrote, “DOJ investigates Colorado prison housing Tina Peters over civil rights violations,” while linking to a right-wing media article making the connection.

DOJ declined a request for comment on which reports of unconstitutional carceral conditions Dhillon was referring to. Its notice to Colorado Governor Jared Polis (D) also did not cite a reason for the probe.

But on Monday, Peters’ attorney, the Trump ally Peter Ticktin, sent a letter to the White House asking that Peters be pardoned. (Because Peters’ conviction was exclusively for state crimes, Trump has no constitutional authority to pardon her, only the governor does.) 

Ticktin claimed Peters had been threatened and assaulted by other incarcerated women, and denied safer housing, and that she did not receive adequate assistance for chronic medical issues.

The DOJ investigation, announced Monday, will examine whether Colorado’s Department of Corrections and Department of Youth Services is violating the constitutional rights of people held in their custody. The Civil Rights Division, led by Dhillon, said it will review “policies and practices to ensure” that residents “whether they are a young person confined in a juvenile facility or an elderly person confined to a prison” are not subjected to unlawful mistreatment.

La Vista Correctional Facility, where Peters, 70, is serving her state sentence, is one of the institutions explicitly named in the DOJ’s notice to Colorado officials. 

Peters, the former Mesa County clerk, was convicted in state court for facilitating a breach of Colorado’s election systems after allowing unauthorized individuals to access secure voting-machine software. Prosecutors said she helped copy and distribute sensitive election data — material that later surfaced in fringe circles promoting Trump’s 2020 election conspiracies — and then lied about her role as investigators closed in.

The Trump administration up to this point has shown little interest in the welfare of incarcerated people. DOJ has not previously launched a statewide civil rights investigation into prison conditions, despite documented abuses in other states. 

Colorado criminal justice advocates — who have stressed the importance of reviewing the state’s troubled prison and youth detention systems — said the sudden timing of the administration’s probe raised immediate questions. They noted that no grassroots organizations had recently lobbied the Justice Department to intervene and that earlier requests for federal attention went unanswered. 

“From my conversations with others in the criminal justice reform activist and juvenile advocacy space, nobody was asking the DOJ to investigate,” Christie Donner, executive director of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, told Democracy Docket. “And I have written those letters before to request DOJ involvement, and have never gotten a response. So it does come out of the blue.”