pardon

It’s entirely possible — as hard as it may be to conceive in these deeply tribal, us-vs.-them times — for two competing notions to be true.

Tina Peters personally enriched herself and betrayed the public trust by perpetrating a harebrained scheme to “prove” the 2020 election in Mesa County, Colo., was rigged against President Trump. The former county clerk and MAGA warrior deserved to go to jail.

But the nine-year sentence she received was unduly harsh and, according to an appeals court decision, improperly meted out as punishment for the false and reckless public statements Peters made, a clear violation of her 1st Amendment rights. The court kicked the case back for resentencing.

That’s when Colorado’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, stepped in.

And stepped in it.

Over the strenuous objection of fellow Democrats and many Republicans — including Peters’ prosecutor and a majority of Colorado’s election clerks — Polis commuted her sentence, clearing the way for Peters’ parole on June 1 after less than two years in prison.

Which just goes to show three wrongs don’t make a right.

Peters, 70, was convicted on multiple criminal counts, four of them felonies, for conspiring to let an unauthorized person access supposedly compromised voting equipment. She then lied to cover up her actions.

Trump carried Mesa County, a conservative stronghold, by nearly 30 percentage points, making Peters’ actions — apart from illegal — unaccountably stupid. But her conniving made her a belle of Mar-a-Lago and a celebrity on the election-denial circuit, jetting around the country and spewing cockamamie conspiracy theories.

Trump loudly agitated for her release.

His corrupted Justice Department sought to get Peters sprung from Colorado prison, presumably to set her loose from a federal facility. The president issued a symbolic “pardon,” though Peters’ conviction on state charges put her beyond his crooked reach. Trump insulted and belittled Polis, suggesting, among other things, he “rot in hell.” More significantly, the vengeful president waged economic war against Colorado.

Among the retributive acts, Trump slashed federal funds earmarked for the state, closed a climate research center in Boulder and moved the U.S. Space Command headquarters from Colorado Springs to Alabama.

Polis, who has a broad libertarian streak, insisted his freeing of Peters was not a capitulation to Trump, but rather a matter of principle, which seems plausible to the extent the governor could have anticipated the unshirted hell he’s gotten from fellow Democrats.

Among the great many infuriated by Polis’ decision are Colorado’s two U.S. senators, as well as other vocal critics up and down the ballot. (One of those indignant senators is Michael Bennet, who is running to replace Polis.) There have been calls, within his own party, to investigate and impeach the governor, who had been spoken of as a potential presidential candidate in 2028.

“He was aiming for a national profile,” said Floyd Ciruli, a pollster who’s been taking soundings of Colorado voters for decades. “This makes it much more difficult.”

Given Democrats’ molten outrage, that seems like an understatement.

The judge who sentenced Peters in October 2024 was unsparing.

“You’re as defiant … a defendant as this court has ever seen,” District Judge Matthew Barrett scolded her. “You are as privileged as they come and you used that privilege to obtain power, a following and fame. You are no hero…. You’re a charlatan who used and is still using your prior position in office to peddle a snake oil that’s been proven to be junk time and time again.”

Amen.

The problem, according to the Colorado Court of Appeals, was that Barrett wrongly punished Peters not just for her illegal actions but for speaking out about alleged election fraud.

“Her offense was not her belief, however misguided the trial court deemed it to be, in the existence of such election fraud,” the three-judge panel wrote in a unanimous April decision. “It was her deceitful actions in her attempt to gather evidence of such fraud.”

The judges — all Democratic appointees — upheld Peters’ conviction and denied her request to transfer the case from Barrett. They ordered him to come up with a new sentence.

And that’s where Polis, who placed Barrett on the bench, should have let things alone.

Instead, the governor interceded and essentially cut Peters’ sentence in half.

“The crimes you were convicted of are very serious and you deserve to spend time in prison,” Polis wrote in his commutation letter. “However, this is an extremely unusual and lengthy sentence for a first time offender who committed nonviolent crimes.”

In response, Peters thanked Polis, apologized and expressed contrition.

“I made mistakes, and for those I am sorry,” Peters wrote in a statement addressed to the governor. “I have learned and grown during my time in prison and going forward I will make sure that my actions always follow the law, and I will avoid the mistakes of the past.”

We’ll see about that. If Peters clambers back aboard Mike Lindell’s crazy plane — he of MyPillow and election denial fame — we’ll know Polis was duped.

It’s easy to see his actions as surrendering to Trump. If so, Polis’ cave-in was pointless. The president is a bully to his core, always demanding more.

But if you take the governor at his word, and his actions weren’t meant as appeasement, what he did was bad nonetheless. He emulated one of Trump’s worst habits, short-circuiting a well-established, independent process by substituting his own headstrong judgment.

Pride, the saying goes, comes before a fall. In Polis’ case, so does arrogance.

April 26 (UPI) — Israeli President Isaac Herzog decided to hold off on a pardon for the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, on charges of corruption, opting instead to attempt to negotiate a plea deal.

Netanyahu has been on trial for six years on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust across three separate cases but denies he has violated any laws, calling the charges a “witch hunt.”

Herzog has been under pressure from Netanyahu, his allies and U.S. President Donald Trump to issue the prime minister a pardon, though he has held off as opinions in Israel are relatively split on the trials, The New York Times and The Times of Israel reported.

“President Isaac Herzog sees reaching an agreement between the parties in Prime Minister Netanyahu’s cases as a proper and correct solution,” Herzog’s office said in a statement.

“The president believes that it is right to first, before discussing the pardon request itself, exhaust a process that could lead to the formation of an agreement between the parties, outside the walls of the court,” his office said.

Netanyahu became the first active Israeli prime minister to be put on trial in 2020, when he was charged with allegedly accepting cigars and champagne in exchange for political favors.

In the second case, he allegedly boosted circulation of an Israeli newspaper that offered him positive coverage and, in the third case, he allegedly promoted regulatory changes to benefit an telecommunications company in exchange for positive coverage by an online news organization.

Netanyahu in November requested the pardon from Herzog, whose office said at the time that it would consider the request and review it with justice officials because of the “significant implications” a pardon for such charges could have.

A plea agreement would require an admission of guilt, in addition to likely requiring Netanyahu to resign from office, which he has said is unacceptable and part of why he calls the trials an effort to drive him from office.

The trial “stirs divisions and deepens rifts,” he said in the request for a pardon, and said that “to repeal the threats [to Israel] and realize the opportunities, national unity is required.

WASHINGTON — The Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee said some of its members would support a presidential pardon for convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell in exchange for her assistance in the committee’s investigation into Jeffrey Epstein.

But good luck getting any of them to admit it.

Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) told Politico Wednesday that “a lot of people” support the idea of Maxwell receiving a pardon from President Trump in exchange for her cooperation in the committee’s investigation.

Although Comer said he opposed a pardon himself — “other than Epstein, the worst person in this whole investigation is Maxwell” — he offered that his committee was “split” on the issue.

Rep. Robert Garcia of Long Beach, the top Democrat on his committee, condemned the idea of a Maxwell pardon and said Democrats on the committee uniformly oppose it.

“It’s outrageous that Republicans on the Oversight Committee are considering a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell,” Garcia said in a statement. “She is a sexual abuser who facilitated the rape of women and children.”

The Times reached out to all 26 Republicans on the committee to see who, if anyone, supported the idea of a pardon.

Although most didn’t respond, the few who did expressed outrage at the idea.

“I am absolutely not supporting a pardon for her nor have I heard that from anyone else,” said Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.).

“Never in a thousand years,” said Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.).

Maxwell declined to answer the committee’s questions during a video deposition in February from the Texas federal prison where she is serving her 20-year prison sentence.

She is still challenging her 2021 conviction on five counts related to the sex trafficking of minors for her role in recruiting and grooming girls for Epstein to abuse. She was accused at trial of also participating in the abuse of one victim.

At the time of her February deposition, Maxwell’s attorney David Oscar Markus said she would offer the “unfiltered truth” if granted clemency by Trump.

Attorneys who have represented victims abused by Epstein and Maxwell strongly opposed the idea of a pardon.

“This is a woman who belongs behind bars for the rest of her life for what she did to women,” said Spencer Kuvin, who has represented numerous Epstein victims.

Sigrid McCawley, a managing partner at Boies Schiller Flexner, questioned the value of information Maxwell could provide.

“Ghislaine Maxwell is a proven self-serving liar,” McCawley said in a statement. “There is nothing credible that she will offer the government, and the assertion that she would provide information is simply a smoke screen.”

Trump has not said he is considering a pardon but when asked by reporters he has declined to rule it out.

Epstein abused more than 1,000 girls and young women over the span of decades. He negotiated a lenient deal nearly two decades ago with federal prosecutors in south Florida that allowed him to serve 13 months in a Palm Beach County jail where he was allowed to come and go freely to settle claims that he had abused dozens of high school girls.

Following investigative reporting on that deal by the Miami Herald, federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York brought new sex charges against Epstein in July 2019. He died in federal custody one month later.

Epstein and Maxwell counted members of the British royal family, multiple presidents and business titans among their friends.

They have been accused of forcing some of their victims to have sex with some of those men. But Maxwell is the only other person who has ever been charged in connection with Epstein’s crimes.

The committee has deposed numerous people who knew Epstein, including Ohio billionaire Les Wexner, who hired Epstein to manage his finances, and former President Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The committee has not, however, deposed Trump, who once famously called Epstein a “terrific guy” and said, “I just wish her well,” when told of Maxwell’s arrest in 2020.

The Department of Justice has also released millions of pages of documents from its investigations into the deceased sex offender in response to the bipartisan Epstein Files Transparency Act, which was signed into law last year.

The release of the files has led to criminal inquiries in the United Kingdom into Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the former prince, and Peter Mandelson, the former British ambassador to the United States, over allegations that they provided secret government information to Epstein.

So far, the files have not led to any publicly known criminal investigations in the United States.