Gov. Jared Polis (D-CO) on Wednesday fired two members of his clemency board after they released confidential information about commuting recommendations to the public about Tina Peters, who was sentenced for her role in tampering with election equipment.
Hannah Seigel Proff and Azra Taslimi objected to Polis’s decision in May to release Peters from prison after President Donald Trump had called for him to commute her sentence.
Proff and Taslimi revealed that the board, which was appointed by Polis, had twice voted unanimously to reject Peters’s application for a shortened sentence. Polis overruled the board and decided to commute Peters’s sentence.
The clemency board typically operates in secret and does not disclose the pardon and commutation recommendations it makes to the governor. Proff and Taslimi felt compelled to break protocol and reveal the internal discussions surrounding her sentencing.
The governor then sent a letter to the two saying they were being dismissed for violating the board’s confidentiality standards.
“You breached the required duty of confidentiality by publicly divulging board members’ votes,” Polis wrote to the two women.
Peters, a former county clerk in the more conservative-leaning western part of Colorado, was sentenced to nine years in prison after being convicted in 2024 as part of a plot to tamper with voting machines under her control in an effort to provide that the 2020 presidential election had been rigged against Trump.
The 47th president had spent months urging Polis to commute the sentence of Peters.
Taskunu said about Polis, “He’s saying the public doesn’t have the right to know his own advisory board told him no — twice. He’s not protecting a process. He’s protecting himself from scrutiny.”
Eric Maruyama, a spokesman for Polis, said that the two women’s decision to break the privacy protocol of the board “threatens the credibility of the board, colors future deliberations by the board, and breaks clearly stated confidentiality policy.”
In May, the Colorado Democrat Party censured the Colorado governor for commuting the sentence of Peters.
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