Colorado governor fires clemency board members, adding to Tina Peters fiasco

Jared Polis has done quite a bit over his 25-year career in public service. The Colorado Democrat served six years on the state board of education, 10 years as a member of Congress and this year, he’s wrapping up his second full term as governor — an office he won twice by wide margins.

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But it appears increasingly likely that Polis will be known, at least to national audiences, for a single misguided decision.

A couple of months ago, the governor waited until late on a Friday afternoon (a time popular with politicians who want their decisions to go largely unnoticed) to announce his commutation for Tina Peters, a convicted felon who illegally tried to use her office in pursuit of pro-Trump election conspiracy theories.

Confronted with bipartisan criticisms of the decision, Polis appeared on CNN and presented a defense that made very little sense and misstated basic factual details, reinforcing concerns that the governor had simply succumbed to Donald Trump’s coercion efforts, even if the Coloradan was reluctant to admit it.

In mid-June, The New York Times reported that Polis’ own clemency board twice voted unanimously to reject Peters’ bid for early release, citing disclosures from two board members. The first vote came in January, and it was soon followed by “an unusual request” from the governor’s office, asking the panel to take a second look because of the “enormous political pressure” Polis was facing from the White House.

Members agreed to review the case anew but still came to the unanimous conclusion that Peters, based on all the available information, simply did not deserve to be released.

The governor ignored his own clemency board in May, and this week, he fired the members who disclosed what had unfolded behind the scenes. The Times also reported:

Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado on Wednesday fired two members of his clemency board after they spoke out against his decision to commute the prison sentence of the election denier Tina Peters.

The board members, Hannah Seigel Proff and Azra Taslimi, had objected to Mr. Polis’s decision in May to release Ms. Peters from prison after pressure from President Trump.

“You breached the required duty of confidentiality by publicly divulging board members’ votes,” Polis wrote in the letters shared with the newspaper.