Tina Peters, an election conspiracy theorist who supported President Trump's voting fraud claims, had her Colorado prison sentence commuted by Gov. Jared Polis after a White House pressure campaign.
Page A222From§Eachthe evening edition — 26 October 2026
White House goes to extraordinary lengths to free the one person convicted of election fraud
As it ran on the front
Baltimore, it says. A shipyard, six point six billion dollars. The company that owns the thing is Anduril Industries — I didn't have to look that part up twice, it's right there in the piece. Who paid for the factory, and whose name is on it as the owner? Those aren't the same name. I wrote that down and then felt foolish for writing down something I could just read.
Did I mention who runs Anduril? A man named Palmer Luckey. He raises money for the president's party — that's not me saying it, that's the paper, I just read it back like a man at the counter reading his own grocery list to the cashier. Does the company that got the factory and the company that gets the fundraising dinners happen to be the same company?…
…(cont) I keep a glovebox like everybody else — two years of registration stickers in there, a toll receipt from a bridge I couldn't swear I crossed. I hang onto paper. You never know when somebody's going to ask you to prove where you were. The next morning after the shipyard story — I checked the date, it was the next morning — another page landed on top of it. Companies backed by Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, six billion dollars in Pentagon contracts, most of it running through a firm called 1789 Capital that made the president's son a partner. Is that six billion the same six billion as the shipyard, or is that a second six billion?
I was at the corner store this week, paying for cigars I probably shouldn't smoke, and the owner was complaining about what the bank takes off the top no matter whose hand the money started in. Does it matter where the money begins if it ends up buying the same thing? Because that's what got me about the super PAC story. Facing the backlash, the president said taxpayers wouldn't pay for his ads anymore — a political committee would. Is a dollar from a super PAC a different dollar than a dollar from the Treasury, or is it the same dollar with its shirt changed?
So here I am with three soft pages in my coat, and I haven't even gotten to the one that sent me out tonight. CBS is reporting the White House went to what they call extraordinary lengths to get Colorado's governor to commute the sentence of an election official — Tina Peters, convicted of helping breach the very voting system she was sworn to protect. The administration that pushed for her release is now being investigated over how hard it pushed. This is the same administration that calls election fraud the gravest threat to the republic. Did it also spend its political capital springing the one person a jury found guilty of committing it?
CBS asked the White House what it offered Colorado in exchange for this, if anything, and the administration declined to say. Declined — their word, I read it twice standing at the mailbox to make sure I had it right. Does a man decline to answer a question he likes the answer to?
Oh — before you go. The one who actually signed the commutation was Governor Jared Polis. Nobody's asked him yet, far as I can find, what Colorado got for saying yes. I've got the page. I just don't have that answer written on it anywhere.
“You get it now? The same month the government builds a $6.6 billion shipyard for a GOP fundraiser's company and the Trump kids rack up $6 billion in Pentagon deals through their own VC shop, the White House is twisting a governor's arm to spring the one person a jury convicted of election fraud — and won't say what it paid for the favor. That's not conviction, that's inventory: who gets the factory, who gets the contract, who gets the commutation, and what it cost you is the one number they won't print. Everybody in this story gets paid except the guy at the end of the bar.”
“Look, the president is allowed to express an opinion about a sentence he thinks is unjust, that's just — did I say "allowed"? He went around a sitting governor with what CBS itself calls extraordinary lengths, over a conviction for breaching voting machines, and now there's an actual investigation into it. There's nothing to see here because the administration hasn't told anyone what there is to see, which, now that I say it out loud, is kind of the whole problem.”
The receipts
President Trump went to extraordinary lengths for Tina Peters, a former election official convicted of helping to breach the very voting system she swore to protect.
Tina Peters, an election conspiracy theorist who supported President Trump's voting fraud claims, had her Colorado prison sentence commuted by Gov. Jared Polis after a White House pressure campaign.
· Trump announces $6.6bn defense shipyard owned by top Republican donor’s firm from the morgue, 6 Oct 2026
· Companies Backed by Trump Sons Have Scored Over $6 Billion in Pentagon Contracts: Analysis from the morgue, 7 Oct 2026
· Swapping One Illegal Scheme for Another, Trump Says Super PAC Cash Will Now Fund His Propaganda Ads from the morgue, 6 Oct 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.