An attorney for Tina Peters, the former Mesa County clerk who is serving a Colorado prison sentence, addressed President Donald Trump directly in a letter to make the case that he should grant Peters a pardon.

The Florida-based attorney, Peter Ticktin, had already said he applied to the Trump administration last month for a pardon, as first reported by Newsline. In a new 9-page letter to Trump, Ticktin details his argument that Trump should pardon Peters, whom he casts as a political prisoner, and his contention that Trump has the power to pardon her.

Presidential pardons are understood across the legal profession to apply only to federal cases. Peters was convicted on state charges. But Ticktin claims in the letter that the scope of a president’s pardon power as described in the Constitution has been broadly misunderstood. He argues that the Constitution’s references to the United States apply to the individual states as well as the country as a whole, concluding, “The President of the United States has the power to grant a pardon in any of the states of the United States.”

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Ticktin acknowledges in the letter that “the question of whether a president can pardon for state offenses has never been raised in any court,” but he thinks the U.S. Supreme Court should consider the matter.

Asked about the pardon request and the letter to Trump, a White House official wrote in an email, “The White House does not comment on potential clemency requests. The President is the final decider on all pardons.”

Newsline has made several attempts to verify with the U.S. Department of Justice receipt of Peters’ clemency petition but has not received a response.

Ticktin said the pardon request was filed a little less than three weeks ago. The letter to Trump is dated Dec. 7, and a spokesperson for Ticktin said it has been sent to Trump and Ed Martin, the U.S. pardon attorney.

Trump has repeatedly demanded that Colorado release Peters, and Martin has indicated the administration is working on freeing her. Trump’s Department of Justice has taken an active role in the case.

Phil Weiser, the Democratic Colorado attorney general, said in a statement to Newsline last week that a presidential pardon for someone convicted in state court “has no precedent in American law, would be an outrageous departure from what our constitution requires, and will not hold up.”

Peters, 70, is incarcerated at La Vista Correctional Facility in Pueblo. The Republican was convicted by a Mesa County jury and sentenced in October 2024. She was convicted for her role in a scheme to breach the security of her own election equipment in 2021, part of an effort to find evidence that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

There is no credible evidence that the 2020 election results were compromised or that Peters’ prosecution, which was led by a Republican district attorney, was flawed.

Much of Ticktin’s letter to Trump repeats the kind of stolen-election claims that for years have circulated among Trump supporters since the president himself initiated the lie that the 2020 election was stolen.