A few weeks ago, the White House’s efforts to help former Colorado county clerk Tina Peters reached a new level: Trump’s Federal Bureau of Prisons contacted the Colorado Department of Corrections, seeking to transfer Peters from a state prison to federal custody.

Evidently, the request was not well received. The Associated Press reported:

Colorado doesn’t plan to transfer from state prison to federal custody a former county clerk who has become a hero to election conspiracy theorists following a request from the Trump administration, state officials said Wednesday. The Colorado Department of Corrections said it is not seeking a transfer of Tina Peters, who was convicted last year of orchestrating a scheme in Mesa County to breach voting machine data driven by false claims of fraud in the 2020 election.

“Transferring an individual is an action initiated by the Colorado Department of Corrections, not an outside entity,” department spokesperson Alondra Gonzalez-Garcia told the AP.....

Despite the Republican’s apparent interest in her case, there’s effectively nothing he can do: This was a state official, charged with state crimes, by state prosecutors, in a state court, with a state jury, overseen by a state judge, which necessarily means neither the president nor his Justice Department can overturn Peters’ criminal conviction.

Trump apparently intends to keep trying anyway, though there’s no reason to believe he’ll succeed.

Tina Peters' attorney is backing the idea of President Trump using a military raid to free her from a prison in Colorado.

Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of Colorado's county clerks say Gov Polis (D) is betraying election workers with his silence on whether he'll free Peters.

— Kyle Clark (@kylec.bsky.social) 2025-11-26T01:51:54.860Z

For his part, Peters’ defense attorney recently told Steve Bannon that he’d like to see the president deploy U.S. military personnel to the Colorado prison where Peters is being held in order to free her. The lawyer did not appear to be kidding.