General Discussion

In early March, Donald Trump’s Justice Department raised eyebrows with an unexpected move: The DOJ’s civil division unexpectedly filed a brief in federal court, raising “concerns” about the criminal conviction of a former Colorado clerk named Tina Peters.

The effort didn’t amount to much, but as NBC News reported, the president’s interest in the case has apparently intensified.

In a Truth Social post tonight, Trump called for former Colorado county clerk Tina Peters to be released from prison and said he was directing the Justice Department to take ‘all necessary action’ to help secure her release.

In a bizarre online harangue, Trump rewrote recent history, claiming that Peters simply “worked to expose and document Democrat [sic] Election Fraud.” He added, “Tina is an innocent Political Prisoner being horribly and unjustly punished in the form of Cruel and Unusual Punishment. This is a Communist persecution by the Radical Left Democrats to cover up their Election crimes and misdeeds in 2020.”

In case that weren’t quite enough, the president concluded, “I am hereby directing the Department of Justice to take all necessary action to help secure the release of this ‘hostage’ being held in a Colorado prison by the Democrats, for political reasons. FREE TINA PETERS, NOW!”......

Time will tell what, if anything, the Justice Department can do about Peters’ incarceration.

For all of the hysterical and baseless Republican conspiracy theories during Joe Biden’s presidency about “weaponized” prosecutions and a “two-tiered” justice system, Trump and his team are creating the very conditions the GOP condemned. The incumbent president — through his scandalous pardons, his intervention in cases such as Peters’ and his willingness to sic prosecutors on his perceived political enemies — is going out of his way to make clear that his allies will be held to different legal standards than everyone else.

The brazenness is so plainly ridiculous, the Republican administration is hardly even trying to keep up appearances — and there’s every reason to believe this will get worse in the coming days, weeks, months and years.