Tina Peters’ legal team is no longer just talking about appeals and motions. One of her attorneys is floating the idea of Donald Trump directing the U.S. military to spring the convicted Colorado election denier from state prison, turning a MAGA cause into something that sounds a lot like a coup plot.
On a recent appearance on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, attorney Peter Ticktin was asked a question that, in any normal political moment, would have been dismissed as pure satire. Should President Donald Trump send the famed 101st Airborne Division into Colorado to forcibly remove Peters from state custody and bring her home as a hero? Ticktin did not blink and responded:
“Do I think it should be done for who I am, yeah – I’d love to see that happen,” he replied, openly entertaining the idea of using elite troops to bust his client out of prison.
Peters, the former Mesa County clerk who became a celebrity in election denial circles, is serving a nine year sentence after a Colorado jury convicted her on multiple counts for breaching voting equipment in 2021. She allowed an outside activist access to secure election systems so that data could be copied and fed into Trump’s conspiracy machine about the 2020 race.
Peter Ticktin Calls For Eisenhower-Style Federal Showdown, Urges Potential Military-Level Intervention to Liberate Tina Peters pic.twitter.com/oLylEnC7pF
— Bannon’s WarRoom (@Bannons_WarRoom) November 25, 2025
At her sentencing, District Court Judge Matthew Barrett shredded the mythology that has grown up around her. “You are no hero. You’re a charlatan who used, and is still using, your prior position in office to peddle a snake oil that’s been proven to be junk time and time again,” he told Peters in court.
That speech has done little to cool her status on the right. Trump has repeatedly demanded her release, calling Peters an “innocent Political Prisoner” and railing that she is being subjected to “Cruel and Unusual Punishment” for trying to expose what he still claims was a stolen election.
His remarks come as Peters’ case is once again roiling Colorado politics. Federal officials have pressed to move her into the federal prison system, citing concerns about her health. At the same time, a bipartisan group of Colorado county clerks has taken the highly unusual step of issuing a joint public plea to Democratic Governor Jared Polis, urging him to keep Peters in state custody and warning that treating her as some kind of political martyr only endangers election workers further.
“Governor, Tina Peters is not a victim. She is a convicted felon,” Routt County Clerk Jenny Thomas said, adding that either the law means something, or it means nothing.
If Ticktin is increasing the pressure, Peters’ supporters on the far right are trying to destroy the whole situation. Local MAGA activist and podcaster Joe Oltmann recently intensified his statements, calling for the execution of Polis and other state officials over their handling of the Peters case. He said they should “hang by their neck until dead.”
Together, the attorney imagining an airborne prison raid and supporters discussing the hanging of public officials show how distant this movement is from regular legal advocacy. Peters is no longer just a former clerk serving time for a data breach. She has become a symbol, a test of how far Trump’s circle is willing to go in treating state courts, prison walls, and even the military as tools in an ongoing loyalty campaign.
