President Trump launches ‘gold card’ path to citizenship for foreign investors
President Donald Trump has launched a $1 million gold card to replace the EB-5 foreign investor program.
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump has announced what amounts to a symbolic “pardon” for Tina Peters, a former Republican county clerk in Colorado who was jailed for accessing secure voting system data to prove a baseless conspiracy to deny the 2020 election.
President Trump announced his “pardon” for Peters in a Dec. 11 post on the X Show. But Peters, the only Trump supporter jailed on charges related to the attempt to overturn the 2020 election, was found guilty of state crimes. As president, Trump’s pardon power only applies to federal charges, so Peters will remain in prison and his conviction will be final.
“Democrats have relentlessly targeted Tina Peters. He is a patriot who simply wanted to make sure our elections were fair and honest,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “Tina is in a Colorado prison for the ‘crime’ of demanding an honest election. Today, I am granting Tina a full pardon for her efforts to uncover voter fraud in the fraudulent 2020 presidential election!”
President Trump’s statement came after a federal judge on Dec. 8 rejected Peters’ bid to free Peters, 69, pending an appeal of his state conviction in 2024.
Peters, a former Colorado state clerk and recorder who denied that President Joe Biden won the 2020 election over Trump, was sentenced in October 2024 to nine years in prison on seven state charges related to tampering with election machines in Mesa County.
She was convicted of three counts of attempting to influence a public official, one count of criminal impersonation conspiracy, first-degree official misconduct and breach of duty, and failure to comply with the Colorado Secretary of State.
Peters was running for Colorado’s secretary of state at the time of the indictment, and the case garnered a lot of attention. Her campaign website now calls her a “political prisoner” and “whistleblower” who has been “forced into silence in defense of the truth.” Over the past year, “Free Tina Peters” has been a rallying cry for Trump and his supporters, who say Peters was prosecuted and wrongly sentenced.
State prosecutors said Peters and a deputy clerk conspired to turn off surveillance cameras in the room where Mesa County’s voting machines were stored, stole someone else’s identity and improperly granted access to outside activists.
Prosecutors said they later refused to turn over documents and records to state election officials investigating the possible violations, which they say occurred during a software update that state officials described as a secure “trusted build.”
Prosecutors said the deputy clerk pretended to hire an IT consultant and used people’s names and Social Security numbers to pass background checks and obtain security clearances and access badges. The badge allowed Conan Hayes, a former surfer who knew election denier and MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, to enter the secure room where the voting machines were kept and take images of them and associated data.
Contributor: Kathryn Palmer for USA TODAY
X Contact Joey Garrison at @joeygarrison.
