Jared Polis has done quite a bit over his 25-year career in public service. The Colorado Democrat served six years on the state board of education, 10 years as a member of Congress and this year, he’s wrapping up his second full term as governor — an office he won twice by wide margins.

But it appears increasingly likely that Polis will be known, at least to national audiences, for a single misguided decision.

A couple of months ago, the governor waited until late on a Friday afternoon (a time popular with politicians who want their decisions to go largely unnoticed) to announce his commutation for Tina Peters, a convicted felon who illegally tried to use her office in pursuit of pro-Trump election conspiracy theories.

Confronted with bipartisan criticisms of the decision, Polis appeared on CNN and presented a defense that made very little sense and misstated basic factual details, reinforcing concerns that the governor had simply succumbed to Donald Trump’s indefensibly aggressive coercion efforts, even if the Coloradan was reluctant to admit it.

In mid-June, The New York Times reported that Polis’ own clemency board twice voted unanimously to reject Peters’ bid for early release, citing disclosures from two board members. The first vote came in January, and it was soon followed by “an unusual request” from the governor’s office, asking the panel to take a second look because of the “enormous political pressure” Polis was facing from the White House.

Members agreed to review the case anew but still came to the unanimous conclusion that Peters, based on all the available information, simply did not deserve to be released.

The governor ignored his own clemency board in May, and this week, he fired the members who disclosed what had unfolded behind the scenes. The Times also reported:

Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado on Wednesday fired two members of his clemency board after they spoke out against his decision to commute the prison sentence of the election denier Tina Peters.

The board members, Hannah Seigel Proff and Azra Taslimi, had objected to Mr. Polis’s decision in May to release Ms. Peters from prison after pressure from President Trump.

“You breached the required duty of confidentiality by publicly divulging board members’ votes,” Polis wrote in the letters shared with the newspaper.

For her part, Taslimi, a former public defender, told the Times, “He’s saying the public doesn’t have the right to know his own advisory board told him no — twice. He’s not protecting a process. He’s protecting himself from scrutiny.”

The president, meanwhile, welcomed Peters, one of his favorite convicted felons, to the Oval Office this week. Around the same time, Trump published a lengthy item to his social media platform on Tuesday afternoon, writing of the Colorado election denier, “She was put [in prison] because she found Election Fraud, but instead of arresting the people that committed the Fraud, they arrested her! … Just think of it, she caught the Democrats cheating, and they put her in jail for Voter Fraud.”

That’s the opposite of what happened in reality.

Trump nevertheless added that Peters “came to the White House to thank me for getting her released from prison in Colorado.” In other words, as far as the president is concerned, it was his efforts to bully the state into submission, not the governor’s magnanimity, that led to Peters’ release.

In May, Polis said he’s confident that his commutation decision, in time, will be “remembered fondly.” Governor, if you see this, I wouldn’t count on it.

The post Colorado governor fires clemency board members, adding to Tina Peters fiasco appeared first on MS NOW.

Author: Source Author

From MS Now.