Tina Peters, a loyalist of President Donald Trump and a denier of the 2020 election results, has taken her election claims on the road in Washington, D.C., meeting with senior administration officials after securing an early release from prison.

Peters was convicted of state crimes connected to the 2020 election and was slated to serve nine years in jail. The charges stemmed from her time as the elected clerk and recorder of Mesa County, Colorado, and her role in a 2021 breach of her county's election equipment, in which unauthorized copies of voting system data were made and later circulated publicly at an event hosted by MyPillow founder Mike Lindell — an episode that made her a hero in election-denial circles. She ran for Colorado secretary of state in 2022 and lost the Republican primary. She served only 20 months before her sentence was commuted by Colorado's Democratic governor, Jared Polis.

Her new election conspiracy roadshow has drawn the attention of CNN, where reporter Marshall Cohen discussed the matter with host Dana Bash on Friday. Bash questioned whether Peters could do much, given that she is "preaching to the converted." Cohen responded that the story is about access. Peters has met with the White House, the Commerce Department and the Justice Department.

"The question of influence is something we're going to find out as we get closer and closer to the midterms and see if the president enacts some of these very extreme and aggressive ideas and proposals that Tina Peters is pitching," Cohen said. "You just saw on your screen photos of her meetings this week in Washington, D.C. She sat down with Harmeet Dhillon, who is the chief of the Justice Department's civil rights division."

Dhillon has been pushing her own election changes while at the DOJ. A veteran conservative election lawyer, she now leads the division that enforces federal voting rights laws.

Peters also met with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, a session that prompted questions about Lutnick's role in elections.

"The Commerce Department is home to the Census Bureau [which] put out a report claiming that there were tons of non-citizens voting in elections," Cohen explained. "It suggests that the office is also trying to play in this space, which is why it's notable that Tina Peters is meeting with him."

Cohen said he spoke with Peters' lawyer, Peter Ticktin, "who is also pushing for some very aggressive moves before the election." According to Ticktin, Peters "has a plan."

"And I don't know whether, you know, she'll get the support to make sure her plan gets implemented. Her plan differs from mine greatly. It's still going to need an emergency order in order to have it happen," Ticktin said.

According to Stateline, the idea of declaring a national emergency so the president can take over the 2026 midterm elections is not a "hypothetical situation." Nick Brown, Washington state's Democratic attorney general, said officials there are already preparing for Trump's attempts to nationalize the election. Elections in the United States are administered almost entirely by state and local officials, making any federal takeover of a federal election a sharp break from longstanding practice — the backdrop to the state-level preparations Brown described.

Last week, when asked about nationalizing the election, Trump told a conservative commentator, "Stranger things have happened, OK? I'll leave it at that."

Cohen noted that Trump has yet to hit the "nuclear option." He also observed that Peters' current activity in Washington comes as a result of Polis commuting her sentence and releasing her early.

"He said, it's the right thing to do, but he's disappointed in what she's up to in Washington," Cohen said of Polis.

Cohen added that another development making officials "lose their mind" is the possibility that Peters could be appointed to a post advising on election security for the state of California. The post was offered by the Shasta County election official, who is a 2020 election denier. Shasta County, in California's far north, has itself been a focal point of fights over voting equipment: its Board of Supervisors voted in 2023 to drop its Dominion election systems.