Election denier Tina Peters released from prison

2026-06-01T14:48:03.408Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/01/politics/tina-peters-prison-release

• Tina Peters, convicted of breaching voting systems to support President Donald Trump’s false election fraud claims, was released from prison Monday.
• Colorado’s Democratic governor had cut her sentence in half despite bipartisan condemnation and censure from his own party.
• Peters continues spreading election conspiracy theories and maintains her innocence while appealing her convictions.

AI-generated summary was reviewed by a CNN editor.

Election denier Tina Peters was released from a Colorado prison Monday, prison officials confirmed, weeks after the state’s Democratic governor granted a controversial commutation that cut her sentence in half.

The Republican former Mesa County clerk was convicted in 2024 of state felonies for conspiring with fellow election deniers to breach her county’s voting systems in hopes of proving President Donald Trump’s baseless 2020 voter-fraud claims.

She was sentenced to nearly nine years in prison, which was reduced last month by Colorado Gov. Jared Polis to 4 ½ years. She ultimately served about one year and eight months in prison, due in part to Colorado’s parole policies.

Over the years, her plight has become a rallying cry in the election conspiracy movement. And until Monday, she was the last remaining person behind bars in connection with the varying efforts by Trump allies across the country to undermine the 2020 results.

Polis, a Democrat whose term ends next year, announced on May 15 that he was reducing Peters’ sentence.

The governor primarily justified his decision by citing a recent Colorado appeals court ruling that found the trial judge violated Peters’ First Amendment rights by improperly punishing Peters for her protected speech about the 2020 election. But he also defended his decision with a series of misleading and false claims about Peters’ case.

“It was a straightforward decision because, after reviewing the facts, and reading the Appeals Court decision, I concluded that her sentence was simply too long,” Polis wrote Sunday in a Substack post, where he condemned Peters’ crimes.

A bipartisan array of election officials, state prosecutors and lawmakers has condemned Polis for releasing Peters early. He was even censured by the Colorado Democratic Party, which said the commutation set a “dangerous and disappointing precedent.”

Peters’ early release marks a triumphant moment for the 2020 election denier movement and for Trump, who waged a long pressure campaign against Colorado over her incarceration. Polis said his decision wasn’t influenced by Trump’s actions — which included closing a Colorado-based climate lab, denying federal disaster assistance requests, vetoing a Colorado water project and pulling federal transportation funds.

Trump granted a symbolic federal pardon to Peters last year, but she had remained in prison under state charges. Peters is appealing her convictions, and she maintains her innocence.

CNN has reached out to Peters’ lawyers seeking comment.

Shortly after walking out of the La Vista Correctional Facility in Pueblo, Colorado, Peters appeared on Trump ally Steve Bannon’s podcast, where she doubled down on debunked conspiracy theories about US elections.

“I know that the Democrats are going to cheat, and no one’s really addressing the problem that I spent my time in prison as retribution for and that was exposing the election machines that allow the votes to be flipped,” Peters said.

She was referring to the long-debunked assertion that Dominion Voting Systems’ machines can fraudulently flip votes. This claim was at the heart of baseless claims of systemic cheating against Trump in 2020. And it’s what she was tying to prove when she breached her county’s equipment in 2021.

“I still have a fight to clear my name and bring out the truth of why they came after me the way they did,” Peters said.

Throughout her incarceration, Peters has stayed active on social media through allies and has continued spreading conspiracy theories about the legitimacy of the 2020 election, which Trump lost to Joe Biden.

But in her clemency application submitted to Polis, she acknowledged wrongdoing for the first time. She said: “I made a mistake four years ago. I misled the secretary of state when allowing a person to gain access to county voting equipment. That was wrong. Going forward, I will make sure that my actions always follow the law.”

In a letter to Peters granting clemency, Polis said her statement “demonstrates taking responsibility for your crimes.” Polis also told CNN in an interview on the day of the commutation that “she’s also expressed contrition now with this statement.”

But her lawyer Peter Ticktin told CNN in a recent interview that he doesn’t see it that way.

“I don’t think she indicated that she was feeling contrition and remorse. She basically was admitting to the fact that she could have done it better,” Ticktin said. “It’s very hard to be someone who has real contrition. There’s a difference between regret and contrition. It could have been done in such a way where she didn’t actually deceive anybody, and that was her mistake.”

In that vein, Peters and Ticktin have continued attacking election officials after her clemency. Peters recently posted on X that Colorado’s secretary of state, Democrat Jena Griswold, was engaged in a “cover up” and Ticktin said she deserves decades in prison. (Griswold has said she always upheld the law, and she staunchly opposed Peters’ release.)

“I will never back down, I will never give up, and I will never give in,” Peters wrote on May 22. “I will always stand for truth, transparency, and fairness in our elections.”

This story has been updated with additional developments.

CNN’s Jeremy Herb and Edward-Isaac Dovere contributed to this report.

高市促伊朗总统在与美停火协议中展现“最大灵活性”

2026年6月1日 20:29 / 联合早报

图为5月30日，从阿曼穆桑达姆半岛可见停泊在霍尔木兹海峡的船只。 （路透社档案照片）

日本首相高市早苗周一说，她在与伊朗总统佩泽希齐扬通话时指出，伊朗应展现“最大灵活性”，抓住与美国达成停火协议的机会。

高市星期一（6月1日）通话结束后对记者说，她还强烈要求伊朗尽快重新开放霍尔木兹海峡，以确保来自亚洲及其他国家船只的自由安全航行。

高市没有详细说明佩泽希齐扬的回应，但表示，两国领导人承诺将继续保持密切沟通。

伊朗称过去24小时有15艘船通过霍尔木兹海峡

伊朗军方周一发布消息称，过去24小时共有15艘船只在伊朗协调和安全保障下通过霍尔木兹海峡，其中包括四艘油轮。

伊朗军方强调，上述船只均在获得许可后，在革命卫队海军协调及安全保障下完成通行。

印度总理莫迪（右）周一在新德里海得拉巴宫接待到访的缅甸总统敏昂莱。 （路透社）

印度和缅甸周一发表联合声明，宣布两国已同意加强双边贸易，包括采用卢比-缅元结算机制。

印度外交部秘书米斯里（Vikram Misri）星期一（6月1日）早些时候说，印缅双边贸易额略高于20亿美元（约26亿新元）。

缅甸总统敏昂莱5月30日抵达邻国印度，进行为期五天的访问，这是他自就任文职领导人以来首次出访，会谈重点围绕安全和贸易议题。

敏昂莱周一会见了印度总理莫迪。印度外交部发言人贾斯瓦尔说，莫迪告诉敏昂莱，“印度仍然是缅甸值得信赖的邻国、可靠的伙伴，以及危机时刻坚定的第一响应者。”

莫迪还“重申了印度支持缅甸和平与对话的意愿”。

米斯里在两国领导人会晤后告诉记者，双方讨论了边境安全以及与印度东北部各邦接壤的缅甸内战的影响。“缅甸的稳定与和平显然是印度的重大利益所在。”

但他同时强调，解决缅甸冲突的任何方案都必须来自缅甸人民自身。

米斯里还说，两国领导人同意加快建设印缅泰三边公路，但他没有给出具体的完工时间表。

Fraudsters bought game-worn Kobe Bryant sneakers and Ferraris with taxpayer funds

June 1, 2026 / 11:53 AM EDT / CBS News

In a secret federal law enforcement warehouse in Southern California, dozens of Ferraris, Lamborghinis and stacks of coveted sports memorabilia – like Mickey Mantle rookie cards and game-worn Kobe Bryant sneakers – offer a modest testament to the mountains of taxpayer money being illegally diverted through fraud, law enforcement officials told CBS News.

By some government estimates, at least $500 billion is lost to fraud schemes each year, though other sources, including those who consult with the government to track fraudulently-obtained funds, said the real figure is over $1 trillion. As the Trump administration has launched a crackdown on those cheating federal programs like Medicare, food assistance and hospice care, it is difficult to claw back the stolen funds, said Bill Essayli, the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles.

“It should offend every American taxpayer that these people are taking advantage of the system,” Essayli said.

Seizing physical assets has been a first step in those efforts, Essayli said as he climbed the driveway of an eight-bedroom, ten-bathroom compound on an isolated Orange County hilltop – the former home to convicted serial fraudster Paul Randall.

“He was living like a king off us,”Essayli said.

Paul Randall pleaded guilty this year in one of the largest medical fraud cases in California history. CBS News

Randall, who declined to be interviewed, was convicted of diverting more than $270 million in taxpayer funds in one of the largest California Medicaid fraud schemes in the state’s history. He pleaded guilty in April to wire fraud and faces up to 30 years in prison when he’s sentenced this summer.

Essayli said Randall was out on bond awaiting sentencing on another federal fraud charge, one of six prior fraud convictions, when he started this latest scheme.

“Obviously there’s a breakdown in the criminal justice system if this guy was able to have six convictions and never did any real prison time,” Essayli said.

The vast majority of the stolen funds move out of the country before authorities have a chance to confiscate it, said Haywood Talcove, the CEO of LexisNexis Risk Solutions, Government.

Talcove consults with the government on tracking illicit funds. He projects that $1 trillion is lost to fraud each year — and believes about 70% of that ends up in the hands of transnational criminal gangs.

“It goes to Russia, it goes to China, it goes to Nigeria, it goes to Romania,” Talcove said.

Talcove’s investigations have shown criminals are getting more sophisticated. “Taxpayers are funding transnational criminals who are using this money for horrible things — child trafficking, drugs, threats to our democracy,” he said.

Essayli said that federal law enforcement is working on ways to better find and recover the stolen funds. But with money easily converted to digital currency and channeled overseas, federal agents are at a disadvantage.

“That is why it is so important that the money never goes out in the first place; that’s why it’s important that we have systems in place to detect and prevent fraud,” he said.

Paul Randall pleaded guilty this year in one of the largest medical fraud cases in California history. CBS News

https://www.cbsnews.com/video/secret-warehouse-assets-seized-california-fraudsters-cbs-news-investigation/

乌克兰总统泽连斯基星期天（5月31日）指出，从去年12月起，俄罗斯开始在战场上失去主动权。 （法新社）

（华盛顿综合电）乌克兰总统泽连斯基在哥伦比亚广播公司（CBS）星期天（5月31日）播出的专访中说，乌克兰政府已经掌握证据，证明俄罗斯正在绑架乌克兰儿童，并训练他们在战场上对抗同胞。

这是泽连斯基首次公开做出这一指控，指俄罗斯把乌克兰儿童带往营地进行再教育或俄罗斯化。如果泽连斯基的指控属实，这可能构成战争罪。

泽连斯基说：“他们（俄罗斯）教唆这些孩子仇恨自己的祖国，仇恨本国人民。你能想象吗，这些乌克兰年轻人，这些小伙子，竟然在战场上杀害乌克兰人。”不过，他没有透露掌握了怎样的证据。

泽连斯基在访谈中说，俄罗斯长期以来把儿童当作战斗人员对待，并提出以这些儿童交换在战场上被俘的士兵。“把我们的战士、战俘带回家很重要，但我们不可能用孩子去交换”。

泽连斯基表示，乌克兰记录了至少两万名乌克兰儿童被绑架的事件，并希望获得国际社会帮助，以追踪这些儿童的下落。他怀疑实际遭绑架的儿童人数更多。

针对结束战争，泽连斯基表示，他希望在冬季来临前，继续推进与俄方的和平谈判。他指出，从去年12月起，俄罗斯开始在战场上失去主动权。

他认为，俄政府正面临来自社会内部的压力，并再次呼吁对俄罗斯实施更严厉制裁。

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Republicans emerge as biggest threat to Trump’s controversial DOJ fund

2026-06-01T10:52:19-04:00 / Fox News

Trump’s ‘anti-weaponization’ fund blew up the GOP’s push to advance billions in immigration enforcement funding

By Alex Miller Fox News

Published June 1, 2026 10:52am EDT

https://www.foxnews.com/video/6396516280112 GOP, Dems clash on Capitol Hill over DOJ anti-weaponization fund proposal

The ‘Fox News Sunday’ panel discusses the controversy in Washington, D.C., surrounding the Department of Justice’s proposed anti-weaponization fund.

NEW You can now listen to Fox News articles!

Senate Democrats are doing everything they can to kill President Donald Trump’s “anti-weaponization” fund, and Republicans may be keen on helping them.

The nearly $2 billion fund has drawn heavy criticism from both sides of the aisle since its announcement last month as part of the settlement between Trump and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

It also, for now, has blown up the GOP’s push to advance billions in immigration enforcement funding. And as lawmakers return from a week-long break, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Democrats aren’t going to let the issue die quietly.

SENATE GOP ERUPTS OVER TRUMP DOJ ‘ANTI-WEAPONIZATION’ FUND, PUNTS ICE, BORDER PATROL FUNDING

Senate Democrats are doing everything they can to kill President Donald Trump’s “anti-weaponization” fund, and Republicans may be keen on helping them.(Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images; Nathan Posner/Anadolu via Getty Images)

“This week, Senate Democrats will launch a coordinated effort to kill the slush fund before one cent goes out the door,” Schumer wrote in a letter to his colleagues. “And no matter what Republicans do, we will force them to vote.”

“If Republicans return to reconciliation, we will be ready with amendments to shut the fund down,” he continued. “If they try to bury the issue, we will force them to the Senate floor. If they try to sneak behind appropriations, we will fight them there too.”

The Senate is returning to pick up where lawmakers left off on budget reconciliation, the party-line process that the GOP is using to ram through $72 billion to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol for the next three and a half years.

REPUBLICANS RECOIL AS TRUMP’S BILLION-DOLLAR DOJ ‘SLUSH FUND’ FOR ALLIES THREATENS ICE, BORDER PATROL PLAN

https://www.foxnews.com/video/6396456984112 GOP revolt over anti-weaponization fund derails ICE, CBP funding

Part of that process includes a “vote-a-rama,” where unlimited amendment votes happen.

Democrats already have several amendments in the works to curtail the fund, including one that would prevent those convicted of rape and sexual assault from gaining access to the taxpayer-funded pot of money.

And Republican leaders feared that many in the GOP would support those amendments. The relationship between Senate Republicans and Trump is not on its highest note, either, following the president’s decision to back successful primary challengers to Sens. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and John Cornyn, R-Texas.

But the dissent within the GOP against the Department of Justice (DOJ) fund is far broader than just two Republicans, with at least half the conference taking issue with it during a fiery closed-door meeting with acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.

REPUBLICAN BREAKS WITH TRUMP AFTER PRIMARY LOSS, CALLS FOR ‘STEADY, NOT ERRATIC’ LEADERSHIP

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche speaks during a news conference at the Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice building in Washington, D.C., on April 7, 2026.(Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Several wanted to know what kind of action, if any, would be taken by the administration to put guardrails on the fund to prevent those convicted of assaulting police officers during the riots of Jan. 6, 2021, from gaining access to the money.

Many see this as an issue that Trump and the administration need to solve, especially with how close Republicans were to ramming the broader reconciliation package through.

But the DOJ has argued that they aren’t seeking reconciliation money for the fund, and that it’s an issue that has nothing to do with the process. However, Republicans see it differently, given that the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has oversight of the Justice Department, plays a significant role in the legislative package.

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Schumer and Democrats, however, want to outright demolish the fund.

“There will be no escape hatch,” Schumer said. “No fake guardrails or backroom promises to hide behind. No Justice Department announcement that makes this corruption acceptable.”

“Republicans are scrambling for a way out — not to end the corruption, but to manage it,” he continued. “That will not be enough. You do not fix a corrupt slush fund by promising to manage it better. You end it.”

Alex Miller is a writer for Fox News Digital covering the U.S. Senate.

乌克兰总统泽连斯基星期天（5月31日）指出，从去年12月起，俄罗斯开始在战场上失去主动权。 （法新社）

（华盛顿综合电）乌克兰总统泽连斯基在哥伦比亚广播公司（CBS）星期天（5月31日）播出的专访中说，乌克兰政府已经掌握证据，证明俄罗斯正在绑架乌克兰儿童，并训练他们在战场上对抗同胞。

这是泽连斯基首次公开做出这一指控，指俄罗斯把乌克兰儿童带往营地进行再教育或俄罗斯化。如果泽连斯基的指控属实，这可能构成战争罪。

泽连斯基说：“他们（俄罗斯）教唆这些孩子仇恨自己的祖国，仇恨本国人民。你能想象吗，这些乌克兰年轻人，这些小伙子，竟然在战场上杀害乌克兰人。”不过，他没有透露掌握了怎样的证据。

泽连斯基在访谈中说，俄罗斯长期以来把儿童当作战斗人员对待，并提出以这些儿童交换在战场上被俘的士兵。“把我们的战士、战俘带回家很重要，但我们不可能用孩子去交换”。

泽连斯基表示，乌克兰记录了至少两万名乌克兰儿童被绑架的事件，并希望获得国际社会帮助，以追踪这些儿童的下落。他怀疑实际遭绑架的儿童人数更多。

针对结束战争，泽连斯基表示，他希望在冬季来临前，继续推进与俄方的和平谈判。他指出，从去年12月起，俄罗斯开始在战场上失去主动权。

他认为，俄政府正面临来自社会内部的压力，并再次呼吁对俄罗斯实施更严厉制裁。

A Supreme Court skeptical of death row appeals has recently sided with three inmates

2026-06-01T15:45:28.094Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/01/politics/supreme-court-death-penalty-appeals-thomas

The Supreme Court on Monday sided with a death row inmate in Florida who was blocked from challenging his sentence even though a lower court acknowledged a key witness lied on stand, marking the third time the conservative high court has backed an inmate sentenced to death in recent weeks.

In an unsigned opinion, the court threw out a decision from a federal appeals court that sided with the state because, it said, the judges considered DNA evidence that had not been presented at trial. Over a dissent from two conservative justices, the Supreme Court’s summary decision will require the federal appeals court to take another look at the case.

It was the latest of several high-profile death penalty cases in which the Supreme Court has sided with a defendant over the objection of some members of the court’s conservative wing.

Last week, the court ruled in favor of a Black man on death row in Mississippi who said the prosecutor engaged in racial bias by striking Black jurors. A week earlier, the court let stand an appeals court decision that barred Alabama from executing a man that lower courts found is likely intellectually disabled.

Especially on its emergency docket, the Supreme Court rarely steps in to stop an execution. In May, the court denied requests to halt executions in Tennessee and Florida.

But the record is more mixed in merits cases. Last year, the Supreme Court ordered a new trial for Richard Glossip, whose appeal drew national attention and support from the state’s conservative attorney general. After nearly three decades in prison and three last meals, Glossip was released on bond last month.

The Florida inmate, Gary Richard Whitton, was convicted in 1992 for the 1990 murder of his friend James Maulden in a motel. Whitton has denied his guilt and is attempting to have his conviction overturned. The case, initially tried before a Florida jury, has made its way through five Florida or federal courts in over 30 years, most recently the Florida Supreme Court and the Atlanta-based 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals.

Maulden was found in his room at the Sun and Sand Motel in Destin, Florida. His skull was fractured, court records show, and he had been repeatedly stabbed in the chest and other parts of his body.

Whitton had unsuccessfully appealed to the Supreme Court twice before.

The Supreme Court’s decision Monday drew a sharp dissent from Justice Clarence Thomas, who said his colleagues had overread the significance of the 11th Circuit’s focus on the DNA testing. And, Thomas wrote, the majority had been willing to swoop into Whitton’s case even when it has failed to do so in a series of other cases he felt were just as worthy.

The justices were reviewing an 11th Circuit decision that acknowledged prosecutors failed to disclose that a key witness named Jake Ozio had been previously arrested as a juvenile, even though he claimed on the stand that was not the case. But the federal appeals court ruled that it didn’t matter due to other “overwhelming” evidence against Whitton.

That other evidence, the appeals court said, included a 2002 DNA retest that linked splattered blood on Whitton’s boots to the victim. But that test was conducted a decade after the trial and was never admitted in court.

“The Court of Appeals did some­thing peculiar: It considered not only the evidence that was presented to the jury at Whitton’s trial, but also evidence the jury never saw,” the Supreme Court said in its decision Monday. “The evidence in question relates to blood stains on Whitton’s boots, which were seized the day after the murder.”

At Whitton’s trial, the jury heard an opposite account of the blood from a DNA specialist who said the blood found on Whitton’s boots did not match the victim’s DNA. Two co-inmates of Whitton, including Ozio, also testified that he told them he “stabbed the bastard,” while in jail, but both have since recanted their statements.

Whitton’s attorney argued that the circuit court should not be allowed to consider the 2002 test. Florida officials counter that the boots were not central to the 11th Circuit’s reasoning, and they note that federal law restricts the ability of courts to review state criminal convictions.

And that is the point that Thomas made in a dissent joined in part by Justice Samuel Alito.

Thomas wrote that the court was basing its decision on “one-and-a-half sentences” in the appeals court opinion.

“In rejecting one of Whitton’s claims — which would fail on other grounds anyway — the Eleventh Circuit mentioned a fact that was notable but certainly not dispositive to its analysis: DNA testing had since further confirmed that Whitton is guilty.”

Toward the end of the opinion, Thomas also opined about several other non-death penalty cases in which the Supreme Court has declined to weigh in with a summary decision. That included a high-profile case the Supreme Court declined to hear two years ago dealing with whether three elite Boston public schools violated the Constitution with a zip-code based admissions policy intended to ensure racial diversity.

“Even when presented with multiple opportuni­ties to vindicate the rights of families to pursue education for their children on color-blind terms, this court ‘refused to correct a glaring constitutional error,’” Thomas wrote in his dissent.

The conservative justice also pointed to a recent case the court declined to hear last year involving Indiana University’s “bias response team,” an effort to lower the temperature of heated rhetoric that critics say winds up chilling speech on campus.

“It is unfortunate that the court chose to intervene at the request of a convicted murderer to correct the Eleventh Cir­cuit’s inconsequential foot fault,” Thomas wrote. “What makes it even worse is that the court does so even while it refuses to correct far more consequential errors for law-abiding citizens, such as the discriminated-against families in Boston.”

这张由伊朗伊斯兰共和国通讯社（ISNA）于6月1日发布的照片显示，一些伊朗民众坐在位于霍尔木兹海峡沿岸的阿巴斯港苏鲁海滩上。 （法新社）

伊朗媒体周一报道称，伊朗和“抵抗阵线”计划彻底封锁霍尔木兹海峡，并在曼德海峡（Bab al-Mandeb）等其他“战线”开启行动。

伊朗媒体星期一（6月1日）还报道称，鉴于以色列在黎巴嫩的持续军事行动，伊朗谈判团队已暂停通过中间人同美国对话。

报道称，在伊朗要求以色列“立即停止”在加沙和黎巴嫩的军事行动得到满足之前，“不会进行任何对话”。

以色列宣布扩大对黎巴嫩真主党的军事打击范围，从以黎南地区为主要目标，扩大至涵盖黎巴嫩首都贝鲁特。

以色列总理内坦亚胡与国防部长卡茨周一发表联合声明，下令以色列国防军对贝鲁特南部郊区达希耶（Dahiyeh）发动空袭。

伊朗外长阿拉格齐周一在社媒发文说，任何一条战线上的停火遭到破坏，等同于所有战线上的停火遭到破坏。

受中东紧张局势影响，周一油价上涨超过每桶3美元。