A lawyer for Tina Peters, the pro-Trump election denier recently granted clemency by Colorado Governor Jared Polis (D), told CNN on Monday that Peters had in fact not “expressed contrition” for her crimes – something Polis cited as a key factor in shortening her sentence.

Polis announced his pardon in mid-May after an intense pressure campaign from President Donald Trump, who attacked Polis relentlessly and punished Colorado by yanking funding for water projects in rural areas.

Peters was sentenced to 9 years in prison for her role in a scheme to try to prove Trump’s allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Polis effectively cut Peters’s sentence in half, and she was released on June 1st.

“She, because of her incorrect and unpopular speech, got an unduly harsh sentence,” Polis told The Colorado Sun after announcing the pardon, defending his controversial decision by saying Peters’s sentence was “very harsh.”

“I’m not pardoning her. I publicly have said very early on I would not even consider a pardon. She’s a convicted felon. She deserves to be a convicted felon. She will remain a convicted felon,” Polis added.

Polis also told the Sun that Peters had changed her tune on expressing regret and taking accountability for crimes. He read from her pardon application, “I made mistakes 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, and I will avoid the mistakes of the past.”

Peters’s lawyer, Peter Ticktin, told CNN in comments published on Monday that he does not believe she actually showed any contrition and it would be an error to view her statement as such.

“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, adding. “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.”

Peters has vowed to continue to try to clear her name, and in a recent social media post, made clear she still believes in Democrats in Colorado should be jailed for some kind of election conspiracy.

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