Lauren Boebert suggests Trump withheld funds to Colorado over prosecution of election denier | Colorado

Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert suggested that Donald Trump blocked funds for a clean water project in his state because of the prosecution of election denier Tina Peters.

Colorado Governor Jared Polis on Friday commuted Peters’ nearly nine-year prison sentence, ordering his release on June 1. The former Colorado county clerk had allowed unauthorized people to access voting records as part of efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, in which Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

Boebert praised the commutation the same day, taking some credit for himself but giving even more to Trump.

“I am proud of the relentless pressure my office and I have exerted, working hand in hand with President Donald Trump, to highlight Tina’s case and demand fairness,” the congresswoman wrote. “This outcome would not have been possible without the continued pressure and advocacy of President Trump, who always knew Tina deserved fairness under the law. »

In comments to 9News Denver on Friday, Boebert also said she hoped Peters’ release would convince Trump to stop blocking funds for a federal project to bring clean water to Colorado. “We were told Tina was the reason we couldn’t get water,” Boebert said, an apparent reference to Trump putting the same type of pressure on the Colorado governor that he put on Ukraine’s president in 2019, when he withheld congressionally mandated military aid to try to force Ukraine to open a fake investigation into Joe Biden. Trump was impeached over this project in 2019.

In January, the president vetoed a bill that would have funded a drinking water project in Boebert’s Colorado district after passing the House and Senate unanimously. Boebert, like all other Colorado lawmakers, had supported the bill, which would have supported access to clean water for 50,000 people in the region.

Trump cited financial concerns, but Boebert stressed to the House that Trump supported the plan before promising retaliation against Colorado for keeping Peters in prison and Boebert joined efforts to force the administration to release records on Jeffrey Epstein, the late pedophile with whom Trump socialized for nearly two decades.

When the House of Representatives then upheld Trump’s veto, it criticized its colleagues, but not the president.

“I’m disappointed to see the lack of leadership, the number of people who are going to walk away, who are going to give in, who are not going to take a stand,” Boebert said. “This is a bill that, politically, no one in this chamber disagrees with. It was purely political and it’s very unfortunate.”

“People are afraid of getting a mean tweet or being attacked. And I came here to defend my constituents,” Boebert said.