Colorado Republican Lauren Boebert is suggesting that President Donald Trump blocked federal funding for a clean drinking water project in her district as retaliation over the state's prosecution of election denier Tina Peters.
Peters, the former county clerk who allowed unauthorized access to voting records in efforts to overturn the 2020 election, had been serving a nearly nine-year prison sentence. Colorado Governor Jared Polis commuted her sentence on Friday, with her release scheduled for June 1.
Boebert praised the commutation on the same day, crediting both her own office and Trump for the outcome. She attributed Peters' release directly to their combined pressure.
In an interview with 9News Denver, Boebert connected the commutation to the stalled water project. "We were told that Tina was the reason we couldn't get water," she said, suggesting Trump had withheld the funding as leverage on Colorado's governor, similar to his 2019 pressure campaign on Ukraine to open an investigation into Joe Biden.
In January, Trump vetoed a clean drinking water bill that had passed both the House and Senate unanimously. The project would have served 50,000 people in Boebert's district. The congresswoman, along with all other Colorado lawmakers, had supported the measure.
Trump cited financial concerns in his veto statement, but Boebert disputed that reasoning on the House floor. She pointed out that Trump had backed the project before publicly vowing retaliation against Colorado. She also noted her own support for releasing files on Jeffrey Epstein, linking both factors to the sudden opposition.
When the House upheld Trump's veto, Boebert criticized her colleagues for lacking the political will to stand their ground, though she notably refrained from directly attacking the president's decision.
"This was purely political and it's very unfortunate," Boebert said during the veto vote debate. She expressed frustration that lawmakers were capitulating under pressure rather than supporting a bill on which there was broad agreement on its merits.
Author James Rodriguez: "Boebert's argument amounts to an admission that Trump weaponized federal funds to punish a state over a case he disliked, and the timing with Peters' release suggests the leverage worked exactly as intended."
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