By Cory Gaines | Guest Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project
I saw a recent CPR article about the conflict between Trump’s directives on immigration and Colorado’s sanctuary state laws.
In that article, the reporter put up a statement by our own Colorado Attorney General (and gubernatorial candidate) Phil Weiser. That statement is in the screenshot linked above.
I thought it would make an interesting contrast to compare what AG Weiser said re. Trump policy vs. Colorado sanctuary law to what AG Weiser said not too long after passage of Colorado’s Red Flag Law.
I found a couple of CPR articles with quotes from AG Weiser. Both date to 2019, the year of passage for the first iteration of the Red Flag Law. The second link below is to an April 1, 2019 article and the third is to an October 16, 2019 article.
AG Weiser’s statements regarding the sheriffs and/or counties who were signaling that they wouldn’t enforce the state’s red flag law are labeled “2019 1” and “2019 2“. They correspond to the articles (i.e. 2019 1 is from the first 2019 article).
Oh what a difference a few years (along with the fact that it’s policy Weiser doesn’t support from Trump but does support from his fellow Colorado Democrats) make for our AG.
The state will “protect its sovereignty” against federal intrusion, but any local sheriff that tries to protect his county’s sovereignty “should resign”.
Federal law preempts state law. State law preempts local law. That is the nature of our system. As someone who lives in the beyond-conservative northeastern corner of Colorado, I can’t tell you the number of times I have bemoaned the fact that our county cannot exempt itself from the policy of the beyond-leftist Front Range. Unfortunately, that’s not an option.
The same should be said for our State vs. Federal laws.
If AG Weiser is to back up with actions his oft-repeated refrain about the importance of the rule of law, he should revisit his stance on local vs. state law in light of his stance on state vs. federal.
As things stand now, it appears that the two are not in synch. It appears he is being a hypocrite with a pronounced double standard.**
In an effort to see if perhaps AG Weiser’s mind had changed on preemption since 2019, or to see if perhaps he wanted to flesh out his perspective on how the two situations (immigration and red flag) are different, I emailed his spokesman Lawrence Pacheco.
I also emailed the CPR reporter (she wrote two of the three CPR articles linked below–both the 2025 article and the October 2019 article) to see if she asked AG Weiser about this apparent dichotomy for her 2025 article.
As of this writing, I have yet to hear from either. If that changes, I will update.
**Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if many other Colorado Democrats had similar mismatches in their statements.