Rocky Mountain Voice

Tag: Colorado Attorney General

Colorado’s main suer runs on Trump
Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, State, Top Stories

Colorado’s main suer runs on Trump

By Tom Anthony | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice According to Tucker Carlson interviewee Joe Kent, erstwhile Director of Counterterrorism, it was Netanyahu that induced the US to attack Iran. Of course Trump is taking the blame and that goes with being President, as executive decisions have their consequences. High gas prices aren't popular with too many people (we're excepting the ones who own oil wells) and so being anti-Trump has gotten somewhat easier on both sides of the aisle. My dad was a doctor and started out a Republican (although, as a Catholic, he did support Kennedy and, we'll have to include, partnered with Roy Romer in a ski resort venture). After me hearing years of ranting about "socialized medicine" he capitulated to the Democrats later in life to the poi...
Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser Faces Scrutiny Over Access to Lawsuit Records
Complete Colorado, Approved, State

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser Faces Scrutiny Over Access to Lawsuit Records

By Adam Herbets | The Center Square (The Center Square) - Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser has filed dozens of lawsuits against the federal government, priding himself on his ability to fight and win cases against the Trump Administration, but he has yet to answer questions about the costs of those lawsuits to taxpayers. His office publishes a partial list of cases but otherwise keeps the full list behind a $331 paywall. While the partial list highlights "the total amount of federal funds successfully defended" by Weiser's lawsuits, it doesn't tell taxpayers the cost of pursuing the lawsuits. It also doesn't show whether taxpayers paid outside firms to do any of the work. Unlike a number of neighboring states, Colorado state law does not requir...
Questions Grow Over Weiser’s Role in Boulder Climate Lawsuit
Complete Colorado, Approved, State

Questions Grow Over Weiser’s Role in Boulder Climate Lawsuit

By Kyle Kohli | Complete Colorado For years, City and County of Boulder officials have defended their ongoing climate lawsuit against energy companies by pointing to its outside counsel arrangement, where lawyers work on a contingency fee agreement along with repeated assurances that local taxpayers would not be paying for the arrangement. However, new comments from Boulder District Attorney and Democrat state attorney general candidate Michael Dougherty raise serious questions about whether Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser – and potentially Colorado taxpayers – helped support that legal operation from behind the scenes. If so, it would represent a clear flip flop from Weiser, who has long voiced skepticism about the legal merits o...
Denver Post Backs Dougherty Over Griswold In Colorado AG Primary
Complete Colorado, Approved, State

Denver Post Backs Dougherty Over Griswold In Colorado AG Primary

By Mike Krause | Complete Colorado (Editor’s note: The Denver Post endorsements linked are paywalled. Complete Colorado is offering this synopsis as a service to non-subscribing primary voters.) DENVER–The Denver Post editorial board on Monday endorsed Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty in the Democratic primary for Colorado Attorney General, passing over the race’s best-known candidate, current Secretary of State Jena Griswold. The Post considered all four Democrat candidates but focused its praise on Dougherty (as well as Hetal Doshi, a former federal prosecutor). While the board acknowledged Griswold as “the only candidate to have actually run a statewide agency,” that credential wasn’t enough. The endorsement makes clear that Dougherty “checked...
Is Experience Optional? Critics Challenge Griswold’s Attorney General Bid
Colorado Politics, Approved, Commentary, State

Is Experience Optional? Critics Challenge Griswold’s Attorney General Bid

By Eric Sondermann | Commentary, Colorado Politics If you were in a child custody dispute with a former spouse, would you hire an attorney with experience in family law or would you trust your case to an operative with virtually zero mastery? If you were getting ready to sue your employer for unpaid wages or a toxic workplace, would you enlist a lawyer with a background in employment statutes or would you put your fate in the hands of someone who had never really practiced law? If you were a doctor being charged with medical malpractice, would you retain a novice lawyer who had never argued a case? What kind of attorney would you retain to defend your teenager accused of shoplifting? Or to represent you in a complicated real estate transaction? Or to handle a br...
Weiser’s record: The special prosecution paradox
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Weiser’s record: The special prosecution paradox

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice When a serial killer was working his way through the San Luis Valley, Anne Kelly's eight-lawyer office needed help. She didn't call the Attorney General. "That case was certainly a prime case for which the attorney general's office could have assisted," said Kelly, the 12th Judicial District DA whose office covers six rural counties in southern Colorado. "Instead, the Boulder County District Attorney's Office sent a crew of people upon the request of the district attorney and handled that case from start to finish. And that was really the only reason why that case was as successful as it was." The case was against Adre Baroz, known as "Psycho," sentenced in May 2024 for five murders in the San Luis Valley. He is servin...
Weiser’s record: A system falling behind
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Weiser’s record: A system falling behind

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice Every time a convicted felon in Colorado decides to fight their case on appeal, the state has to answer. Homicide. Sexual assault. White collar crime. Death row. It doesn't matter — the Attorney General's Criminal Appeals Section picks up every one. Thirty-four attorneys. Every felony appeal in the state. And for three straight years, they haven't been able to keep up. The cost of that starts before a single case is decided. The state tracks response briefs through mandatory SMART Act performance filings. One metric counts how many are overdue — cases where the office has not filed within the deadline set by the Colorado Appellate Rules.  The Attorney General's office sets its own annual target for how ma...
Federal Order Keeps Craig Coal Plant Ready As Power Demand Tests Grid
The Colorado Sun, Approved, State

Federal Order Keeps Craig Coal Plant Ready As Power Demand Tests Grid

By Michael Booth | The Colorado Sun Tri-State still doesn’t want to burn fuel at the northwestern Colorado plant, but is under emergency federal orders. A reluctant Tri-State Generation and Transmission is now burning coal and sending electricity out onto the grid from its Craig Unit 1, after the Western power grid authority said potential for outages at other plants meant the northwestern Colorado power is needed to balance regional resources.  Tri-State had long planned to shutter Craig 1 for good at the end of 2025, but federal emergency orders from the Trump administration required the co-op to instead to keep the generating unit in good repair and available to operate. Craig 1 had been available but idle in the first months of 2026, while Tri-State, the Col...
Weiser’s record: 27,000 complaints. 17 settlements.
Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Weiser’s record: 27,000 complaints. 17 settlements.

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice When a Coloradan files a consumer complaint with the attorney general's office — a contractor who vanished with a deposit, a lender charging illegal interest, a landlord who pocketed a security deposit without cause — the office receives it, logs it and adds it to a database. The complaint may help build a future case. It informs trend reports. For the person who filed it, that is usually where it ends. Coloradans filed a record 26,993 complaints with Attorney General Phil Weiser's Consumer Protection Section last fiscal year. That's nearly three times the number filed when Weiser took office in 2019. His March 2026 press release describes the growth as "over 200 percent." His office's own annual figures put the actual increa...
Weiser’s Record: The Lawsuit Machine and the Scorecard
Rocky Mountain Voice, Commentary, State, Top Stories

Weiser’s Record: The Lawsuit Machine and the Scorecard

By Shaina Cole | Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice Marya Washburn is a federal Forest Service firefighter. She was fired by Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins last year, right before fire season. At a January forum in Denver, Attorney General Phil Weiser singled her out by name as evidence of what his office has accomplished. "My office got involved in one of the 50 lawsuits we brought against this administration," Weiser told the Colorado Young Democrats forum. "We got our job back." It is also incomplete in ways voters should understand. The lawsuit Weiser was describing is captioned State of Maryland v. USDA. Maryland filed it. Maryland's attorneys drafted the complaint and argued the case. Colorado was one of several states that added its name to the filing. Weiser's o...

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