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Weiser’s record: The special prosecution paradox
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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...
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Weiser’s record: A system falling behind
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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...
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Weiser’s record: 27,000 complaints. 17 settlements.
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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...
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Weiser’s Record: The Lawsuit Machine and the Scorecard
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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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