New insider complaint alleges widespread coverups in Colorado Judicial Department

By DAVID MIGOYA david.migoya@gazette.com

• Oct 26, 2024 Updated Oct 26, 2024

  from The Denver Gazette

Photo: The Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2023, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

In an elaborate and precisely laid-out missive that stretches more than 330 pages — with better than 3,100 pages of additional exhibits — a complaint filed with three state commissions and the FBI alleges a far-reaching and ongoing conspiracy within Colorado’s judiciary designed to conceal years of alleged lying, retaliation and misuse of public funds that began when a purported contract-for-silence scandal erupted in 2019.

The anonymous complaint lays out how it believes officials ranging from Colorado’s Supreme Court justices, the Attorney General’s Office and a litany of others within the Judicial Department have allegedly misled and intentionally obstructed ongoing investigations into the scandal while ensuring additional inquiries into other details that were uncovered went nowhere.

Two of those justices — Brian Boatright and Chief Justice Monica Márquez — face retention votes in November for 10-year terms.

“There is substantial and reliable evidence that, for years, the Justices of the Colorado Supreme Court, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, and other public officials/employees have conspired to openly engage in a pattern of misusing public funds, public resources, and the authority of their positions to unlawfully conceal evidence of misconduct by judges, attorneys, and public officials/employees,” the complaint reads.

“This fraudulent conduct includes a pattern of intimidation, retaliation, and the misuse of public funds (in excess of $4 million since 2019) to negotiate general waivers/non-disclosure agreements intended to silence victims, whistleblowers, and, even, other public officials.”

The sweeping complaint was filed with the Fraud Hotline of the state auditor’s office, the Colorado Commission on Judicial Discipline, the state’s Office of Judicial Performance Evaluation, the Governor’s Office of Boards and Commissions, the public integrity section of the U.S. Department of Justice and legislative leadership at the state Capitol. None of those bodies, which all operate in secret, have indicated yet whether they will act on the complaint, or what action they might take.

The complaint lays out a variety of remedies it seeks that include the suspension, non-retention, or impeachment of the justices, a judicial discipline system that is free of conflicts, new and wholly independent investigations into the entire scandal. There’s even a call for a recomposed commission on judicial discipline because of alleged conflicts of interest intentionally put in place to ensure the coverup remains unaffected.

Copies of the documents were anonymously provided to The Denver Gazette. The complaint is not signed and efforts to confirm its author were unsuccessful, although several sources said it is a former high-ranking official within the Judicial Department. Denver Gazette efforts to reach that individual were similarly unsuccessful.

Judicial Department spokeswoman Suzanne Karrer said in a statement the Supreme Court is unaware of the complaint.

“The Court has not been notified by any agency of any complaints filed with the Judicial Performance Commission, the Colorado Commission on Judicial Discipline, or other agencies,” Karrer said. “It is our understanding that under CRJD 14 (Colorado Rules of Judicial Discipline), the Judicial Discipline Commission will not notify justices or judges unless ‘the members of the Commission have concluded that the allegations are sufficient to be processed as a complaint.’”

The commission’s work is secret even after telling a judge there is a complaint being investigated. Only public discipline outcomes under the current system — which occurs only after the Supreme Court approves it — are made public.

Voters are being asked in November, under Amendment H, to change how the judicial discipline system works in Colorado, making cases public earlier in the process and removing the Supreme Court from any oversight function except to consider appeals.

Several legislators to whom copies of the complaint were sent told The Denver Gazette they’ve not seen it as yet and couldn't comment. Weiser's office on Friday said the same.

In essence, the new complaint describes how officials, through money and influence, ensured any repercussions from the contract-for-silence scandal would be minimized and limited only to the most obvious participants.

"The Justices have reinforced a bastardized system where they choose their own investigators, their own prosecutors, their own judges/adjudicators, and their own appellate review panel all while simultaneously acting as their own legislature," the complaint alleges. "The Justices have destroyed judicial independence by becoming a law unto themselves."

The retaliation and misconduct have impacted more than a dozen people’s lives, reputations and careers through forced resignations and firings, the complaint alleges.

Ultimately the Judicial Department's intent was to keep any inquiry, whether by so-called independent investigators or any state agency, from finding any fault or culpability with anyone wearing a judge’s robe despite evidence suggesting otherwise, according to the complaint.

That all began with the revelation that a former Judicial Department official who faced firing over financial irregularities was instead given a multimillion-dollar contract allegedly to silence her threats of a tell-all sex-discrimination lawsuit that was expected to reveal that years of judicial misconduct was either covered up or handled gently.

At the core of the scandal — and the coverup, the complaint alleges — was a two-page memo outlining the misconduct the lawsuit would expose, a document the Judicial Department initially refused to release publicly and, despite knowledge of its existence, never told state auditors who were investigating the contract about the memo.

The complaint alleges the decision to withhold the memo from investigators — it became public in 2021 only after a newspaper reporter twice requested the document and was refused — came at the advice of Weiser’s office and attorneys there.

The scope of the complaint is enormous, touching on the first moments the Supreme Court made public comments on the alleged quid pro quo contract — the complaint says in apparent violation of the Code of Judicial Conduct — to the use of contrived evidence in the controversial removal of a state senator heading legislative hearings into judicial discipline reform.

The coverup, the complaint alleges, came at a price tag of millions of taxpayer dollars that included: nondisclosure agreements with employees in return for hefty payments, contracts for independent investigations that were actually overseen by Judicial Department officials tied to the scandal, and ongoing appropriations for workplace culture programs designed to further cloud what really occurred.

In the end, only former Supreme Court Chief Justice Nathan “Ben” Coats was publicly sanctioned for his role in the contract, an admonishment that came long after Coats’ retired in December 2020.

Two investigations — the complaint says in apparent violation of the Code of Judicial Conduct — concluded the contract was not a quid pro quo for silence despite evidence of the threatened sex-discrimination lawsuit in light of the employee’s firing. Coats maintained that he dismissed the lawsuit threat outright and that it had no impact on his choice to approve the deal, though he did not explain why he would approve it at all given those circumstances.

Neither investigation noted the employee — former State Court Administrator’s chief of staff, Mindy Masias — signed a nondisclosure agreement of her own before being awarded the sole-source contract.

Other key people behind the scandal, including then-Judicial Department Human Resources Director Eric Brown who allegedly authored the memo, have never spoken publicly or to investigators or legislators since the story broke, and subpoenas were never issued for their testimony.

A complaint filed in 2022 by a retired District Court judge with the discipline commission against the justices for having violated ethics rules by publicly discussing the scandal was dismissed with little explanation earlier this year.