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December 03, 2009 07:20 PM UTC

Sorting Through the Villafuerte Hype

  • 24 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

Adams County Deputy DA Paul Nitze with the best analysis of the brouhaha over U.S. Attorney nominee Stephanie Villafuerte we’ve seen, laying out the unspun facts in a column today:

Late in Gov. Ritter’s 2006 campaign, when GOP candidate Bob Beauprez knew he was on the ropes, he took a cheap shot at the governor, then Denver’s district attorney. Based on information he obtained from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent by the name of Cory Voorhis, he ran an ad claiming that Ritter cut sweetheart deals to illegal aliens charged with serious crimes…

Had it not been for Voorhis’ concerted effort to funnel the Ramo information to Beauprez’s campaign, it never would have aired. Voorhis accessed this information for an improper, political purpose, and most likely violated federal law in doing so. But Voorhis wasn’t the only person who accessed the National Criminal Information Center (NCIC) database that fall.

Just after the Beauprez campaign launched its attack on Ritter, someone in the Denver DA’s office also ran Ramo’s name through the NCIC database. And that background check coincided with a series of calls from Villafuerte and others in the Ritter campaign to their old office. While we don’t know exactly who requested that the check be run, the evidence strongly suggests that Villafuerte called First Assistant DA Chuck Lepley and a press officer about Ramo.

Since then, both Ritter and Villafuerte have denied contacting the Denver DA’s office about Ramo. They claim that the flurry of calls to their old office was limited to a possible security threat to Ritter, despite evidence to the contrary. Rather than simply admit the contact, they’ve stonewalled. As seems to be a pattern with the governor through his first term, the cure has turned out to be worse than the disease.

Dick Wadhams, Congressman Mike Coffman, and a substantial chunk of the Republicans in the state Legislature are now out for blood. With its breathless, scoop-a-minute coverage of the Ramo/Voorhis affair, the Post is eager to help them kill the nomination. Lost in all of this is the basic question of what’s best for the state.

We’ve been without a U.S. attorney since January, when Troy Eid stepped down. Dave Gaouette, the acting U.S. attorney, is a very capable interim head, but he doesn’t have the mandate of a Senate-confirmed appointee. Major policy decisions and new hiring is frozen until a nominee is confirmed…

I welcome a serious debate about Villafuerte’s qualifications as a nominee, her judgment during her long tenure at the Denver DA’s office, and her position on the policy issues a U.S. attorney must navigate. If there’s a pattern of deception or misconduct, let’s hash it out.

But let’s not follow the Post’s lead by allowing state Republicans to use Villafuerte as a pawn to air out their grievances against Ritter or weaken him for the 2010 campaign.

One of the few issues we’d take with Nitze’s analysis is his description of Denver Post reporter Karen Crummy’s coverage as ‘scoop-a-minute.’ Most of her stories could more accurately be titled “Dick Wadhams sends press release on Villafuerte” or “Republicans even more bombastic than yesterday about Villafuerte” than whatever she calls them, very little actual ‘scoop’ to be had here. Add in the practically identical cut-and-paste from Crummy about how her read of this three-year-old Beauprez hit job ‘doesn’t comport’ with the FBI’s conclusions, which appears in each breathless ‘new’ article, and you could pretty much write these stories for her.

Folks, we do make every effort to be fair in these situations–we still wonder why, given the glacial pace of U.S. Attorney confirmations and the relative ease with which they can be stalled, somebody didn’t do a better job pushing back on this stuff before it became a problem. We’re still baffled that Villafuerte ever made it this far in the process, because it was obvious (or should have been) that these questions would continue to be a problem for Ritter if she was the nominee. We agree with Nitze that the lack of communication from the Governor’s office doesn’t really help them extract from the situation.

But we’ve read all these stories from Crummy, and if there’s not a really big unreported fact lurking that somehow makes what the Ritter campaign may have done in self-defense worse than the Beauprez campaign’s original act of misusing law enforcement resources for political purposes, it’s just a load of Wadhams’ spin that the Post is subsidizing.

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24 thoughts on “Sorting Through the Villafuerte Hype”

  1. 1. Give Voorhis his job back. He was acquitted of the original charge, has no doubt learned his lesson about misuse of law enforcement data, and should be given a chance to move on from the passion of the end of a losing campaign.

    2. Strict memo to ALL parties who have access to the NCIC or other confidential databases that you cannot misuse the information for political purposes, even if it’s the middle of October and you’re down by 20 points. The Pols are absolutely right that the original offense was on the part of Beauprez’s campaign, and all Republican use of this against Villafuerte now is total hypocrisy.

    3. Confirm Stephanie Villafuerte as the next US Attorney for Colorado.

    4. Move on, Wadhams. Beauprez would still have lost and everybody knows it.

    1. I think beyond the political piece of this is the fundamental question we need to ask: If a nominee for US Attorney (regardless of party affiliation) purposely lied to the FBI in the course of an investigation, is that person still qualified to hold that office?

      If the answer is no, that she is not qualified, then this issue needs to be investigated and dealt with.  If the answer is yes, then these are just political jabs.  Assuming she did ask the DA’s office to collect the material, I think 90% or more of people would lie about it to protect themselves and those around them.  But 90% of the people are not going to be the top federal prosecutor in the state.   Personally, I answer no to that question and believe that she needs to answer these accusation in a straight-forward manner.  

      This, ‘I will answer questions after I am confirmed’ stuff is the biggest load of crap.  How convenient for her…

      1. Not even that dingbat Crummy has implied that SV lied to the FBI, has she?  Instead, Crummy likes to say that the FBI failed to ask the right questions and follow up on them.  You know, cuz Crummy knows much more about investigation than the FBI.

              1. ps Obama’s daily tracking poll rose from – 15 to – 12 this week.  I expected a much higher bump with the AFPAK decision.

                Don’t you think 40% strongly disapprove is a a signal?

        2. She denies that she called the DA’s office about Ramo.  The phone records and the note by Kimbrough suggest otherwise.  That would be a lie.  It isn’t too difficult.

          1. Did the FBI ask her that question?  If not, and it seems not, she could not have lied about it.  In which case, your baseless allegations that she lied to the FBI are over the top.

            1. Here is the text from Bartels first story:

              FBI interview summaries describe Stephanie Villafuerte as saying she had “no conversations” with anyone at the DA’s office about the illegal immigrant, Carlos Estrada-Medina.

              But the FBI apparently never asked Villafuerte, the former chief deputy DA who was then working for Bill Ritter’s campaign, why she left a phone message for DA spokeswoman Lynn Kimbrough that Kimbrough noted was about Estrada-Medina.

              If she called Kimbrough about Ramo (like Kimbrough’s note suggests), that would be lying to the FBI.

              1. If I called somebody and left a message about an issue, but never actually spoke to the person I called, I would honestly say that I had no conversation about that issue.  Has Kimbrough said she had a conversation with Villafuerte about Ramo?

                1. Maybe we could find out if she actually answered some questions about it.  That would be quite the Clinton-esque definitional defense.  

                  I agree with Gilpin Guy in wondering why the party, Obama and Ritter are so hell bent on getting this appointment through when it is clear that even in the best case scenario, this looks bad to the pubic.  Makes me think that there is something else at play here, like a political bargain made in the past that Obama or Ritter needs to make good on, even when it goes against their own self-interest.

  2. the stonewalling does make it a bigger deal than it should be. See Tiger Woods. Sure would have been nice if there was any record of alleged communication over a security threat. Regardless of what is or isn’t fair,  best case scenario now would be for Stephanie Villafuerte to do the I’ve-become-too-much-of-distaction song and dance and withdraw.  

      1. if the lie was to protect a friend?  I’ve always assumed, with no direct evidence, that when the ad ran, Villafuerte, or someone else in Ritter’s campaign, contacted the DA’s office to try to find out more info on Ramo.  I think it is safe to assume that at that point the Ritter campaign did not know that story would eventually become “ICE agent unlawfully accesses fed database for political purposes.”  Once that became the story line, a full disclosure of a Ritter campaign request would not only damage the Ritter campaign staff member, but also be a potential career ending problem for someone in the DA’s office.  My assumption is that even if Villafuerte or someone else in the campaign staff wanted to “come clean” it is not going to happen because of the negative consequences for a friend in the DA’s office.

            1. My point is we do need to determine if she did. And if she did, I think that makes her unqualified to be a U.S. Attorney.

              On the flip side, if she did not lie, then she appears to be well qualified and should be confirmed.

        3. if the DA’s office said something like…

          yes we were asked to review the files on Ramo and ascertain whoinhell he was…and when we couldn’t do it from our files, we accessed the NCIC and that’s when we determined that someone in the Beuprez campaign must have accessed the database illegally…etc and so on…”

  3. to save this nomination.

    Villafuerte had a job before this job and will have a job after this job.  Throw her under the bus and find someone else.  The Repubs. will dance with joy and shout about how great they are and oppose the next one but there are a lot of lawyers in the land and it shouldn’t be difficult to find someone just as good.  The Dems. are spending political capital to push through a nomination that smacks of cronyism and looking the other way.  They should cut their losses and look for someone else.  Standing on principle in these kinds of situations usually turns out badly I don’t care how innocent the person is.  She isn’t worth the delay in appointing a good district attorney or jeopardizing Ritter’s reelection.

    1. Whatever the truth of this matter may be, this is not a fight worth fighting nor a nominee worth fighting for.  She was not the best choice of the three USA finalists, and it seems a waste of time, effort, and capital to push on this, particularly when other capable (and more capable) candidates are readily available.

  4. “Had it not been for Voorhis’ concerted effort to funnel the Ramo information to Beauprez’s campaign, it never would have aired. Voorhis accessed this information for an improper, political purpose, and most likely violated federal law in doing so. “

    What a load of carp – Voorhis was acquitted in Federal Court of accessing that database improperly.  He was charged and found innocent.

    Had he not accessed the database, few in Denver would know of Ritter’s plea bargains for illegals.

    “most likely violated federal law”. Guess again.  Most likely he brought truth to light – Mr. Nitze doesn’t like it because prosecutors are used to being on the other side of the lens.

    As far as doing what is best for the state, maybe Ms. Villafuerte should pull out of contention, and allow another attorney without all of the Ritter baggage to step up so we can move forward with the process.

    1. Fun fact: in Romanian the word for the carp fish is actually “crap.” So my in-laws frequently offer me crap for dinner, and it’s considered a compliment.

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