June 27, 2024 10:54 AM UTC

The Colorado GOP's Lawyer Could Be The Worst Lawyer Ever

• 2 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

Former Denver Post political reporter Justin Wingerter, now writing for BusinessDen, brings us up to speed on a lawsuit pending against talk show host, Republican National Committee member, and attorney for the Colorado Republican Party Randy Corporon. Corporon, as our readers know, is one of the state’s most strident election conspiracy theorists, and the defendant in a defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems former employee Eric Coomer. Corporon was recently in the news defending John Eastman, the Trump coup attorney working with Corporon on the lawsuit to exclude unaffiliated voters from GOP primaries whose license to practice law was just suspended, assuring that Eastman would remain on the case in an advisory capacity.

Although Corporon hasn’t been subject to professional discipline like Eastman or fellow Colorado lawyer Jenna Ellis who lost her license to practice law for three years, Corporon is an enthusiastic promoter of the “Big Lie” that the 2020 presidential election was unfairly decided despite the lack of any evidence to suggest that emerging after all these years of second-guessing. Whether a determined facade to maintain that Corporon really believes the falsehoods Ellis was forced to disown, which provides Corporon with legal cover should he ever face the same scrutiny, or Corporon is in fact gullible enough to believe that Trump won the 2020 election, his dogmatic clinging to the “Big Lie” invites questions about Corporon’s judgment in a broader sense.

And if it doesn’t, today’s story from Wingerter surely will:

On Monday, [Anne] O’Riordan sued the Aurora lawyer and KNUS host Randy Corporon, accusing him of ignoring obvious red flags in the days and hours before he unknowingly wired $375,000 of O’Riordan’s money to an account in Hong Kong at the urging of a hacker there…

In May 2022, the divorce was settled and O’Riordan was to receive her half of the estate, about $375,000. But when Corporon emailed O’Riordan’s divorce attorney, Danielle Demkowicz, asking O’Riordan to pick up a check, a hacker who had infiltrated Demkowicz’s email told him to instead wire the money to a bank in Hong Kong, where O’Riordan was headed.

“The emails were so ridiculous. My name was spelled wrong, it wasn’t my phone number, it wasn’t my email, the English was bad,” said O’Riordan, a licensed English teacher. [Pols emphasis]

If these allegations are proven, it’s an absolutely humiliating disaster for Randy Corporon, who was taken in by a scam that should have raised immediate red flags for any reasonable person let alone an attorney. For one thing, it’s common practice for scammers to intentionally misspell names and make other grammatical errors to ensure that only the most clueless dupes are ensnared. But even setting that aside, it’s completely insane that Corporon would wire a $375,000 divorce settlement to Hong Kong without double-checking directly with the recipient to ensure this was not a scam.

And it gets even worse:

When Corporon called his client — O’Riordan’s ex-husband — the client expressed surprise she was en-route to Hong Kong and questioned the decision to wire money there, the lawsuit said. But Corporon spoke with the hacker by phone and, convinced it was O’Riordan despite her accent, wired $374,290. O’Riordan is from Colorado and doesn’t have an Asian accent.

If Randy Corporon cared at all about his professional integrity, Anne O’Riordan would never have had to sue to get this money back–without which she says she could lose her home. This is such an obvious failure to conduct the most basic due diligence that it could be grounds for a complaint to Colorado’s attorney regulators all by itself. At the very least, consider what this says about Corporon’s judgment in the context of his continued insistence to this day despite any evidence that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” from Donald Trump. Irresponsible actors like Randy Corporon are why the falsehoods about Dominion and the 2020 elections go unchecked at the highest levels of the party. The rot goes to the top.

It shouldn’t be a surprise that these people are ripe to be conned by literally anyone. The Nigerian prince who needs help opening a bank account. The utility bill collector demanding payment in Best Buy gift cards. These are all scams.

Hopefully this helps. Don’t let it happen to you.