District Attorney Carol Chambers displayed a serious lack of judgment in her conduct with a bill collector who was pursuing an Englewood City Council member and fellow Republican.
Chambers, whose district includes Arapahoe and Douglas counties, claims she really didn’t mean what she said when she left a message threatening to use a grand jury to investigate an Englewood lawyer representing the collection agency.
Chambers’ actions are being investigated by the state’s attorney regulation counsel on four possible violations of attorney conduct rules.
The matter began in 2005 when Wal-Mart gave a collection agency some bad checks that appeared to have been written by Laurett Barrentine, the Englewood council member. According to documents filed in the disciplinary case, Barrentine was a victim of identity theft. Someone had stolen her driver’s license in 1999 and used personal information to open a checking account and begin a spending spree.
It’s understandable that Chambers was sympathetic to Barrentine’s plight when they talked about it, reportedly at a political function in 2005. But what apparently happened after that is more questionable.
Chambers referred Barrentine to her husband, Nathan Chambers, for free representation in the collection matter.
Then, she left a recorded voice-mail message for the Englewood lawyer in which she said: “I am calling you because we are getting a lot of complaints from victims of identity theft that you are pressuring them, shall I say, to pay on checks that they did not write, that their banks knew that they did not write, that should be obvious to you that they did not write, and I am looking at investigating this with the grand jury.”
Lawyer Jonathan Steiner contends the DA later told him – in front of witnesses – that there were no other complaints.
Chambers told The Denver Post last week what she meant is that she was looking at the practice in general. “I wasn’t doing this specifically at him,” she said.
Given the powers that DAs have and the trust the public must have in their integrity, we look forward to a full airing of the facts.
