The attorney for former Secretary of State Mike Coffman says an ethics group engaged in a “scorched-earth public-relations campaign to destroy” Coffman’s reputation and discredit the office.
But the director of Colorado Ethics Watch says Coffman’s defense is all “smoke and mirrors,” and the evidence is clear that Coffman is guilty of ethical violations.
Both made their pitches Monday in written closing arguments sent to a panel investigating an ethics complaint against Coffman, now the Republican congressman from the 6th District.
“Ethics Watch’s complaint — the first before this commission — is a pure partisan attack and is disgraceful,” attorney Doug Friednash wrote. “A finding of personal guilt against Mr. Coffman based upon such flimsy allegations of violations of technical personnel rules would ‘open the floodgates’ to future complaints.”
But Chantell Taylor of Ethics Watch said Coffman knowingly let a state elections worker and political ally run a partisan side business and that he improperly recertified voting machines from a company represented by the same political- consulting firm he hired to run his 2008 congressional campaign.
The Independent Ethics Commission is hearing the complaint. The commission was created through Amendment 41, an ethics measure voters approved in 2006.
Coffman, who became a congressman in January, had tried to stop the complaint from proceeding.
Both sides blasted the other’s performance at the March 6 hearing.
“Mr. Coffman’s testimony at the hearing removed all doubt as to why he fought so hard to stop it, why he flouted the IEC’s rules of procedure that required him to produce relevant documents three months earlier than he did, and why he tried to change the subject to Ethics Watch’s alleged motives for bringing the case,” Taylor wrote. “What the IEC saw at the hearing was the defense of a man who knows he has been caught and will say or do anything to avoid accountability.”
But Friednash said Ethics Watch’s “lurid crusade . . . expired in whimpering anticlimax.”
A ruling is expected this month or early next month.
Lynn Bartels: 303-954-5327 or lbartels@denverpost.com
