Sen. Sonya Jaquez Lewis, D-Longmont, who is under investigation for violating Senate ethics rules, announced her resignation on Tuesday morning.

Her resignation comes in the wake of allegations that she “fabricated” at least one letter of support from a former aide in her 17-page response to the ethics committee on Jan. 31. Questions have also been raised about the authenticity of four other letters of support.

Her resignation was effective Monday night at 7:15 p.m., according to the Senate ethics committee, which met on Tuesday morning.

Jaquez Lewis was reelected to her second and final term in the state Senate last November.

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The ethics investigation alleged that Jaquez Lewis mistreated her aides and interns. Five former aides filed a complaint through the Political Workers Guild in January.

The ethics committee disbanded on Tuesday in the wake of the senator’s resignation.

On Feb. 11, the committee discussed Jaquez Lewis’ response, including five letters of support she sent.

However, one of the former aides, Anna McLean, emailed Senate President James Coleman and the committee that same day, according to Ed DeCecco, the director of the Office of Legislative Legal Services.

“I was dumbfounded to hear my own name” in relation to those letters of support, she wrote. The tone of the letter was “offensive in tone and substance” and mentioned her children, McLean wrote.

Coleman directed Ben FitzSimons, the Office of Legislative Workplace Relations director, to contact McLean about the letter.

According to DeCecco, McLean told FitzSimons, as well as in her Feb. 11 email, that she had not spoken to Jaquez Lewis in a year and was not the author of the letter purported to be in her name.

DeCecco said that Jaquez Lewis told FitzSimons the “letter was information she had from Ms. McLean from years ago, and that she stated the letter was based on conversations they had. Director FitzSimons determined that it was more likely than not that she had not, that Ms. McLean did not write the letter of support, and indeed it was done without her knowledge or consent.”

Considering that information, Ethics Committee Chair Sen. Julie Gonzales, D-Denver, directed DeCecco to contact the four other people who allegedly submitted letters of support to ask them to verify they’d written the letters attributed to them, but none of them responded.

Jaquez Lewis was told she would have to provide documentary proof that those other individuals had written those letters, with a deadline of 2 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 17.

She resigned Monday night.

“We serve to uphold the public interest and to act in with integrity in alignment with our democratic ideals,” Gonzales said on Tuesday. “Candidly, it shouldn’t take a Senate rule to treat your staff, your colleagues, and your constituents with dignity and respect. It shouldn’t require a written Senate rule to treat this office with the honor and the respect it requires in service of one’s constituents.”

Gonzales also thanked the aides and the Political Workers Guild for bringing the complaint forward.

“I hope as we conclude our work as a Senate committee on ethics, that each one of us remembers that this work is much bigger than any one of us, but any one of us has the opportunity to advance and uphold integrity by our actions,” Gonzales said.

The Political Workers Guild submitted a request in December for Jaquez Lewis to resign, and in lieu of that, called for an ethics investigation.

Sen. Dylan Roberts, D-Frisco, a former assistant district attorney, said that not only did Jaquez Lewis “fabricate” the letter but that it could be a violation of Colorado state law, along with other potential violations of campaign finance and other laws.

“I hope this isn’t the end of the discussion,” Roberts said, adding what Jaquez Lewis is alleged to have done should be further examined by the public, by other legislative leaders, and by everyone else over the coming months.

While noting it wasn’t in Jaquez Lewis’ response, Roberts said he was sorry for how those aides and interns were treated in her office.

“We have a responsibility to make sure that’s corrected and improved. We have to do better,” Roberts said. 

In her announcement on her SonyaforColorado Facebook page, Jaquez Lewis said she will serve with “a regional not-for-profit that focuses on developing future women and LGBTQ+ leaders through an International lens.”

She didn’t mention the ethics investigation in her announcement.

After last week’s ethics committee meeting, in which fellow Democrats criticized Jaquez Lewis over her response to the ethics complaint, the legislator stopped coming to the state Capitol. She was excused from Wednesday through Friday, including Thursday, when the Senate debated Senate Bill 3, which would ban detachable magazines in guns. Jaquez Lewis, a co-sponsor of the bill, was considered key support on what’s expected to be a close vote on the bill, scheduled for Tuesday morning. Gonzales is one of the bill’s two prime sponsors in the Senate.

“Serving the people of Colorado as an Elected Official from Senate District 17, Longmont, Lafayette and Erie has been the honor of a lifetime,” Jaquez Lewis wrote on the Facebook page. “I have served my constituents with pride and productivity. I have passed an enormous amount of legislation and policy that hopefully benefits every citizen of Colorado, and some have become national benchmarks.”

She wrote that being in the legislature has been a tough job “emotionally, physically and financially.”

She added: “My family and I have made great sacrifices over the last 7 years. I have accomplished more legislative goals and helped more folks in their everyday lives than I ever could have dreamed of. I am ready for some real and true time off.”

A vacancy committee will choose Jaquez Lewis’ replacement.