Colorado is haunted by the ghosts of Watergate. Through his preemptive pardon of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford blunted the rule of law by preventing our country from ever directly addressing the wrongfulness of Nixon’s conduct and having public discourse as to what accountability was appropriate. The evolution of Colorado’s judicial scandal has been very similar to the chronology of Watergate. In it I have found my own spiritual camaraderie with Justice Melissa Hart’s grandfather, Archibald Cox. Like me, Cox was retaliated against and fired just as his investigation of Nixon discovered critical evidence.

The greatest danger to the American republic is not who voters choose to represent them but rather the selective enforcement or non-enforcement of our nation’s and our states’ public corruption laws and civil rights protections.  In his 1776 Thoughts on Government, John Adams stated: “A republic is the best form of government, a government of laws, not arbitrary rule. (T)here is no good government but what is Republican. (T)he very definition of a Republic, is “an Empire of Laws, and not of Men.”

During the past six years, the justices of the Colorado Supreme Court have consistently enforced what amounts to a protection racket in which they choose their own investigators, prosecutors, adjudicators, and appellate panels all while acting as their own legislature. The citizens of Colorado should be petrified by the fact that the justices and their co-conspirators have overtly endorsed a system where those in power may sit in judgment of themselves with license to violate the law, including their ethical obligations.

Voters expressed their desire to have an independent and legitimate judicial discipline system by approving Amendment H with a 73% majority. Despite this mandate, the justices and the Colorado Commission on Judicial Discipline’s members responded by rigging the newly created judicial discipline adjudicatory board and the judicial discipline rulemaking committee through the appointment of more of their cronies.

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At the April 28 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the reappointment of the commission’s Chair Mindy Sooter and its Vice Chair James Carpenter, it was revealed that the commission had summarily dismissed a 330-page anonymous request for evaluation (RFE) of judicial conduct. The anonymous RFE, reported in the Oct. 27, 2024 Denver Gazette, alleged significant misconduct by the justices and a conspiracy that includes the commission itself. Gov. Jared Polis’s re-appointment of Sooter and Carpenter despite his personal awareness of the allegations in the anonymous RFE is evident that Polis is knowingly conspiring to protect the justices and the commissioners. Although this is only the latest example of a judicial discipline system that has been degraded into being merely a tool for judicial self-protection, it is perhaps the most blatant abuse of the justices and the commissioners’ obligations to be fair and impartial as well as to provide an opportunity to be heard.

Through all the complexity of the Colorado judicial scandal, it has been lost that the commission has already proven sufficient grounds to merit the immediate suspension and removal of six of the seven justices. Through Matter of Coats, 2023 CO 44, a special tribunal publicly censured former Chief Justice Nathan B. Coats for his role in approving at a $2.66 million-plus sole-source quid pro quo contract intended to prevent former State Court Administrator’s Office Chief of Staff Mindy Masias from disclosing compromising information about the justices and the Colorado Judicial Department. It is uncontested that all of the Justices were aware of allegations of fraud by Masias at the time; that all the justices approved the Masias contract, and that all the justices intentionally concealed the Masias contract and the Masias memo from the Colorado Office of the State Auditor. Despite their proven complicity, Justices Boatright, Gabriel, Hart, Hood, Márquez, and Samour remain in their positions on the state’s highest court without the commission pursuing any judicial disciplinary proceedings against them. Moreover, with the support of the State Commission on Judicial Performance, Justices Berkenkotter, Boatright and Márquez all overcame 2024 retention elections without any acknowledgment of their own or their colleagues’ judicial misconduct with respect to the Masias Contract and its cover up.

During and after the 2024 judicial retention elections, it has been the justices’ publicly expressed position that any scrutiny of their conduct is an attack on judicial independence because of their purportedly brave hearing of Anderson v. Griswold, 2023 CO 63 (holding that Donald Trump engaged in insurrection; barring Trump from the 2024 presidential primary election ballot), reversed by Trump v. Anderson, 601 U.S. 100 (2024) (unanimously holding that qualifications of candidates for federal office are determined by Congress).

Instead of being a brave exercise of judicial independence, the justices’ hearing of Anderson v. Griswold was an unethical effort to politicize the court (which the justices would later use to justify their own candidacies for retention). Because the justices should have been accountable for their misconduct involving the Masias controversy, they were required to disqualify themselves from all pending judicial discipline cases and any other matters in which they had personal interests in the outcome.

On Dec. 14, 2023, as the Commission’s executive director, I hand-delivered a disciplinary notice letter to then-Chief Justice Brian Boatright via the clerk of the Colorado Supreme Court. The letter contained allegations of judicial misconduct by all of the justices as asserted by former 10th Judicial District Court Chief Judge Dennis Maes. Instead of disqualifying themselves as they should have done under Canon Rule 2.11 of the Code of Judicial Conduct, the justices proceeded to announce their opinion in Anderson v. Griswold on Dec. 19, 2023. There are reasonable grounds to suspect that the justices and those who assisted them in suppressing the judicial discipline process knowingly interfered with the 2024 presidential election for their own personal advantage. 

At the April 28 Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, I called for the non-confirmation of Chair Sooter and Vice Chair Carpenter’s reappointments to the commission. I also called for the Colorado General Assembly to pass a bipartisan joint resolution referring the Colorado judicial scandal to conflict-free federal law enforcement for further investigation.

Unless there is finally an independent, unobstructed, and legitimate investigation, Colorado will continue to suffer from public corruption, patterns of retaliation and arbitrary rule analogous to Watergate. Our last hope in protecting Colorado’s republican form of government is for our Legislature to exercise meaningful and legitimate oversight.

Christopher Gregory, appointed by Gov. John Hickenlooper, served as a member, vice chair and chair of the Colorado Commission on Judicial Discipline from May 15, 2017 through June 30, 2021. Gov. Jared Polis replaced Gregory with Mindy Sooter on July 1, 2021. Gregory then served as executive director from Jan. 3, 2022 until Jan. 19, 2024 when he was fired by Mindy Sooter and James Carpenter.