Free Republic

Governor Bill Ritter and US attorney nominee Stephanie Villafuerte had an affair as early as 2006, confirming reports circulating among political "in-the-know" for years... The Senate Judiciary Committee will review Villafuerte's nomination for US attorney soon. Senator Max Baucus created controversy by nominating his mistress for a US attorney position, making the Villafuerte's relationship with the Governor relevant. Greg Kolomitz, Governor Ritter's disgraced former campaign manager, first made the allegations in 2006, when he traded insults with Jim Carpenter, Ritter's chief of staff at the time. Now more staff are admitting there was an affair. If there was an affair,...

U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama questioned U.S. Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano this morning about the firing of a Colorado immigration agent and asked why the agent's supervisor still has a job, despite the agency's finding that he was not telling the truth about the accessing of a restricted federal database. "I am not personally familiar with this," Napolitano replied during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Homeland Security. "But I will become personally familiar with it." The exchange is the first public indication that Sessions is closely following the case of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent Cory Voorhis....

"You really should go read the John Kane opinion as opposed to just reading Vince Carroll's column," Gov. Bill Ritter told a KOA audience Monday, because Judge Kane's "findings were that nobody in the DA's office did anything wrong." By all means, let's review Kane's remarks last year regarding the contacts between Ritter's 2006 campaign and the Denver district attorney's office following an attack ad released by Republican candidate Bob Beauprez. The episode is suddenly relevant because President Barack Obama nominated Ritter's deputy chief of staff and former campaign worker, Stephanie Villafuerte, as Colorado's next U.S. attorney. As Ritter suggests,...

While the most transparent administration in history continues to stonewall Congress on its legal theories for supporting a would-be dictator in Honduras, dismissing a civil-rights case against nightstick-wielding Black Panthers, and flouting the plain language of the Constitution on the D.C. Voting Rights Bill, it’s time once again to check in on the president’s equally laughable commitment to disinfect the Justice Department, removing all traces of political taint. When it was Scooter Libby in the crosshairs, Democrats were awfully sanctimonious about the grave felony of lying to the FBI. (snip)Meet Stephanie Villafuerte. She is a former prosecutor from Denver, where...

Stephanie Villafuerte, nominee for Colorado U.S. attorney, owes the public some answers. A Denver Post story published Friday raised questions about Villafuerte's involvement in the response by Bill Ritter's campaign to the controversial accessing of a restricted law enforcement database in the heat of the 2006 gubernatorial campaign. Over the past two years, Villafuerte has declined requests from The Post to describe her contact with former colleagues at the Denver District Attorney's office around the time the database was accessed. But the Senate Judiciary Committee needs to ask her about it. The public deserves to know more details about the...

President Barack Obama's nominee as Colorado's next U.S. attorney told the FBI two years ago that she never spoke to anyone in the Denver District Attorney's Office about an illegal immigrant who became a controversial figure in the 2006 gubernatorial race. FBI interview summaries describe Stephanie Villafuerte as saying she had "no conversations" with anyone at the DA's office about the illegal immigrant, Carlos Estrada-Medina. But the FBI apparently never asked Villafuerte, the former chief deputy DA who was then working for Bill Ritter's campaign, why she left a phone message for DA spokeswoman Lynn Kimbrough that Kimbrough noted was...