May 20, 2025 • 18 mins
HOW MUCH IS AG PHIL WEISER SPENDING TO SUE TRUMP? Attorney General Phil Weiser has joined a slew of lawsuits (at last count it was 15 but today is another day) suing the Trump administration for a myriad of things he disagrees with on behalf of Colorado. I don't particularly want him to do any of this but he didn't ask me. I asked last week just how much he was spending to sue so many times, and Cory Gaines of the Colorado Accountability Project came to my rescue with this post outlining how many of our tax dollars he's using to do it. Cory joins me today at 1 to talk about it.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Just last week, I was saying to myself self, I
wonder what our Attorney General, Phil Wiser, who is also
running for governor, is spending suing the Trump administration. And
lo and behold, Corey Gaines comes to the rescue at
the Colorado Accountability Project, a phenomenal blog that he does
where he just popes the bear over and over and
over again, using their own statistics against them. He is
(00:22):
joining me now to talk about this. Corey, welcome to
the show.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Thank you for having me on.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
Well, first of all, I.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Want to find out a little bit about you, okay,
because I have been reading the Colorado Accountability Project and
now complete Colorado dot Com shares your work quite a bit.
How did you start this? What's your background? What made
you want to be a nerd to dig into this stuff?
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Well, I didn't start out this way. I actually, way
back in the dark initial days of COVID, started out
writing letters to the legislature, the leadership of the legislature,
saying why have you abdicated or authority to the governor?
And I kept getting, you know, like hear hear Corey
(01:06):
from Republicans, nothing from Democrats. So I decided eventually to
write my own blog and then kind of went on
from there. And I'm actually a teacher by profession, so
as I learned stuff, I like to share it. So
I was like, well, how do you do a record's request?
You know, how do you go look and find expense reports?
Things like that? So it just kind of evolved from there.
(01:28):
I would learn new things, I put them to work,
share them with people, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Well, and now, first of all, thank you for doing
this particular column, because last week I was like, you
know what, I mean, what are we in right now?
What are we in fifteen lawsuits against the federal government?
Last time I checked it was fifteen. Do you know
how many it is now?
Speaker 2 (01:47):
I think yeah? So when I wrote the newsletter it
was fifteen. I believe that we're up to twenty. What yeah,
I think we're up to twenty now. And now these
are a lot of suits that the Attorney General has
either filed or joined right. One of the things that
Attorney General Wiser likes to do is is attaching attached
(02:10):
caller rather two lawsuits that are already happening right by
filing a brief and then claiming, you know, hey, we're
part of this now.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Okay, So what are we looking at in terms of
taxpayer dollars that are being spent to sue the Trump administration? Because,
and I pointed this out before, I don't know every
lawsuit that Phil Wiser is either filed or is joined onto,
but I do know that some of the ones he
has joined on to have already there is precedents in
the Supreme Court that indicate to me they're going to
(02:40):
be losing suits.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Right.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
I mean, the President says the federal government can with
old funds in order to make stakes.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Do what they want us to just do.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
So what are we looking at and how did you
break down these costs?
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Well?
Speaker 2 (02:52):
So it's it was hard to get to straight away
to a number. Right. The best I could do I
had sent an a Corps request to his office and
got back in the Inner Office memo that his office
had sent to the Joint Budget Committee back in March.
And essentially what they were saying was is that we've
done you know, X number of lawsuits so far. It's
(03:15):
this many you know, it's this many hours that we've
racked up and this much cost, et cetera. We can't
continue this without more money. So back in March. His
request of the Joint Budget Committee was for the coming
fiscal year, about six hundred.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Thousand additional dollars, Yes, okay.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Six hundred thousand dollars, and that funds I think you
know it's got total fte of two point eight meaning
probably and I think when I I don't recall all
the details off the top of my head, but that
funded two high flying lawyers and perhaps some assistance.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Does that kilt?
Speaker 2 (03:53):
I mean, we do.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
We also know and this is separate from the state
that the city of Denver contracted with a Democrat concern
controlled law firm in DC to help them get through
this immigration stuff. But that's separate from the state fund.
I just wanted to make sure we mention that because
I know other people in the listing audience are going
to go, what about the million bucks for this? You know,
these attorneys? So this is just to fund the people
(04:16):
who already work here. Are we hiring outside help for
these as well?
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Hiring outside help?
Speaker 3 (04:22):
Ok?
Speaker 2 (04:23):
His office has already put in prior to this is
when I got that Corps request back. By that memo,
he was saying, I'm not sure exactly how they didn't indicate,
but somehow or another, they got win that a bunch
of stuff was coming out of the Trump administration prior
to Trump taking office. So you know, it's sort of
(04:44):
intimated in this memo that they had started gearing up
and have been probably paying attention since you know, January
twenty s after Trump took office, and they have been
working within house people. But in order to to continue
and keep the fund going, they do need to hire
some outside people or else they say it's not sustainable.
(05:07):
They're going to have to let something go, which I
would it doesn't come as any surprise.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Yeah, I want to.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Read this one paragraph from the memo. It says, what
does FTE stand for?
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Full time equivalent?
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Full time? Yeah, full time employee.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Okay, full time equivalent workload is presently absorbed by the
thirty sum attorneys assigned to this work. However, this is
an unsustainable model to continue. This is particularly true as
number one, the Department does not expect this new workload
to abate. Number two, the workload is anticipated to grow
if and when new litigation is brought specific to Colorado agencies, facilities,
(05:46):
or laws, and number three federal agencies actions delaying pausing
or canceling state agency and federal funding grants has not
stopped despite current tros and preliminary injections ordered by the federal.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
So essentially, what they're.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Saying is, we can't continue working this hard, but we
also expect to file more lawsuits.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Yeah, in essence, that's what I took it to mean. Yeah,
it was kind of funny to me to read that,
because you know, I mean, maybe if you run out
of staff or if you run out of money, you
might have to reprioritize, and that's something the AG has
certainly never been uncomfortable with. I can I'm thinking of
a time when they reprioritize their way away from helping
(06:27):
rural fire departments get money from Colorado.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Right, this is.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Something he's done. Why not here, Probably because it's not
politically advantageous, But right, I'll leave it to other people
to figure out what his motives are.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
So you've got a spreadsheet in here that seems to
show the Attorney General's estimate for what they thought they
would need as of March twelfth, of twenty twenty five,
And they did a pretty detailed estimate. And what do
people see when they're looking at this estimate of what
they started with and what they're going to need next year.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Well, by my reading, and some of these acronyms are
kind of difficult, but basically the upper part of the
spreadsheet that came out of this memo is, you know,
office supplies, you're gonna have new people, You're gonna have
to have a desk forum and I don't know paper
and pens and all right, that's what I take it
to be. Below that would be the people. How much
(07:25):
would you pay? And when I read that, you know,
maybe a senior assistant attorney general, two of them, you know,
it was like two hundred and sixty one k. It
makes me think that perhaps I shouldn't have gone into
teaching and I should have gone into law school. Well, Corey,
I think it's kind of a salary blows my mind.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
But wait a minute, you left out the best part.
Not only does that two hundred and sixty one thousand
and change, they also get fifty two thousand put into.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Their parent account.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
So you know, you can't leave off the pair of
contributions because any government employee, you can't just look at
the salary. You have to look at the long term impact.
Of that employee when it comes to the PAARA system YEP.
So essentially they're asking for how much more in the
next year.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
So next year, fiscal year twenty six, which would start
in July of this year, our fiscal years ago July
to June, that would be total. His estimate was six
hundred and four thousand in fiscal year twenty seven. That
goes up both in terms of money and in terms
of full time equivalent employees to six hundred and thirty
(08:37):
eight thousand.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
So that's not a huge increase. But my question is
what are we not doing in the Attorney General's Office
when we have so many people working on these Trump cases.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Yeah, that would be my question too. I saw an
interview with mister Wiser and Ryan Warner at CPR, and
according to that interview, mister Wiser said they hadn't short
at anything. Why I don't work there, I'm not. I'm
a little bit dubious about that, because I mean, I can,
(09:12):
like I said, there's been plenty of things that have
been reprioritized to use his term, away from the AG's office. So, yeah,
we live in a finite world. There's no magic. Something
had to have been cut somewhere or half assed. I
don't know.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Yeah, let me ask about the four hundred thousand dollars
slush fund that I guess the governor freed up to
sue Trump.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
Tell me about that.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
So I'm not sure if Wiser got the full six
hundred k. What I do know for sure is that
a bill passed out of the legislature, and that was
taking four hundred k and basically just giving it to
the governor in a in a slush fund and saying, here,
(09:57):
you have money. Now you can help support lawsuits. If
the Fed say we're not going to give you this
particular grant because you're a sanctuary state, you could use
that money to backfill That much did get given to
the governor by the legislature well, And one of the
(10:18):
things that was in Wyser's memo was it was in
a later another they called it a comeback request where
it was official that the Department of Law, the Attorney
General's office goes to the legislature and says, give us money.
They proposed a way to fund that, but it would
have required legislation. This four hundred thousand dollars legislation did pass.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Okay, so we know that at least four hundred thousand
dollars of taxpayer money in a year that we were
told was desperately tight and that we all had to
tighten our belts because we had to trim one point
two billion dollars out of the budget. They found four
hundred thousand dollars to sue Trump. Is that, I mean,
that's a fair assessment, right.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Yeah, And that one point two billion dollars shortfold ought
to come with an asterix on it, because the budget
actually grew this year faster than inflation, even though we
did have that shortfall of the budget went up like
three or four percent, which is higher than inflation. So yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
One other thing that's in this newsletter is about Attorney
General Phil Wiser using taxpayer dollars to support gun control groups?
Are those gun control groups in the state? Are we
supporting groups in other states?
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Well? So what it was this was sort of this
one little line item down way at the bottom of
this memo that I got from the AG's office, and
it was a table of different suits at the time
of the writing in March, and a couple of the
last items this actually occurred back in the Biden administration.
(11:52):
One of the things that Weiser has been doing was
he was signing on to join to defend, signing on
to help Joe Biden in a couple of gun control
lawsuits that had been filed. These had reached the appellate level,
and that was another one where the Attorney General signed
(12:14):
us on too. It because it's not something you see
a lot in the media, but our attorney general is
quite a gun control enthusiast, so I'm sure that he
was happy to sign on to help the Biden administration
with these lawsuits.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Well, it's funny.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Somebody asked on our text line how many lawsuits were
filed by Colorado during the Biden administration. I did a
quick google, couldn't find a single one. That's so weird.
I mean, cities sued, but not the state of Colorado,
because of course, the state of Colorado agreed with everything
that he was doing. So somebody just asked on the
text line, Hi, Mandy, I appreciate your guest. Is he
(12:51):
essentially doging in Colorado? I mean a little bit, But
unfortunately we don't have lawmakers that care about what you're doing, Corey.
They're not going to actually do anything with the information
that you're providing.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
I don't mean to laugh about it, but it's true.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
You know, I wish I wish that they did, and
not just me, but but other people that sort of
work in this alternative media space like Free State Colorado
is another good one. I wish that more attention would
be paid. And like I said at the start, that
was one of the things that spurred me to do
this page. Every time I would write the legislature, i'd
(13:27):
hear from the Republicans, I would hear almost nothing from Democrats. Right, well,
they don't care.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
One of the biggest I don't know's it's intellectually I
knew that this is how it was in Colorado, but
I got to tell you, seeing the you know, the
social media videos that were posted by Democrats in this
last legislative session where they were taking the petitions that
were signed against SB three and showing themselves making origami
(13:55):
or a little cutout snowflakes or.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
You know, doing whatever they were doing.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
With the those with those petitions really drove home how
little they care about the opinions of Republicans or conservatives
in this state. They really don't care what we have
to say, and they're open about it, and they're open
with their disdain for.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
The voters and they have no reason.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
To expect they'll be held to account for it, and
that's super frustrating.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Oh here here, And I would say that goes double
if you live in rural Colorado like I do, or
if you work in an egg because from the top down,
what you get is a big middle finger from.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
The state that is one hundred percent correct.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Today on the blog, I have a great column by
Rachel Gable and talking about the newest appointment by Jared
Polis into an office that is going to oversee much
of our public lands that are used by ranchers and
farmers and oil and gas is now going to be
headed by a person who is anti.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
All of those things.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
So the war against rural Colorado is now gone from
just a war against oil and gas to a roar
a war against agriculture and ranching at a level that
I don't think people understand.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
So to your point, yeah, there's a.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Lot of disdain in the front range by Democrats for
the rest of the state in my view.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Right well, and you know it's bad when a Democrat
themself acknowledges it. I don't know if you remember, it
was Senator Donovan Carry. Donovan Yep made a remark once
that I don't remember the exact words, but it was
something like, I'm the only Democrat down here and knows
what posthole diggers in the back of a pickup looked
like something. It came to that, right, right, which is
(15:37):
I think it's a big change from even when I
was a kid. I'm not being politically aware of my
whole life, but I do remember a lot more connections
between the Front Range and rural Colorade. I mean, it's
always been tension, but it felt like more when I
was a kid, as opposed to like the last ten years,
where it's gotten just completely disconnected.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
When I moved here thirteen years ago, twelve years ago,
excuse me, there was and I told people this all
the time. One of the things I loved about Colorado
is you could be in a nice restaurant and you
see the same number of people wearing cowboy hats and
belt buckles as you did wearing suits. Right, it still
had that Western feel to it. I do not feel
that at all anymore in the Front Range. And we've
(16:21):
seen in discussions about the National Western Complex and trying
to get the funding for that done, just to maintain
that connection to our agriculture and ranchers in the state.
There's been a lot of people fighting against that, and
it really goes to show that the people that live
in the Denver Boulder corridor really don't care about the
(16:41):
people who don't live in this corridor.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Yeah, I would agree. I remember hearing something that was
Colorado Springs City councilmen. I forget his name, but one
of the things the Springs is doing is taking water
up out of the Lower Arkansas so sink Rocky Ford
where we grow melon, et cetera. They're taking it up
out of there. And one of his laments was, we
use so much water for egg in this day. These
(17:06):
people just use drip irrigation. It's like, dude, have you
ever been in the field.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
Have you ever been to a farm ever?
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (17:14):
What's comical is when people who have never And I'm
going to use this latest appointee that Jared Poulis is
putting on this board.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
It's a friend of his.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
She used to work for wild Earth Guardians, one of
the most extreme environmental organizations out there. They believe that
all of our land should be rewilded and that we
should not have any farming. And I just want to
ask these people where are you going to get your food?
But I think the response is going to be I'll
just keep going to Whole Foods like I do now,
you know, I mean, the disconnect is so huge, Corey Gains.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
I so appreciate what you do.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
And I put a link to today's newsletter and people should
subscribe to the Colorado Accountability Project because you will learn
so many things that will make your head explode.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
But you need to know them right. You need to
know them.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Corey.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
Keep up the good work, my friend.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Thank you. I appreciate you having me on no problem.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
I'll do it again soon
Just last week, I was saying to myself self, I
wonder what our Attorney General, Phil Wiser, who is also
running for governor, is spending suing the Trump administration. And
lo and behold, Corey Gaines comes to the rescue at
the Colorado Accountability Project, a phenomenal blog that he does
where he just popes the bear over and over and
over again, using their own statistics against them. He is
(00:22):
joining me now to talk about this. Corey, welcome to
the show.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Thank you for having me on.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
Well, first of all, I.
Speaker 1 (00:29):
Want to find out a little bit about you, okay,
because I have been reading the Colorado Accountability Project and
now complete Colorado dot Com shares your work quite a bit.
How did you start this? What's your background? What made
you want to be a nerd to dig into this stuff?
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Well, I didn't start out this way. I actually, way
back in the dark initial days of COVID, started out
writing letters to the legislature, the leadership of the legislature,
saying why have you abdicated or authority to the governor?
And I kept getting, you know, like hear hear Corey
(01:06):
from Republicans, nothing from Democrats. So I decided eventually to
write my own blog and then kind of went on
from there. And I'm actually a teacher by profession, so
as I learned stuff, I like to share it. So
I was like, well, how do you do a record's request?
You know, how do you go look and find expense reports?
Things like that? So it just kind of evolved from there.
(01:28):
I would learn new things, I put them to work,
share them with people, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Well, and now, first of all, thank you for doing
this particular column, because last week I was like, you
know what, I mean, what are we in right now?
What are we in fifteen lawsuits against the federal government?
Last time I checked it was fifteen. Do you know
how many it is now?
Speaker 2 (01:47):
I think yeah? So when I wrote the newsletter it
was fifteen. I believe that we're up to twenty. What yeah,
I think we're up to twenty now. And now these
are a lot of suits that the Attorney General has
either filed or joined right. One of the things that
Attorney General Wiser likes to do is is attaching attached
(02:10):
caller rather two lawsuits that are already happening right by
filing a brief and then claiming, you know, hey, we're
part of this now.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Okay, So what are we looking at in terms of
taxpayer dollars that are being spent to sue the Trump administration? Because,
and I pointed this out before, I don't know every
lawsuit that Phil Wiser is either filed or is joined onto,
but I do know that some of the ones he
has joined on to have already there is precedents in
the Supreme Court that indicate to me they're going to
(02:40):
be losing suits.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Right.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
I mean, the President says the federal government can with
old funds in order to make stakes.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
Do what they want us to just do.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
So what are we looking at and how did you
break down these costs?
Speaker 3 (02:52):
Well?
Speaker 2 (02:52):
So it's it was hard to get to straight away
to a number. Right. The best I could do I
had sent an a Corps request to his office and
got back in the Inner Office memo that his office
had sent to the Joint Budget Committee back in March.
And essentially what they were saying was is that we've
done you know, X number of lawsuits so far. It's
(03:15):
this many you know, it's this many hours that we've
racked up and this much cost, et cetera. We can't
continue this without more money. So back in March. His
request of the Joint Budget Committee was for the coming
fiscal year, about six hundred.
Speaker 3 (03:32):
Thousand additional dollars, Yes, okay.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Six hundred thousand dollars, and that funds I think you
know it's got total fte of two point eight meaning
probably and I think when I I don't recall all
the details off the top of my head, but that
funded two high flying lawyers and perhaps some assistance.
Speaker 3 (03:52):
Does that kilt?
Speaker 2 (03:53):
I mean, we do.
Speaker 1 (03:54):
We also know and this is separate from the state
that the city of Denver contracted with a Democrat concern
controlled law firm in DC to help them get through
this immigration stuff. But that's separate from the state fund.
I just wanted to make sure we mention that because
I know other people in the listing audience are going
to go, what about the million bucks for this? You know,
these attorneys? So this is just to fund the people
(04:16):
who already work here. Are we hiring outside help for
these as well?
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Hiring outside help?
Speaker 3 (04:22):
Ok?
Speaker 2 (04:23):
His office has already put in prior to this is
when I got that Corps request back. By that memo,
he was saying, I'm not sure exactly how they didn't indicate,
but somehow or another, they got win that a bunch
of stuff was coming out of the Trump administration prior
to Trump taking office. So you know, it's sort of
(04:44):
intimated in this memo that they had started gearing up
and have been probably paying attention since you know, January
twenty s after Trump took office, and they have been
working within house people. But in order to to continue
and keep the fund going, they do need to hire
some outside people or else they say it's not sustainable.
(05:07):
They're going to have to let something go, which I
would it doesn't come as any surprise.
Speaker 3 (05:11):
Yeah, I want to.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Read this one paragraph from the memo. It says, what
does FTE stand for?
Speaker 2 (05:18):
Full time equivalent?
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Okay?
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Full time? Yeah, full time employee.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
Okay, full time equivalent workload is presently absorbed by the
thirty sum attorneys assigned to this work. However, this is
an unsustainable model to continue. This is particularly true as
number one, the Department does not expect this new workload
to abate. Number two, the workload is anticipated to grow
if and when new litigation is brought specific to Colorado agencies, facilities,
(05:46):
or laws, and number three federal agencies actions delaying pausing
or canceling state agency and federal funding grants has not
stopped despite current tros and preliminary injections ordered by the federal.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
So essentially, what they're.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Saying is, we can't continue working this hard, but we
also expect to file more lawsuits.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Yeah, in essence, that's what I took it to mean. Yeah,
it was kind of funny to me to read that,
because you know, I mean, maybe if you run out
of staff or if you run out of money, you
might have to reprioritize, and that's something the AG has
certainly never been uncomfortable with. I can I'm thinking of
a time when they reprioritize their way away from helping
(06:27):
rural fire departments get money from Colorado.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Right, this is.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Something he's done. Why not here, Probably because it's not
politically advantageous, But right, I'll leave it to other people
to figure out what his motives are.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
So you've got a spreadsheet in here that seems to
show the Attorney General's estimate for what they thought they
would need as of March twelfth, of twenty twenty five,
And they did a pretty detailed estimate. And what do
people see when they're looking at this estimate of what
they started with and what they're going to need next year.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Well, by my reading, and some of these acronyms are
kind of difficult, but basically the upper part of the
spreadsheet that came out of this memo is, you know,
office supplies, you're gonna have new people, You're gonna have
to have a desk forum and I don't know paper
and pens and all right, that's what I take it
to be. Below that would be the people. How much
(07:25):
would you pay? And when I read that, you know,
maybe a senior assistant attorney general, two of them, you know,
it was like two hundred and sixty one k. It
makes me think that perhaps I shouldn't have gone into
teaching and I should have gone into law school. Well, Corey,
I think it's kind of a salary blows my mind.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
But wait a minute, you left out the best part.
Not only does that two hundred and sixty one thousand
and change, they also get fifty two thousand put into.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
Their parent account.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
So you know, you can't leave off the pair of
contributions because any government employee, you can't just look at
the salary. You have to look at the long term impact.
Of that employee when it comes to the PAARA system YEP.
So essentially they're asking for how much more in the
next year.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
So next year, fiscal year twenty six, which would start
in July of this year, our fiscal years ago July
to June, that would be total. His estimate was six
hundred and four thousand in fiscal year twenty seven. That
goes up both in terms of money and in terms
of full time equivalent employees to six hundred and thirty
(08:37):
eight thousand.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
So that's not a huge increase. But my question is
what are we not doing in the Attorney General's Office
when we have so many people working on these Trump cases.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Yeah, that would be my question too. I saw an
interview with mister Wiser and Ryan Warner at CPR, and
according to that interview, mister Wiser said they hadn't short
at anything. Why I don't work there, I'm not. I'm
a little bit dubious about that, because I mean, I can,
(09:12):
like I said, there's been plenty of things that have
been reprioritized to use his term, away from the AG's office. So, yeah,
we live in a finite world. There's no magic. Something
had to have been cut somewhere or half assed. I
don't know.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
Yeah, let me ask about the four hundred thousand dollars
slush fund that I guess the governor freed up to
sue Trump.
Speaker 3 (09:34):
Tell me about that.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
So I'm not sure if Wiser got the full six
hundred k. What I do know for sure is that
a bill passed out of the legislature, and that was
taking four hundred k and basically just giving it to
the governor in a in a slush fund and saying, here,
(09:57):
you have money. Now you can help support lawsuits. If
the Fed say we're not going to give you this
particular grant because you're a sanctuary state, you could use
that money to backfill That much did get given to
the governor by the legislature well, And one of the
(10:18):
things that was in Wyser's memo was it was in
a later another they called it a comeback request where
it was official that the Department of Law, the Attorney
General's office goes to the legislature and says, give us money.
They proposed a way to fund that, but it would
have required legislation. This four hundred thousand dollars legislation did pass.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Okay, so we know that at least four hundred thousand
dollars of taxpayer money in a year that we were
told was desperately tight and that we all had to
tighten our belts because we had to trim one point
two billion dollars out of the budget. They found four
hundred thousand dollars to sue Trump. Is that, I mean,
that's a fair assessment, right.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Yeah, And that one point two billion dollars shortfold ought
to come with an asterix on it, because the budget
actually grew this year faster than inflation, even though we
did have that shortfall of the budget went up like
three or four percent, which is higher than inflation. So yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
One other thing that's in this newsletter is about Attorney
General Phil Wiser using taxpayer dollars to support gun control groups?
Are those gun control groups in the state? Are we
supporting groups in other states?
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Well? So what it was this was sort of this
one little line item down way at the bottom of
this memo that I got from the AG's office, and
it was a table of different suits at the time
of the writing in March, and a couple of the
last items this actually occurred back in the Biden administration.
(11:52):
One of the things that Weiser has been doing was
he was signing on to join to defend, signing on
to help Joe Biden in a couple of gun control
lawsuits that had been filed. These had reached the appellate level,
and that was another one where the Attorney General signed
(12:14):
us on too. It because it's not something you see
a lot in the media, but our attorney general is
quite a gun control enthusiast, so I'm sure that he
was happy to sign on to help the Biden administration
with these lawsuits.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Well, it's funny.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Somebody asked on our text line how many lawsuits were
filed by Colorado during the Biden administration. I did a
quick google, couldn't find a single one. That's so weird.
I mean, cities sued, but not the state of Colorado,
because of course, the state of Colorado agreed with everything
that he was doing. So somebody just asked on the
text line, Hi, Mandy, I appreciate your guest. Is he
(12:51):
essentially doging in Colorado? I mean a little bit, But
unfortunately we don't have lawmakers that care about what you're doing, Corey.
They're not going to actually do anything with the information
that you're providing.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
I don't mean to laugh about it, but it's true.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
You know, I wish I wish that they did, and
not just me, but but other people that sort of
work in this alternative media space like Free State Colorado
is another good one. I wish that more attention would
be paid. And like I said at the start, that
was one of the things that spurred me to do
this page. Every time I would write the legislature, i'd
(13:27):
hear from the Republicans, I would hear almost nothing from Democrats. Right, well,
they don't care.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
One of the biggest I don't know's it's intellectually I
knew that this is how it was in Colorado, but
I got to tell you, seeing the you know, the
social media videos that were posted by Democrats in this
last legislative session where they were taking the petitions that
were signed against SB three and showing themselves making origami
(13:55):
or a little cutout snowflakes or.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
You know, doing whatever they were doing.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
With the those with those petitions really drove home how
little they care about the opinions of Republicans or conservatives
in this state. They really don't care what we have
to say, and they're open about it, and they're open
with their disdain for.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
The voters and they have no reason.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
To expect they'll be held to account for it, and
that's super frustrating.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Oh here here, And I would say that goes double
if you live in rural Colorado like I do, or
if you work in an egg because from the top down,
what you get is a big middle finger from.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
The state that is one hundred percent correct.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Today on the blog, I have a great column by
Rachel Gable and talking about the newest appointment by Jared
Polis into an office that is going to oversee much
of our public lands that are used by ranchers and
farmers and oil and gas is now going to be
headed by a person who is anti.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
All of those things.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
So the war against rural Colorado is now gone from
just a war against oil and gas to a roar
a war against agriculture and ranching at a level that
I don't think people understand.
Speaker 3 (15:05):
So to your point, yeah, there's a.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Lot of disdain in the front range by Democrats for
the rest of the state in my view.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Right well, and you know it's bad when a Democrat
themself acknowledges it. I don't know if you remember, it
was Senator Donovan Carry. Donovan Yep made a remark once
that I don't remember the exact words, but it was
something like, I'm the only Democrat down here and knows
what posthole diggers in the back of a pickup looked
like something. It came to that, right, right, which is
(15:37):
I think it's a big change from even when I
was a kid. I'm not being politically aware of my
whole life, but I do remember a lot more connections
between the Front Range and rural Colorade. I mean, it's
always been tension, but it felt like more when I
was a kid, as opposed to like the last ten years,
where it's gotten just completely disconnected.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
When I moved here thirteen years ago, twelve years ago,
excuse me, there was and I told people this all
the time. One of the things I loved about Colorado
is you could be in a nice restaurant and you
see the same number of people wearing cowboy hats and
belt buckles as you did wearing suits. Right, it still
had that Western feel to it. I do not feel
that at all anymore in the Front Range. And we've
(16:21):
seen in discussions about the National Western Complex and trying
to get the funding for that done, just to maintain
that connection to our agriculture and ranchers in the state.
There's been a lot of people fighting against that, and
it really goes to show that the people that live
in the Denver Boulder corridor really don't care about the
(16:41):
people who don't live in this corridor.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Yeah, I would agree. I remember hearing something that was
Colorado Springs City councilmen. I forget his name, but one
of the things the Springs is doing is taking water
up out of the Lower Arkansas so sink Rocky Ford
where we grow melon, et cetera. They're taking it up
out of there. And one of his laments was, we
use so much water for egg in this day. These
(17:06):
people just use drip irrigation. It's like, dude, have you
ever been in the field.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
Have you ever been to a farm ever?
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (17:14):
What's comical is when people who have never And I'm
going to use this latest appointee that Jared Poulis is
putting on this board.
Speaker 3 (17:22):
It's a friend of his.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
She used to work for wild Earth Guardians, one of
the most extreme environmental organizations out there. They believe that
all of our land should be rewilded and that we
should not have any farming. And I just want to
ask these people where are you going to get your food?
But I think the response is going to be I'll
just keep going to Whole Foods like I do now,
you know, I mean, the disconnect is so huge, Corey Gains.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
I so appreciate what you do.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
And I put a link to today's newsletter and people should
subscribe to the Colorado Accountability Project because you will learn
so many things that will make your head explode.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
But you need to know them right. You need to
know them.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Corey.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
Keep up the good work, my friend.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
Thank you. I appreciate you having me on no problem.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
I'll do it again soon
The Mandy Connell Podcast News
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Amy Robach & T.J. Holmes present: Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial
Introducing… Aubrey O’Day Diddy’s former protege, television personality, platinum selling music artist, Danity Kane alum Aubrey O’Day joins veteran journalists Amy Robach and TJ Holmes to provide a unique perspective on the trial that has captivated the attention of the nation. Join them throughout the trial as they discuss, debate, and dissect every detail, every aspect of the proceedings. Aubrey will offer her opinions and expertise, as only she is qualified to do given her first-hand knowledge. From her days on Making the Band, as she emerged as the breakout star, the truth of the situation would be the opposite of the glitz and glamour. Listen throughout every minute of the trial, for this exclusive coverage. Amy Robach and TJ Holmes present Aubrey O’Day, Covering the Diddy Trial, an iHeartRadio podcast.
Good Hang with Amy Poehler
Come hang with Amy Poehler. Each week on her podcast, she'll welcome celebrities and fun people to her studio. They'll share stories about their careers, mutual friends, shared enthusiasms, and most importantly, what's been making them laugh. This podcast is not about trying to make you better or giving advice. Amy just wants to have a good time.