Recent elections

In the 2018 Democratic primary Weiser defeated state representative Joe Salazar, 301,354 (50.40%) to 296,551 (49.60%). Weiser then defeated Republican George Brauchler in the general election. In 2022 Weiser defeated Republican John Kellner. Certified write-in candidate Stanley Thorne received 1,772 votes.^[11][12][13]

Weiser is term-limited in 2027 and ran for governor instead of a third term as attorney general. The secretary of state certified the June 30, 2026, primary on July 24, 2026. A biennial HTML abstract had not been posted as of August 2026; candidate totals below follow Ballotpedia's certified figures. Secretary of State Jena Griswold won the Democratic nomination. Republican Michael Allen defeated David Willson. Griswold and Allen are the major-party nominees for the November 3, 2026, general election.^[14][15][16]

Legal services to state agencies

Before 1973, state agencies hired their own lawyers, which the Joint Budget Committee has said sometimes produced conflicting legal positions among agencies. In 1973 the state centralized agency counsel in the Attorney General's Office. Agencies are generally prohibited from retaining outside counsel except when the Department of Law cannot provide the work, in which case services are still provided under the office's supervision.^[2][7]

The Legal Services to State Agencies section is the department's largest budget block. In FY 2025-26 it was about $68.4 million, or 44.9 percent of the department's total appropriation, for an assumed 550,080 billed hours. Two classes of employees bill client agencies: attorneys and legal assistants. Each billing attorney and legal assistant is assumed to provide 1,800 hours of legal services a year. All attorneys bill at one uniform attorney rate. All legal assistants bill at one uniform legal-assistant rate. The "blended" legal rate is a weighted average of those two rates. It is the figure used to convert each agency's estimated hours into a Long Bill appropriation.^[7][17]

From 1973 through FY 2016-17 the department billed agencies each month for hours actually worked the prior month. Starting in FY 2017-18 the General Assembly switched to a common-policy model: each agency is appropriated hours equal to its three-year average of actual use, multiplied by the blended rate. The Department of Law then bills each client one-twelfth of that appropriation every month. The Joint Budget Committee has said the change gave the department more staffing certainty and reduced the use of higher-cost contract counsel at year-end, while making the actual year-to-year cost of representation less transparent.^[7] Payments are credited to the Legal Services Cash Fund created in Colorado Revised Statutes section 24-31-108(4).^[7]

The annual Long Bill footnote caps the rates the department may charge. For FY 2026-27 the General Assembly's intent is that hourly rates not exceed the following:^[18]

The prior-year (FY 2025-26) caps were $146.05 for attorneys, $98.03 for legal assistants, and a blended rate of $138.82.^[7] Rates move each year with salary, benefit, and operating costs. Nine clients each used more than 18,000 hours in FY 2024-25, led by the Department of Regulatory Agencies (125,265 hours). The Department of Corrections billed 27,416 hours. Statewide actual hours that year were 556,174.^[7][19]

Seat

The department occupies the Ralph L. Carr Colorado Judicial Center at 1300 Broadway in Denver, which also houses the Colorado Supreme Court, the Colorado Court of Appeals, and related judicial offices. The Attorney General's Office has used floors 6 through 10 of the office tower.^[20]

In the early morning of January 2, 2024, Brandon Olsen broke into the building, took keys from a security guard at gunpoint, started fires on the seventh floor, and fired a gun through windows. He later called 911 and surrendered. Sprinklers ran for more than two hours. Judicial officials told lawmakers that repair costs could exceed $35 million, with substantial rebuilds of the fifth, sixth, and seventh floors and smoke circulated through the HVAC system. District Attorney John Walsh later described the repair cost as "many millions of dollars."^[20][21][22] Spokesman Lawrence Pacheco said Attorney General's Office staff worked remotely and from the State Services Building and that the office did not lose critical daily-work records. Authorities said the break-in did not appear related to threats against justices after the court's 2023 ruling on Donald Trump's primary-ballot eligibility.^[20]

The office tower partially reopened to the public on October 8, 2024, starting with floors 1 and 2. Full reconstruction was projected into 2025. Joint Budget Committee staff later noted ongoing Carr Center renovation, including furniture, targeted by January 1, 2027, and a possible leased-space budget amendment.^[22][7] Olsen pleaded guilty to arson in 2025 and was sentenced in December 2025 to eight years in prison. Prosecutors had asked for 14 years. He also agreed to pay restitution in an amount set by the court.^[21][23]

Leadership

As of 2026 the senior officers of the department include:

• Attorney General Phil Weiser
• Chief Deputy Attorney General Natalie Hanlon Leh, who oversees litigation and legal counsel to executive and judicial agencies and may act for the attorney general except as to duties the constitution assigns to the officeholder personally^[24][2]
• Solicitor General Shannon Stevenson, the state's chief appellate lawyer under the attorney general's supervision^[24]
• Associate Chief Deputy Attorney General Tanja Wheeler^[24]

Named section deputies in department press releases, section pages, and legislative hearings include Nathan Blake (Consumer Protection), Scott Steinbrecher (Natural Resources and Environment), Jennifer Sullivan (State Services), Lee Reichert (Revenue and Regulatory Law), Kurt Morrison (intergovernmental affairs), Michelle Brissette Miller (Civil Litigation and Employment Law), Janet Stansberry Drake (Criminal Justice), and Jillian Price (Criminal Appeals).^{[25][26][27][28][29]}

The attorney general also appoints deputy attorneys general who typically lead sections of the office. The Criminal Justice Section must be led by a deputy attorney general who is a licensed attorney with at least two years of experience as a trial or appellate prosecutor.^[30] Designated lawyers in the department, including the attorney general, chief deputy, solicitor general, and certain deputies and assistants, are peace officers under Colorado law.^[31]

Statutory components

Colorado Revised Statutes section 24-31-102 lists the following components of the department, plus any other division, office, or unit the attorney general or the General Assembly establishes:^[30][2]

• Office of the Attorney General
• Office of the Solicitor General
• Division of Consumer Protection
• Division of Criminal Justice
• Division of Civil Protections and Rights
• Administrator of the Uniform Consumer Credit Code
• Medicaid Fraud Control Unit
• Peace Officers Standards and Training Board
• Financial Empowerment Office
• Fair Housing Unit
• Worker and Employee Protection Unit

Related statutory programs housed in the department include Safe2Tell and the Colorado Domestic Violence Fatality Review Board.^[6]

Operational sections

The department delivers day-to-day legal work through operational units it calls sections (statute uses the word "divisions"). The Department of Law's FY 2025-26 strategic plan describes eight operational sections, each divided into units.^[6][32] The Office of the Solicitor General is a statutory office rather than one of those eight sections. It oversees appellate strategy and constitutional litigation under the attorney general.^[2]

Peace Officer Standards and Training

The Peace Officers Standards and Training Board is a statutory component of the department and is chaired by the attorney general. Operationally it is a unit of the Criminal Justice Section. POST sets certification and in-service training standards for Colorado peace officers, approves academies, issues and revokes certifications, and administers training grants. Staff are at the Carr Center, 9th floor.^[6][42]

State Claims Board

The attorney general sits on the State Claims Board created in Colorado Revised Statutes section 24-30-1508. The other members are the state treasurer and the executive director of the Department of Personnel and Administration. As of 2026 the members were Attorney General Phil Weiser, Treasurer Dave Young, and DPA executive director Jana Locke. The board meets regularly to oversee the management of the risk management fund under section 24-30-1510. Meetings are scheduled in March, June, September, and December and are held virtually. A notice of public hearing is posted one week before each meeting by the secretary of state, DPA, the treasurer's office, and the Attorney General's Office.^[9][8][45]

The DPA executive director is charged with the efficient operation of the fund. For Claims Board purposes the fund pays liability claims and related expenses brought against the state, its officials, or employees under the Colorado Governmental Immunity Act, or arising under federal law, that the state is legally obligated to pay or that are compromised or settled.^[9] The attorney general, or private counsel with the attorney general's concurrence, provides the legal defense. Claims of $100,000 or more, and settlements of federal-law claims, require action by the board.^[46] Those payments come from the Risk Management Fund, not from the attorney general's operating budget. The Department of Law's Civil Litigation and Employment Law section advises the Office of Risk Management and appears as counsel on many of the cases the board considers.^[27]

State Personnel Board

The Department of Law represents respondent state agencies in classified-employee appeals before the Colorado State Personnel Board, including termination, discipline, and claims under the State Employee Protection Act (the whistleblower statute, Colorado Revised Statutes article 24-50.5). Revenue and Regulatory Law also lists the Personnel Board among its client agencies.^[39][27] An employee who alleges retaliation for a protected disclosure may appeal to the board within 10 days. The board reports annually to the governor on whistleblower complaints, hearings, and actions taken.^[47][48]

In its report for fiscal year 2024-25 the board recorded 36 whistleblower complaints filed, four evidentiary hearings on such complaints, and zero initial decisions finding a whistleblower violation. The prior year it recorded 44 filings, three hearings, and one initial decision finding a violation. Many filings were dismissed voluntarily, after review, or for procedural reasons (jurisdiction, untimeliness, abandonment, or failure to follow board rules).^[49] Those counts are Board statistics, not a win-loss rate for the Attorney General's Office. Most published ALJ hearings in the same reports found no statutory violation.

Two publicly reported merits findings against respondent agencies during Weiser's tenure, with Department of Law lawyers as agency counsel, are as follows. In Maes v. Department of Transportation, an ALJ found that CDOT violated the Whistleblower Act and the Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act when it reverted Marcus Maes from a trial-period supervisor job after he was interviewed in a civil-rights investigation of alleged racist workplace conduct. The board affirmed. In June 2023 the Court of Appeals affirmed, holding that substantial evidence supported the finding that the interview was a substantial or motivating factor. The remedy included reinstatement, back pay, a housing stipend with interest, and attorney fees.^[50] In Mendias v. Department of Human Services (2023), an ALJ reversed a disciplinary demotion at the Colorado Mental Health Hospital in Pueblo after finding a Whistleblower Act violation and later awarded fees. The board's FY 2023-24 annual report lists that initial decision as the year's finding of a violation.^[51]

When the Department of Law is the employer it is the named respondent. In Turner v. Department of Law (SPB 2024B079(c), March 2025) an ALJ affirmed the disciplinary termination of a certified department employee. A related whistleblower complaint in the same matter was dismissed in December 2024 after an unopposed motion; the Civil Rights Division had issued a no-probable-cause opinion.^[49][52]

Final board orders may be reviewed by the Colorado Court of Appeals. In February 2026 a three-judge panel in Strumpf v. Department of Corrections held that the board abused its discretion by excluding a hearing transcript that a former CDOC budget director had prepared after following the board's own instructions. The Attorney General's Office appeared for the department and for the board. The Court of Appeals remanded for the board to reconsider with the transcripts. The court did not decide the underlying disability-accommodation claim.^[53] In April 2026 the Court of Appeals in Anderl v. Department of Human Services affirmed the board's denial of a hearing on a probationary employee's whistleblower and discrimination claims.^[54]

Defense of the Department of Corrections

A dedicated Corrections client unit in Civil Litigation and Employment Law defends CDOC and its employees in 42 U.S.C. § 1983 prisoner suits, Americans with Disabilities Act claims, and employment and wage cases. The office is almost always defense counsel for the agency, not the plaintiff. Earlier administrations resolved large CDOC matters on the same docket, including a 2014 $3 million settlement over the death of prisoner Christopher Lopez and a 2018 State Claims Board approval of Aragon v. Raemisch, under which CDOC committed $41 million over two years to hepatitis C treatment (program funding, not a class damages check) plus $175,000 in attorneys' fees.^[55][56]

In July 2019 Weiser's office announced a $170,000 settlement with transgender prisoner Lindsay Saunders-Velez. In 2024 Denver District Court approved Raven v. Polis, a consent decree providing about $2.1 million to a class of transgender women plus housing and health-care changes; Department of Law lawyers, including Weiser, were listed as CDOC counsel, and Weiser called the decree a model for other states.^[57][58] A federal jury in Brooks v. Colorado Department of Corrections awarded $3.5 million in 2022 on an ADA meal-accommodation claim. The Attorney General's Office later sought remittitur, which the district court denied. The state then applied the payment to Brooks's criminal restitution; the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit held in 2026 that the judgment was satisfied.^[59][60]

In February 2026 Denver District Court held in Mortis v. Polis that CDOC's use of punishment, including isolation, to compel prison labor violated the state constitution's ban on involuntary servitude. The Department of Law defended the governor and CDOC. Weiser's spokesman said the office was reviewing the ruling.^[61] In December 2025 the United States Department of Justice opened a Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act investigation of CDOC medical care and conditions (and of the Division of Youth Services). That investigation had not produced findings or a consent decree as of August 2026.^[62]

The table is not a complete docket. It lists publicly reported CDOC defense outcomes during Weiser's tenure with named parties and amounts or injunctive terms in reliable sources. Amounts are as reported and generally include fees where the source does not break them out. The department typically does not admit liability.

Federal litigation against the Trump administration

From 2025 the office joined dozens of multi-state suits against Trump administration agencies. The Denver Post reported that House Republicans described Democratic policy and the lawsuits as "poking the bear" and that House Minority Leader Rose Pugliese said the cases "feel like more politically motivated" and that she wanted Colorado "to be careful continuing to put a target on Colorado's back." Weiser described the docket as responses to illegal harm to Colorado and said the cost was justified by federal funds at stake. The 2025 Long Bill added $604,491 General Fund for additional litigation resources aimed at federal-government matters, annualizing to 3.0 FTE. JBC staff later listed reversing that item among General Fund relief options. Democratic legislators kept the positions. Senator Jeff Bridges, then JBC chair, called the spending "an investment ... that will pay dividends in protecting a lot of the investments that we would lose from the federal government."^[74][7] H.B. 25-1321 appropriated $4 million from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act cash fund to the Governor's Office, with authority to reimburse the Department of Law, for personnel and contractors responding to adverse federal action.^[75] The Gazette reported in January 2026 that the second-term docket had "so far cost Colorado more than $600,000 in 2025" and that the legislature had authorized more than $1 million for the legal battles. Axios reported the extra attorneys at $604,491 a year. The governor's office said that since December 5, 2025, the state "has fought the federal government to save more than $868 million in funds." Weiser told the Gazette the cost was "worth it, since the lawsuits are meant to recoup billions in federal dollars earmarked for projects throughout Colorado."^[76][77] The office's public "Defending Colorado" list emphasizes federal funds it says it has successfully defended. It does not itemize the state's cost of the docket or outside-counsel payments.^[78]

The Colorado Sun reviewed the office's count of 66 suits (tracker updated through June 2026) and reported that courts had partially or fully blocked challenged policies, at least temporarily, in 36 cases, left policies in place in eight, and left 22 pending. The paper noted that most rulings were preliminary and subject to appeal, that Weiser joined other Democratic attorneys general on all of the cases, and that the 66 filings exceeded the 11 he filed in Trump's first term.^[79] Later cases included challenges to the relocation of U.S. Space Command, the planned dismantling of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, SNAP recertification demands, and withheld energy and transportation funds. A federal court issued a preliminary injunction on the SNAP "pilot" recertification order in January 2026.^[80] Critics, including journalists seeking CORA records, have asked what the docket costs taxpayers and how much of the relief is lasting rather than a stay. Those cost records remain behind the fees described below.

Criminal appeals and reversed convictions

The Criminal Appeals Section is the appellee when defendants challenge felony convictions. Reversals therefore often rest on trial error, not on the Attorney General having tried the case. Joint Budget Committee staff reported the section's brief backlog at 435 at the end of FY 2025 and 468 as of December 31, 2025.^[7]

In April 2026 the Colorado Court of Appeals reversed Letecia Stauch's 2023 first-degree murder convictions in the killing of her 11-year-old stepson, Gannon Stauch, and ordered a new trial. The court held that the trial court committed structural error by seating a juror whose son-in-law worked as a deputy district attorney in the prosecuting office. The El Paso County district attorney's office said it was disappointed and would consult the Attorney General's Office about seeking Colorado Supreme Court review. The Department of Law filed a petition for review on June 29, 2026. As of July 2026 the Supreme Court had not decided whether to take the case. If review is denied, the matter returns to the 4th Judicial District for retrial.^[81][82]

In June 2026 the Court of Appeals reversed the criminally negligent homicide conviction of Aurora paramedic Jeremy Cooper in the death of Elijah McClain and remanded for a new trial on a jury-instruction issue about the standard of care. The Attorney General had prosecuted Cooper and co-defendant Peter Cichuniec after the local district attorney declined and Governor Jared Polis directed the office to investigate under Colorado Revised Statutes section 24-31-101. The same division held that the attorney general had authority to prosecute on that executive order. Cichuniec's negligent-homicide conviction was also reversed for a new trial; his second-degree assault conviction was affirmed.^[83]

In July 2026 the Court of Appeals reversed David Alberto Garcia's Arapahoe County felony-murder conviction for a second time after an unredacted statement suggesting a confession was played to the jury, the same class of error that had reversed his first conviction. Coverage treated the mistake as the local prosecutor's; the Attorney General's Office was the appellee on appeal.^[84]

In March 2026 the Colorado Supreme Court, 4-3, affirmed a Court of Appeals reversal in People v. Day and ordered a new trial on second-degree murder and related counts arising from a 2015 Leadville death. The Attorney General had petitioned to restore Maria Laida Day's convictions. The court held that a defendant must be competent before a mental-condition examination and that the trial court erred by excluding expert mental-condition evidence based on noncooperation while the defendant was incompetent.^[85] In a separate 2023 U.S. Supreme Court appeal, Weiser argued Counterman v. Colorado. The Court, 7-2, vacated Billy Counterman's stalking conviction and held that true-threat prosecutions require proof that the speaker was at least reckless as to the threatening nature of the speech. Weiser said the decision "made it more difficult to stop stalkers from tormenting victims."^[86]

2024 presidential-ballot litigation

Voters, not the attorney general, filed Anderson v. Griswold seeking to keep Donald Trump off Colorado's 2024 Republican presidential primary ballot under Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. The named respondent was Secretary of State Jena Griswold. The Attorney General's Office represented Griswold. A divided Colorado Supreme Court held Trump disqualified and ordered the secretary not to list him. The Supreme Court of the United States unanimously reversed in Trump v. Anderson (March 4, 2024), holding that states lack power to enforce Section 3 against federal candidates. Solicitor General Shannon Stevenson argued for Griswold at the U.S. Supreme Court. The ruling is an outcome of Colorado's election-code litigation and the state supreme court's order, not a case the Attorney General initiated to "remove Trump from the ballot."^[87][88]

In a separate civil-rights defense, the office represented Colorado officials in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis. The U.S. Supreme Court held in 2023 that the state could not compel a website designer to create speech celebrating a same-sex wedding. Colorado later agreed to pay more than $1.5 million in attorneys' fees, less than the nearly $2 million originally sought.^[89][90] In Chiles v. Salazar (March 31, 2026), Solicitor General Stevenson argued for Colorado officials defending a 2019 law that barred licensed counselors from providing conversion therapy to minors. The U.S. Supreme Court, 8-1, reversed the Tenth Circuit and held that the ban, as applied to talk therapy, regulates speech based on viewpoint and must be reviewed under strict scrutiny. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. Weiser called the decision a setback for protecting children from discredited practices. The ruling was not a facial invalidation of all regulation of aversive physical interventions.^[91][92]

In Bella Health and Wellness v. Weiser, a Catholic clinic challenged a 2023 law that treated abortion-pill "reversal" as unprofessional conduct and a deceptive trade practice. U.S. District Judge Daniel Domenico issued a permanent as-applied injunction in August 2025. In January 2026 the state settled attorneys' fees for $6.1 million ($5.4 million to Becket and $700,000 to Alliance Defending Freedom). An Attorney General's Office spokesperson confirmed the fee settlement and otherwise declined comment.^[93] Shortly after Weiser took office in 2019, the office and Masterpiece Cakeshop agreed to dismiss remaining administrative and federal cases that had continued after the 2018 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, a Coffman-era case.^[94]

In December 2025 the U.S. Department of Justice sued Secretary Griswold in United States v. Griswold to compel production of Colorado's unredacted statewide voter-registration list. On August 3, 2026, Chief Judge Philip Brimmer dismissed the complaint with prejudice. The department appealed to the Tenth Circuit.^[95]

Consumer protection and antitrust

As plaintiff, the office joined large multistate consumer, opioid, and antitrust matters. Settlement money in those cases is deposited in custodial accounts the attorney general administers.^[2] In August 2021 Weiser and local governments adopted a memorandum of understanding to allocate opioid-settlement proceeds 10% to the state, 20% to participating local governments, 60% to regions, and 10% to statewide infrastructure.^[96] After near-universal local sign-on, the office said Colorado would receive about $385 million from Johnson & Johnson and three national distributors. Colorado's share of the Purdue/Sackler resolution is estimated at $75.67 million of a $7.4 billion national deal.^[97] The office's public dashboard lists about $880.6 million in anticipated allocations excluding a pending Albertsons amount; a separate office page totals $912.6 million including $32 million from Albertsons.^[98] Colorado received $31.7 million from a 2023 Juul Labs consent judgment.^[99] A 2022 40-state settlement with Google over location-tracking practices paid Colorado $8,326,875 of $391.5 million nationwide.^[100] Weiser led a 38-state companion case to the Justice Department's Google search-monopoly suit; a D.C. federal court found liability in August 2024 and entered a remedies order in September 2025.^[101]

In April 2026 a Manhattan federal jury found Live Nation and Ticketmaster liable for monopolization in a case Colorado and other states continued after the Justice Department settled mid-trial. The jury found a $1.72 per-ticket overcharge in 22 states; damages and structural remedies had not been entered as of August 2026.^[102] Opening statements in a 29-state consumer case against Meta over alleged addictive design began August 18, 2026, in Oakland; California, Colorado, Kentucky, and New Jersey tried the first wave.^[103] Other reported settlements include $24 million from Greystar in a hidden-fees case with the FTC ($23 million in consumer refunds and $1 million to Colorado), separate $7 million RealPage-related antitrust settlements with Greystar (November 2025) and LivCor (June 2026), a $45 million national Cash App/Block settlement (Colorado's $1,663,539 share is stated by the office), about $1.4 million from HCA over nurse training-repayment contracts, $400,000 from Dollar General, $1.35 million in restitution from Cobblestone Car Wash, and the office's first Colorado False Claims Act settlement of $400,000 from Instawork.^{[104][105][106][107][108][41]}

Campaign contributions during enforcement

In October 2022, during Weiser's campaign for a second term as attorney general, Colorado Politics and The Denver Gazette reported that people tied to Dish Network had contributed nearly $40,000 to Weiser while the office was examining whether Dish had overcharged customers. DirecTV and Comcast were in similar matters. All three companies settled. DirecTV and Comcast were required to refund customers or allow cheaper equivalent service. Dish agreed to stop assessing a $10 monthly HD fee for about 2,500 customers and was not required to issue refunds. Office spokesman Lawrence Pacheco said Dish had voluntarily ended the fee and that "there really was no investigation." Legal experts told the newspapers the contributions did not appear to violate Colorado ethics or pay-to-play contractor bans. Weiser's campaign said it would return Dish-tied gifts from August 2021 through March 2022 and that Weiser "refuses and returns any contributions from anyone tied to a pending investigation."^[109]

In June 2026, during Weiser's campaign for governor, CBS News Colorado reporter Shaun Boyd reported that campaign-finance filings showed about $75,000 from 68 attorneys at 12 law firms that were in litigation with the attorney general's office or had just settled. CBS compared donation dates with settlement dates and reported that 66% of those donations were made within four months of the settlements, averaging about $1,300. One example was a settlement with MC Global Holdings, a cannabis company that agreed to pay a $50,000 fine for misrepresenting the health benefits of hemp products. In the month before and the month after that settlement, 10 attorneys at the firm representing the company donated more than $6,000. CBS reported that the donations were legal and that the timing raised questions. A Weiser spokesperson did not address the timing and instead criticized rival Michael Bennet's out-of-state donations and a campaign-finance complaint. CBS reported that the campaign had not said whether it would return the 2026 donations.^[110] In a later interview with The Center Square, campaign spokesman Nate Jackson said Weiser "doesn't take contributions from anyone involved in active litigation against his office or who works at a corporation his office is in litigation with."^[111]

Attorney General Alliance conferences

Weiser chaired the Attorney General Alliance, a private association of state attorneys general. In 2022 Axios reported that the group sold high-dollar sponsorships that gave companies invite-only access to attorneys general, including firms that Weiser's office had recently settled with. Weiser told Axios he was not involved in Alliance fundraising, that donors did not set conference programming, and that "anyone who wants access to me can have access to me."^[112] CBS News Colorado later reported on the 2021 annual conference at the Grand Wailea in Maui, funded in part by corporate sponsors that included companies state attorneys general were then suing. Weiser held a campaign fundraiser in Maui the day after the conference. Former Republican attorney general Cynthia Coffman, who had endorsed Weiser's 2022 re-election, told CBS the events were educational and that she and Weiser paid for everything except food and drink. A former chair of Colorado's Independent Ethics Commission called the arrangement distasteful but said a legal violation would be hard to prove.^[113]

A 2021 campaign-finance complaint by the conservative group Defend Colorado alleged that Weiser's Maui fundraiser under-reported costs. The Colorado Secretary of State's elections division investigated and dismissed the complaint in March 2022, finding that the event was a short gathering in a public bar area, that the resort charged $437.50 for food and beverage, and that the space was not a reportable contribution.^[114]

Colorado Open Records Act requests

In June 2026 The Center Square reported, and the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition summarized, that journalists sought records of the cost of the office's federal lawsuits, including whether outside firms were paid. The office cited Colorado Open Records Act cost-recovery rules. A full case accounting was estimated at about $331. A request for outside-counsel contracts was first estimated at $289.59. Communications director Lawrence Pacheco said the office did not have a record that provided a detailed fee breakdown and that it could not give legal advice to requesters. Colorado law does not require agencies to help identify records. Jeff Roberts of the Freedom of Information Coalition said high fees impede access.^[115] In July 2026, after Weiser won the Democratic gubernatorial primary, The Center Square reported that the office raised the related estimate from $289.59 to $5,129.88, citing 2,517 invoice pages and 983 pages on appointments of special prosecutors and the time required to review and redact privileged material.^[116] There is no finding in those reports that the records request concerned spending by Donald Trump's presidential campaign. The dispute is about the taxpayer cost of the Colorado attorney general's lawsuits against the Trump administration.

Colorado Territory

From 1873 to 1877 the attorney general position was filled by the United States Attorney because the territorial government did not fund the office. In 1876 Colorado was admitted to the Union as a state.

State of Colorado

Attorneys general of Colorado

No.	Image	Name	Party	Term
1		A. J. Sampson	Republican	1877-1879
2		Charles W. Wright	Republican	1879-1880
3		Charles H. Toll	Republican	1881-1882
4		David F. Urmy	Republican	1883-1884
5		Theodore H. Thomas	Republican	1885-1886
6		Alvin Marsh	Republican	1887-1888
7		Samuel W. Jones	Republican	1889-1890
8		Joseph H. Maupin	Democratic	1891-1892
9		Eugene Engley	People's Party	1893-1894
10		Byron L. Carr	Republican	1895-1898
11		David M. Campbell	Republican	1899-1900
12		Charles C. Post	Republican	1901-1902
13		Nathan C. Miller	Republican	1903-1906
14		William H. Dickson	Republican	1907-1908
15		John T. Barnett	Democratic	1909-1910
16		Benjamin Griffith	Republican	1911-1912
17		Fred Farrar	Democratic	1913-1916
18		Leslie E. Hubbard	Democratic	1917-1918
19		Victor E. Keyes	Republican	1919-1922
20		Russel W. Fleming	Democratic	1923-1924
21		Wayne C. Williams	Democratic	1924-1925
22		William Boatright	Republican	1925-1928
23		Robert E. Winbourn	Republican	1929-1930
24		John S. Underwood	Republican	1930-1931
25		Clarence L. Ireland	Republican	1931-1932
26		Paul P. Prosser	Democratic	1933-1936
27		Byron G. Rogers	Democratic	1936-1940
28		Gail L. Ireland	Republican	1941-1945
29		H. Lawrence Hinkley	Republican	1945-1949
30		John W. Metzger	Democratic	1949-1950
31		Duke W. Dunbar	Republican	1951-1972
32		John P. Moore	Republican	1972-1974
33		J.D. MacFarlane	Democratic	1975-1982
34		Duane Woodard	Republican	1983-1987
			Democratic	1987-1991
35		Gale Norton	Republican	1991-1999
36		Ken Salazar	Democratic	1999-2005
37		John Suthers	Republican	2005-2015
38		Cynthia Coffman	Republican	2015-2019
39		Phil Weiser	Democratic	2019-present