Last week, Democratic Senate candidate John Hickenlooper was found in violation of a state ban on accepting personal gifts while in office. This week he is blaming those violations on Republicans.
Hickenlooper, the former governor and a failed presidential candidate, accepted a flight on a campaign donor’s private jet and the use of a Maserati limousine while attending a conference in Italy while he was governor, The Daily Wire previously reported. Hickenlooper was found guilty of ethics violations by the Colorado Independent Ethics Commission, yet he now blames the violations on Republicans.
The Washington Free Beacon reported that Hickenlooper referred to his ethics conviction as Republican “smear attacks” during the Democratic Senate primary debate in Colorado on Tuesday.
“These allegations were waged by a dark-money Republican group and they’re going to lay attacks and millions of dollars of smear ads against whoever the Democratic candidate is,” Hickenlooper said after his primary opponent, former Democratic Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, demanded he drop out of the race.
As noted by the Free Beacon, the “allegations against Hickenlooper were first submitted to the nonpartisan commission in 2018 by the Public Trust Institute, a watchdog group founded by former Republican Colorado House speaker Frank McNulty.”
The Ethics Commission, however, is not partisan.
Romanoff said Hickenlooper was “the first person ever held in contempt by an independent ethics commission” after the former governor initially refused to testify at the hearing despite a subpoena.
“Now, when he breaks the law, [he] refuses to apologize, defies a subpoena,” Romanoff said at the debate. “You heard John blame the Republicans, you heard him blame the staff, I suppose he even blames the [ethics] commission, which includes his own appointees who ruled against him.”
More from the Free Beacon:
The Colorado Springs Gazette editorial board also came out against Hickenlooper’s candidacy on Tuesday, writing that a “politician proven susceptible to inappropriate gifts by corporations is the last thing Colorado needs in Washington.”
Hickenlooper’s sentencing is scheduled for Friday, and he faces fines of up to twice the value of the illicit gifts as well as sanctions for the contempt charge.
The Colorado Sun previously reported that Hickenlooper also accepted three flights on friends’ private jets, though the Colorado Independent Ethics Commission didn’t find those violated the state’s ban on receiving gifts.
“The verdict in the case — the state’s most high-profile ethics trial since voters approved the ban in 2006 — came after a two-day hearing that started dramatically with Hickenlooper refusing to testify and being held in contempt. The commission delayed a decision about potential sanctions for the ethics violations and the contempt charge to June 12, but he faces a fine that amounts to double the benefits he received,” the Sun reported.
Commission member and former U.S. attorney Bill Leone, who voted to find Hickenlooper in violation, told the Sun that if the candidate’s actions were allowed to go unchecked, voters would lose confidence in the government.
“If we allow this kind of special privately financed treatment for elected officials, it just accentuates the cynicism in the public that led to Amendment 41,” Leone said.
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