This story was produced as part of the Colorado Capitol News Alliance. It first appeared at coloradosun.com.
A former state senator who resigned this year amid an ethics investigation into her treatment of legislative aides has been charged with attempting to influence a public servant, a felony offense.
The Denver District Attorney’s Office filed the charge against Sonya Jaquez Lewis, a Longmont Democrat, on July 6, according to court records. Prosecutors didn’t issue a news release or otherwise publicly announce the case, which was first reported Monday by Colorado Politics.
Attempting to influence a public servant is a Class 4 felony, punishable by up to six years in prison and a $500,000 fine.
Court records show Jaquez Lewis’ alleged offense occurred between Jan. 31 and Feb. 11, which is before she resigned from the legislature on Feb. 18. Further information on the case wasn’t available Monday night and a spokesperson for the Denver District Attorney’s Office said he couldn’t provide more information until Tuesday.
Jaquez Lewis is due in court on Aug. 7 for an arraignment, according to court records.
“I’m sure when all the facts are known in this difficult and complex case that justice will be done,” Craig Lewis Truman, an attorney for Jaquez Lewis, told The Sun on Monday evening.
Jaquez Lewis resigned from the legislature amid allegations of mistreatment of her Capitol aides.
She stepped down when the Senate Ethics Committee, which was investigating a complaint lodged against her, announced that Jaquez Lewis had submitted at least one fabricated letter of support sent to the panel that purported to be from a former aide.
The aide from whom the letter purportedly came told legislative investigators that she didn’t write the letter and hadn’t been in touch with Jaquez Lewis for roughly a year before the missive was sent.
When confronted, Jaquez Lewis told legislative investigators that she was relaying information she had gathered from conversations in years past with the former aide. The letter, however, appeared on letterhead with the aide’s name on it and was written in the first person.
“She was a terrific boss,” the letter said. “I would tell anyone to work with Sen. Jaquez Lewis anytime and anywhere.”
Jaquez Lewis told The Sun at the time that the fabricated aide letter “was accidentally submitted” and that she had asked that it be removed from the public record. She didn’t respond to questions about whether she wrote the letter or whether she wrote any of the other letters of support submitted to the Ethics Committee.
Jaquez Lewis submitted several letters of support to the Senate Ethics Committee, several of them from people purporting to be her former aides. Nonpartisan legislative staff said that they couldn’t verify the authenticity of any of the letters.
Separately, the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office is investigating Jaquez Lewis’ campaign finance practices following a complaint lodged against her earlier this year following reporting by The Sun.
Jaquez Lewis sought to “cure” the alleged violations highlighted in the complaint — including accusations that she failed to report spending and spent campaign funds in unauthorized ways — but state elections officials said her campaign “failed to substantially (comply) with its legal obligations.”
Following the investigation, the Secretary of State’s Office will either file a complaint with a hearing officer, which could lead to fines, or dismiss the allegations.
Several of Jaquez Lewis’ former aides have come forward in the past 18 months to share stories of alleged mistreatment with the media. Two staffers who worked at the Capitol for her last year filed a workplace misconduct grievance with the legislature, claiming Jaquez Lewis used one of them to do chores like yard work and bartend at a party at her home.
The aide who did the yard work and bartending told The Sun he worried that if he did not accept the side jobs, Jaquez Lewis would not promote him after working for her during the 2024 legislative session as an intern.
The staffer said he was promoted after doing the landscaping and bartending work, as well as campaign work that he did at the senator’s request. But in November, the promotion was rescinded and he was let go.
At the start of 2024, the senator was removed as chair of the Senate Local Government and Housing Committee and blocked from serving as a lead sponsor of a wage theft bill following accusations that she refused to pay one of her aides.
In April 2024, Colorado Public Radio reported that four of Jaquez Lewis’ former staffers told the news outlet that “she withheld wages, set unreasonably demanding work schedules, and attempted to prevent them from communicating with other people in the Democratic political sphere.”
The aides and a former campaign manager who spoke to CPR were not the same people who filed the workplace misconduct grievance against the senator reported on by The Sun.
Democratic leadership in the Senate, citing the repeated claims against Jaquez Lewis, barred her from having state-paid legislative aides and stripped her of her committee assignments.
Then, in January, an ethics complaint was filed against Jaquez Lewis with the Colorado Senate by four of her former legislative aides and a former campaign manager through the Political Workers Guild, the union representing Democratic political staffers.
In a formal response to the ethics complaint, Jaquez Lewis said the accusations lodged against her by her former staffers, and the allegations of mistreatment they made in the prior year, were part of a veiled attempt by Colorado Capitol aides to get collective bargaining power.
“This complaint is no more than a compilation of incidents unsupported by actual facts that are meant to focus attention on valid universal aide issues by scapegoating one senator,” Jaquez Lewis wrote in her Jan. 31 response. “I am being dragged through the mud for political ends. With false allegations, the PWG is using me to showcase its concerns.”
Colorado Capitol Alliance
This story was produced by the Capitol News Alliance, a collaboration between KUNC News, Colorado Public Radio, Rocky Mountain PBS, and The Colorado Sun, and shared with Rocky Mountain Community Radio and other news organizations across the state. Funding for the Alliance is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
