Colorados Democratic attorney general, Phil Weiser, has built a political brand on suing Donald Trump, but now appears reluctant to show taxpayers what his crusade is costing them.
According to WND, Weiser has either initiated or joined at least 66 lawsuits targeting the president, turning sue-President-Trump-for-everything into a defining feature of his tenure and now his campaign for governor. A commentary from the free-market Independence Institute even quipped that Weiser is running for the Independence Institutes Californian of the Year Award. He wants to pull the same stunt in Colorado, underscoring conservative fears that the state is being pushed toward California-style leftism through the courts rather than through accountable legislation.
Weisers legal activism has not been confined to narrow technical disputes but has extended into core questions of federal authority, from budgeting decisions in the Executive Branch to the enforcement of national border and immigration laws. In effect, he has sought to substitute the judgment of a partisan state attorney general for that of a duly elected president, a tactic so aggressive that Congress has already weighed whether to intervene in his scheming.
The broader pattern has drawn national attention from conservative legal watchdogs. It was reported that America First Legal, the nonprofit founded by former Trump adviser Stephen Miller, is urging House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, to investigate coordinated lawfare by Democrat-led states as part of a broader campaign to block Trump and his policy agenda.
Yet when it comes to the price tag of this political lawfare, Weisers office has turned opaque. Despite his public boasting about suing Trump, he has delayed the release of public records that would show how much taxpayer money has been poured into his anti-Trump litigation machine.
The Center Square, a watchdog news outlet, reported that Weiser, one of the political leaders in Colorado fighting to make that state more extremist than California, has made his lawsuits against Trump a central plank of his gubernatorial campaign. He has repeatedly bragged about his attacks on the president, but when pressed for documentation, his office erected financial and procedural barriers that appear designed to stall disclosure until after key political dates.
The Center Square requested a full list of cases in April, but the cases are held behind a $330.96 paywall. Public records that would reveal payments to outside counsel are being held behind a $289.59 paywall, the Center Square confirmed. For nearly two months, Weisers office has declined to answer how the fees were calculated, raising questions about whether the charges are legitimate cost-recovery or a pretext to obstruct public scrutiny.
The stonewalling has been unusually brazen even by bureaucratic standards. Communications director Lawrence Pacheco delayed processing the request and has repeatedly refused to accept payment of the unexplained fees, the report confirmed, effectively blocking access to the records while maintaining the fiction that they are available for a price.
Colorados open-records law is not ambiguous about the governments obligations. The Center Square revealed that state law requires the release of public records within three working days, with agencies allowed an extension of up to seven days only if extenuating circumstances exist, such as when responding would significantly interfere with an employees other public duties.
Pacheco invoked that extenuating circumstances clause, but only near the end of Juneroughly two months after the original request was filed. On at least five occasions, he has ignored requests for a timeline estimate, even though records show taxpayers paid Pacheco $186,840 last year specifically to respond to media inquiries and facilitate transparency.
Conservative leaders in Colorado see the maneuvering as a deliberate attempt to hide the financial consequences of Weisers partisan agenda. Im amazed that theyre trying to conceal public documents like this, said Dick Wadhams, former chair of the Colorado Republican Party, told the Center Square. What are they afraid of? If (Weiser) is going to brag about all these lawsuits, he damn well ought to share all the information with the public.
Jon Caldara, president of the Independence Institute, framed the issue as a classic case of unaccountable government power. Government that isnt transparent is always going to be corrupted, he said, noting that Every minute theres a new press release or a press conference (from Weiser) on how hes saving us from Trump. It sure seems like, well, thats nice, but whats it costing me for you to sue Trump all the time? Maybe they are spectacular lawsuits. Maybe theyre worth every penny. Maybe when people find out how much of our money is being spent, they will hail him but we have a right to know. For him to say, Im not going to tell you until after the primary, is basically saying, Im not going to tell you until after Im elected governor, because whoever wins that primary becomes governor.'
Caldara went further, warning that the secrecy reflects a deeper contempt for citizens and the press. It is the nature of government and those in power to keep their cards close to the vest and not have those nasty citizens and those icky reporters asking them for governmental documents, Caldara said. This is very tyrannical, and the AGs Office plays a sizable role in this.
WND has previously reported on the broader campaign by Colorados Democratic leadership to resist, disobey and block Trumps agenda through the courts rather than through legislative debate. A lawfare tracker report cited by critics found roughly 200 active cases against the president, many without concrete evidence to back up the claims they make, underscoring how litigation has become a political weapon rather than a tool of last resort.
A detailed analysis by constitutional scholar Robert G. Natelson at Complete Colorado described some of Weisers legal strategies as constitutionally perverse. Natelson argued that Progressives, he concluded, generally dont care a rodents derriere about the Constitutions division of powers. (How many times did Weiser sue the overreaching Biden administration?) And most of Weisers suits are constitutionally perverse: they are designed either to (1) undermine legitimate federal functions, such as immigration control, or (2) force the federal government to do things the Constitution actually does not assign to it (such as subsidizing solar power).
Natelson also faulted Weiser for prioritizing ideological battles in Washington over basic public safety at home. He criticized that Weiser would rather fight the duly elected president of the United States than protect Coloradans from crime, which is surging in the state, and warned that the attorney generals troubled obsession with Trump is distracting from his core responsibilities.
The costs of Colorados progressive legal crusades extend beyond Weisers anti-Trump lawsuits. State taxpayers have already been forced to pay out millions of dollars because of Gov. Jared Polis aggressive campaign against Christians who refuse to abandon their beliefs on marriage and sexuality, a campaign that has repeatedly collapsed at the U.S. Supreme Court.
The state has dragged into court a baker, a web designer and a counselor, each time trying to compel them to give of their own religious faith and adopt the religious beliefs of the state, which revolve around the LGBT agenda. Colorado has lost all of those cases at the Supreme Court, resulting in fee awards to plaintiffs lawyers totaling millions of dollars, yet officials continue to pursue similar policies.
That pattern of hostility to religious liberty is now before the high court again. The state is defending another case in which faith-based preschools were targeted after Polis created a universal preschool program for all in Colorado, then specifically excluded Catholic preschools from participation, embracing a viewpoint-discriminatory agenda that punishes orthodox Christian teaching.
For conservatives, the through-line is unmistakable: a Democratic establishment in Colorado that uses the machinery of government and the courts to advance progressive ideology, punish dissenters, and wage lawfare against political opponents, all while shielding the true financial burden from the public. Whether it is Weisers refusal to disclose the full cost of his 66 anti-Trump lawsuits or Polis insistence on litigating against Christians and Catholic schools despite repeated Supreme Court rebukes, taxpayers are left footing the bill for a partisan project that undermines constitutional limits, religious freedom, and basic transparency.
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