October 24, 2009 01:40 AM UTC

Villafuerte Nomination Questioned

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• by: Colorado Pols

As The Denver Post reports:

President Barack Obama’s nominee as Colorado’s next U.S. attorney told the FBI two years ago that she never spoke to anyone in the Denver District Attorney’s Office about an illegal immigrant who became a controversial figure in the 2006 gubernatorial race.

FBI interview summaries describe Stephanie Villafuerte as saying she had “no conversations” with anyone at the DA’s office about the illegal immigrant, Carlos Estrada-Medina.

But the FBI apparently never asked Villafuerte, the former chief deputy DA who was then working for Bill Ritter’s campaign, why she left a phone message for DA spokeswoman Lynn Kimbrough that Kimbrough noted was about Estrada-Medina. The FBI also apparently never asked her about the nature of a series of phone calls she exchanged over the next two days with Kimbrough and First Assistant DA Chuck Lepley. Those calls came both before and after an order by Lepley to a subordinate to run a criminal history check of Estrada-Medina in a restricted federal database.

Frankly, we were a little surprised that Villafuerte was nominated to be Colorado’s U.S. Attorney, let alone that she made it out of the top 3 to be the ultimate selection, because this was always floating around and threatening to pop up again. Certainly nobody in Gov. Bill Ritter’s camp wanted to see the questions about Villafuerte and this case emerge yet again, yet they surely would have known this would happen if Villafuerte made it as far as she did in the process.

For some reason the process of selecting a U.S. Attorney always seems to last forever anyway. Given that it took literally years — and several candidates — under the second Bush administration to come up with a new U.S. Attorney in Denver, it wouldn’t surprise us if Villafuerte never actually took office. If these questions get national traction, you’d have to think that there would be discussions about Villafuerte removing her name from consideration — whether there’s any truth to these accusations or not.