July 18, 2025 01:56 PM UTC

GOP Operative "Shakedown" Of Counties Gets Substantially Worse

•  
• by: Colorado Pols

As the Denver Post’s Seth Klamann reports, the story that broke this week in the Washington Post about Republican political consultant Jeff Small’s rebuffed approaches to Republican county clerks to permit outside access to voting equipment, a la convicted former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, is taking a turn towards something closer to extortion and influence peddling on an unrelated issue–the Trump administration’s abortive declaration of “sanctuary jurisdictions” across the nation that Republicans rushed and in many cases succeeded in getting themselves removed from.

As it turns out, doing so in some cases involved a fee payable to Jeff Small:

Jeff Small, a consultant for the 76 Group, a prominent Denver-based conservative public affairs firm, offered a way out. In emails to the elected leaders of at least four Colorado counties on the list, Small quoted media reports about targeted counties losing millions of dollars in grant funding.

For a “one-time low payment,” he wrote on May 31, he could use his expertise and “extensive relationships” with the White House and federal law enforcement agencies to “swiftly” get the counties off the list.

The pitch went to commissioners in at least Jefferson and Arapahoe counties in suburban Denver and Clear Creek and Chaffee counties in the mountains. The offer shocked and confused the commissioners who received it, five of them told The Denver Post on Thursday.

All said they’d never received an email like it during their time in office. Three of them likened it to a shakedown…

After the list of sanctuary jurisdictions was published, Reps. Lauren Boebert and Gabe Evans took swift credit for arranging the removal of favored municipalities from the list. Boebert claimed credit for getting three locations removed, while Evans said he “worked diligently to have Weld County removed from this list.”

But while Boebert was helping politically aligned local governments get out from under the list (we assume) for free, Boebert’s former chief of staff Jeff Small was soliciting the same service to other localities for cash money:

His email, some of the commissioners said, seemed to suggest that he had influence over the list’s contents before it was publicly unveiled. [Pols emphasis] He wrote that he’d already prevented current “county clients” from ending up on the list and that he’d also “successfully helped remove multiple other counties.”

This new story raises a number of pointed questions for both Reps. Boebert and Evans. Did either of them agree to help Jeff Small with “client” requests to be removed from the DHS sanctuary cities list? Were Boebert or Evans aware that Small was attempting to resell his own access to federal officials like themselves in order to “solve” a problem the Trump administration unilaterally created? How much did Small’s bosses at the 76 Group know about this supposed side hustle, and how will it impact the firm’s lobbying business going forward?

And the question we’ll need a lawyer to answer: does this conduct meet the definition of influence peddling under federal criminal statute?

Just like Donald Trump hangs his honor on a distinction between civil sexual abuse and criminal rape, sleazy lobbying isn’t always criminal.

But sometimes, like Jack Abramoff can tell you, it is.