The DSCC has released this ad in the Colorado Senate race.
This story first broke in the primary, when Buck's opponent, Jane Norton, raised it. A decade ago, Buck was a federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office and left his job "after the U.S. attorney rebuked him for bad-mouthing a felony case to defense lawyers representing Aurora gun dealers." The details are somewhat damning.
Then-U.S. Attorney John Suthers called Buck's conversations with defense attorneys a "reckless disregard of your obligation to keep client information confidential," according to his letter of reprimand.
Buck, elected Weld County district attorney in 2004, says now that he doesn't think the conversations he had before the 2000 grand jury indictment are different from off-the-record chats prosecutors and defense attorneys have every day.
But others said those conversations very likely compromised the case. Only one of the three men initially indicted on felony charges was convicted, and that was for a misdemeanor.
He is now a Buck campaign contributor.
The case revolves around Gregory and Leonid Golyansky, brothers who ran a gun store and pawnshop in Aurora in the 1990s and who were the target of an ATF investigaton, after "more than three dozen firearms sold at ABC Loan from 1995 through 1997 were impounded by Denver-area police agencies."
Agents first presented the investigation to the U.S. attorney's office in 1998, when Buck was chief of general crimes. At the time, Buck and a prosecutor below him declined to file charges because of weaknesses in the ATF probe, Buck said.
A new U.S. attorney took over in April 1999, right after the Columbine shootings, and decided to pursue the case. A mutual friend of Buck's and the brothers called Buck for a recommendation of defense attorney, and he recommended another social acquaintance. It's his conversation with that acquaintance, Stephen Peters, once he was the defendants' attorney that got him into trouble with his bosses, because Peters used information from that phone call--including the existence of a memo outlining some of the weaknesses in the case--in the defense of the Golyanskys.
So we come to a basic question about Ken Buck, reflected in this story and the rape case story that he refused to prosecute as Weld County prosecutor--did Ken Buck let his personal political connections and views interfere with his prosecutions? In this case, it's friendship with the Golyanskys (one of whom became a campaign donor to Buck) as well as his steadfast opposition to any kind of gun oversight by the feds. In the rape case, it's his making the case about abortion instead of about rape.
In both cases, it appears that Buck's fealty to the law--as a public servant where upholding the law was his sole professional obligation--came second to his personal beliefs. The rule of law has certainly proven to be a moving target for Republicans, so Buck is in good company there, but just because everyone does it doesn't make him qualified for the Senate.