We have good news.
We have a candidate on the Republican side, a serious candidate. Some other guy filed a run, but nobody's heard of him, and I'm not taking him seriously. I am taking my next guest seriously. He is the Olpaso District Attorney. He is Michael Allen. Michael, welcome to the show.
Thank you for having me. Mandy, it's always a pleasure to talk with you.
Well, I'm excited about the potential of your candidacy because you have this word. Let's see, you actually have experience as a prosecutor, and you've actually done a very similar job in the courtroom. I'm thrilled that that would be returned to the Attorney General's office. Tell me a little bit about your track record for people who don't know you.
Yeah. So I'm the elected daid down in the fourth judicial district, which is Elpaso in Teller County's biggest city in this district is Colorado Springs, which happens to be the second largest city in Colorado, and El Paso County is the largest county in Colorado. We get a lot
of dynamic crimes down here. Unfortunately, just like any large populated area, it gets most Notably, the Club Q mass shooting occurred down here just after Thanksgiving a few years back, and I was lead prosecutre on that, and one of the things that as district attorney, it was important for us to really stand up for victims in that case, just like we do all victims. My overriding principle on that is that every human has inherent human dignity, and if you are a victim of crime, I'm going to
stand their shoulders shoulder with you to seek justice. And that's what we did in that Club Q prosecution, and we were able to get the second longest prison sentence in Colorado state history. So you know, that's some of the stuff that we've done down here. There's a lot more. We could be on the fund for hours, probably, So.
Tell my people who have never heard of you before, give them a little bit of your personal background, because I mean, you have a very impressive resume. And I put a link to Michael's website on the blog today where you can see more of his resume the other steff that he's prosecuted. But tell people a little bit about yourself.
Yeah, I'm a Colorado native, grew up in the north and West Denver Metro Aris. I was a graduate of our Borist High School in nineteen ninety one and then joined the Navy Strail out of high school and did aviation electronics technician work. So I repaired essentially F eighteen radar packages and then did that for eight years. Most recently on that I was stationed on both the USS Carl Vincent in nineteen ninety six and we were enforcing
no flies on there. And then came back to Colorado in ninety eight and went to the University of Northern Colorado where I got my undergraduate degree, and then went off to Kansas to do law school at the University of Kansas. And so for everybody that's listening, if you're in the Denver metro area, that used to be Kansas territory. So technically everybody hears Kansas jay hockey.
And if they wanted, I was about to say Jayhawks just to see what you'd say back.
So you know, no, we're not all.
Kansas fans, but go ahead, move on. I'll forgive that. We'll forget that never happens. So why do you want to jump into the Attorney General's race?
What do you bring to the table.
Yeah, you know, I think you hit the nail on the head at the beginning there, and that's experience. You know, we've been in a situation now where we've had one party control in the state government for a long time. We've had a complete lack of balance and that's a big factor for me, and getting into this race is getting some common sense and some balance back into state government. We have, unfortunately, over the last decade roughly seen a lot of criminal justice reform, a lot of reform that's
been hard on victims, on coloradin's of every variety. And then we've also seen a business climate that's really changed for the worst two and the Attorney General's office can
play a big role in all those areas. And as you mentioned, my experience is unique to the table for this opportunity, and I want to, you know, provide that common sense approach to everything that we do, whether it's business regulation, depaying the state on different things, standing up for victims, making sure that the Attorney General's offices weighing in in an appropriate way on criminal justice reform efforts
that continue. We're going to have a busy legislative session this coming session that actually starts today, and I'll be up there a lot of da like I always am, but you know, I can have even more influence of the Attorney general. And so really it's just about serving the people of Colorado.
So I'm going to ask you a question.
And you know Attorney General Phil Wiser has filed or joined. I should also point out, like fifty and I'm not exaggerating that number is fifty. I believe lawsuits against the Trump administration.
Let's just say.
That the next the next governor is a Democrat and you are elected attorney general. How do you handle either deciding to sue or not sue the Trump administration when you're dealing with a Democrat governor.
You know, I'm not sure that whoever the government is would have a lot of say on that, you know, the two totally different elected positions between governor and Attorney general. I think the Attorney General has its own electoral authority to decide to sue or not to sue any entity, whether it's the federal government or otherwise. So I would take that approach first and foremost. Secondly, I'm always going to take a position of how does this affect the
people of Colorado? Does it make sense to file a lawsuit here and will that serve the interests of the people of this great state or is this going to be just a purely politically motivated lawsuit. And I think what you're hitting on is that we've seen very politically motivated lawsuits being filed against the federal government, and you know there are going to be times when it will be in the best interests of the people of the state to file lawsuit against the federal government and it
won't matter who the president is. We've seen over years and years that there's time when states have to stand up for their rights and file lawsuits. But they should never be done to advance somebody's own political career. That should always be done to serve the interest of this great state.
So Michael Allen is my guest.
He is not only a district attorney in the fourth Judicial District down in El Paso and Teller County, he's also running for attorney general on the Republican side. Michael, I want to ask you a question about people are now worried. It's kind of funny depending on who's in charge, the people get worried about the weaponization of offices like
the Department of Justice at the federal level. And to your point about the sort of political nature of some of these lawsuits the Attorney general's office, what do you say to people who are genuinely concerned that this office would be weaponized against them.
Yeah, well, I mean the front runner on the Democrat side is our current Secretar of State, and she's already be done politically motivated, I would call them stunctually when she tried to keep Donald Trump off the ballot just this last election, and that case went all the way to the US Supreme Court, and it is very rare to get a ruling from the Supreme Court that is unanimous,
but it was nine zero against her position. That means both the conservative justices and the liberal justices all agreed that she was completely flat out wrong in what she did. And so if you take that as a litmus test and then apply it to the authority and the power of an Attorney general's office, you can only imagine what
would be used to her advantage that way. And you're exactly right the idea that either criminal prosecution or even civil litigation, that's a lot of authority and can have very far ranging impacts on people's individual lives, on policy within the state, and we need to stop and really get away from having any politicallynovated lawsuits or criminal prosecutions and get back to what I think has been part of the Republican Party platform for a really long time,
and that is that we are a rule of law country and we need to get back to that as a guiding principle.
So what do you think the biggest issues that you would be tackling as attorney general? Obviously you are in the criminal justice system already, so you probably have a better idea into where.
That focus should be.
What would you like to see the Attorney General's office really focus on in your say, your first year.
Yeah, well, you know, there's a wide swath of authority that the Attorney General's office brings to bear, and most of it is in the civil realm, defending the state against all kinds of lawsuits, different agencies, that kind of thing. But I think the biggest place that we can have and the impact, is changing the way that we look at criminal prosecution. And the Attorney General's Office, despite what some people will say, does have a pretty wide swaths
of authority there as well. They have you know jurisdiction over certain specific cases, but they also help out with smaller jurisdictions around the state on their prosecutions. And if you just look at, for instance, motor vehicle theft in the state, we've obviously been on the wrong side of the ledger as far as our ranking where I think forty seventh in the nation in the rate of motor vehicle theft in the state. That's not where we need
to be. And that's a result of policies. It's a result of bad legislation, and it's a result in some places of maybe not prosecuting those cases the way they should be. And what we've done down here in the fourth Judicial District is we dedicated a prosecutor an investigator towards those those types of cases. In twenty twenty four,
we had over five thousand motor vehicle theft cases. Twenty twenty five, we dropped that down to less than fifteen hundred by roughly the end of November of twenty twenty five. So that shows you that you can take resources that you have in staff, apply them to specific problems and
have an immediate impact. And where this impacts the wider communit is We've got some of the highest motor vehicle insurance rates in the entire country because of natural disasters obviously hail and that kind of thing, but also because of the motor vehicle theft issues that we've got in
the state. And so if you can attack a problem that way, that has an economic benefit for the rest of the state that doesn't have their carstole even though they're paying higher intern rates because we have that problem existing here.
What are these things that I don't know if this would even be appropriate for the Attorney General to involve him or herself in, but the issue of the rape kit backlog here in the state of Colorado, I mean I find that appalling. I can't even imagine being sexually assaulted and then being told, oh, we might get to it in the next eighteen months, right, I mean that's not okay.
Yeah, that is absolutely not okay. What that means is that one what you just hit on the human effect of this, that victims have to live knowing that their attacker is out there in the community. They have not arrested, the investigations not been completed, DNA samples have not been processed and identified, and so these victims are living in a state of fear that also potentially victimizes other people.
If this is somebody that is, you know, taking advantage of multiple people or looking to take advantage of multiple people, and frankly, it's a failure of government. One of the fundamental requirements of government is to provide public safety. And if we can't do that on an effective basis because of backlog issues, that needs to be addressed, and it should have been addressed a long time ago. But I certainly can weigh in on that as well, I mean as much as I can.
Last I saw there were literally like women just raising money to see if they could send them.
I mean, that's that is shameful. Now.
One of the other things that I think when people think about, you know, criminal justice in this state is sort of the way that the attitudes towards law enforcement since the summer of quote love in twenty twenty. Is there anything that the Attorney general can do to fur or bridge the gap, because I do think in the last year or so that I do think strides have
been made a little bit. But is there anything that the Attorney general can do to either set the tone or change the tone or tenor of that conversation.
Yeah, well, you know, there certainly is something that the Attorney general can do, and what we've seen from current leadership in the Attorney General's officers to actually file lawsuits against individual law enforcement officers around the state because they happen to be working on a criminal case that involves
immigration issues. And that's a direct attack from a cheap law enforcement officer for the entire state of Colorado against uniform law enforcement on the street trying to protect all of us. So that's one way that we can have a big impact on both the morale and support to law enforcement is to stop some of that nonsense, don't I can't imagine a scenario where I would be in a position where I'd want to file a civil lawsuit against law enforcement for doing their job.
What is do you think the biggest criminal issue facing Colorado?
Now?
I think it's multiple layers there. I think we've seen criminal justice reform over the last several years that's had a really detrimental impact on what's happening in crime. We've had, like you said, the attack on law enforcement from our legislative legislative branch with our Police Accountability bill that really impacted retention and recruitment efforts and really are permissive drug culture.
When we have a situation in Colorado that dangerous drugs like fentanyl and heroin and methamphetamine are decriminalized to a misdemeanor for four grams or less, that creates the perfect recipe for what we saw with the fennyl epidemic, where we've had thousands of our friends and neighbors and relatives
die from fentyl poisonings. So, you know, I think it's multiple factors that go into all of the issues that we're dealing with, and we've got to start being more common sense approached in how we attack those problems and using resources like I used the example on the motor vehicle theft.
Michael Allen is my guest. He's running for district attorney. One last question and I got it in multiple ways. Oh, I'm sorry, he's running for attorney general. He is currently a district attorney.
Ye.
I got this text top ten in the nation for human trafficking.
What are you doing about this?
This It's so weird to me that the concept of being concerned about human trafficking is somehow seen as a right wing idea. I don't understand how we got here, but that seems to be what it is. A lot of my listeners are super concerned about that. I have probably three or four text messages about it. I don't have a ton of text messages. So what is the state of human trafficking? Should that be something that we pushed to the forefront.
Absolutely should be something that we pushed to the forefront. You know, I think it was last legislative legislative session where there was a built to require prison for sexualistlip on children and that failed. In some the comments that were voiced in committee, we're worried about what will happen to the offender if they have to go to prison under that sort of a triumph.
Oh my god.
So that's looking at it from the exact opposite way that it should be looked at, in a common sense way that should be looked at it. I am heartened that we maybe are going to have some good legislation on that this session. You know, we had a press conference just last week. I believe it was with many different people from both sides of the aisle supporting something there. But that's another area I think that the Attorney General
can be effective. They have the ability to use the state wide grand jury to deal with you know, wide ranging criminal activity that affects the entire state through that grand jury process, and something that would definitely look at using against human trafficking too, because it's not just an isolated thing that happens in one neighborhood. For human traffing to occur, it requires networks and a coordination between many different people.
Yeah, like I said, I don't understand how that ever became a left right thing.
I really don't.
That seems like so baffling to me. I truly don't understand it.
Michael Allen.
I appreciate the time today. I'm excited that you're in the race.
You know.
I like having what I perceive to be good, strong candidates, and I believe that you're a good, strong candidate for Attorney General. So we'll have you on again before we get up to the primaries and get out there and pound the pavement, because we cannot allow the wildly partisan Jenna Griswold to get into that office. I can only imagine after seeing what she's said to the Secretary of State's office, which is like the least controversial office in
statewide elected office. I shudder to think what she would do as attorney general. I appreciate your time today.
Yeah, thank you, Mandy. I appreciate it and I'd be happy to come on any time you will.
Have me, all right, That is Michael Allen. Thanks sir, we will talk to you again soon. And nice guy.
I like him.