Liberal Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser is facing a pay-to-play scandal heading into the final days of his campaign against crime-fighting Republican District Attorney John Kellner.
According to a new story in The Denver Gazette, Phil Weiser treated Dish Network differently than other companies involved in a similar probe to the one facing Dish Network. Various Dish Network employees and people connected to the company donated $40,000 to Weiser’s campaign around the same time the investigation was occurring.
The comprehensive bombshell story written by David Migoya has more:
Dozens of people with ties to Dish Network ponied up nearly $40,000 in campaign contributions to Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser — many of them giving for the first time — just before, during and after the company was the focus of a deceptive trade practices inquiry that began in 2021, campaign records show.
And although two other of the state’s largest cable providers, DirecTV and Comcast, were the targets of similar investigations since 2019, only Dish came out unscathed. All three companies eventually settled AG claims that they wrongly assessed fees to consumers, but Dish was the only one that did not have to refund the money it allegedly pocketed or explain to its customers what had occurred.
In all, Weiser’s reelection campaign has collected more than $60,000 in contributions from people tied to all three companies in that timeframe, the bulk of it from people associated with Dish, including its owners, Charles and Cantey Ergen, records show.