BOULDER – A report from the Washington Free Beacon published Tuesday brought a 19-year-old incident at Jared Polis’ office into the spotlight of the Colorado gubernatorial race.
The report said Polis, the current Democratic candidate for Colorado governor, shoved a former employee at his Boulder office in June of 1999.
Polis was never charged in connection to the incident. However, the woman, Patricia Hughes, was charged and eventually pleaded guilty to stealing trade secrets, according to the Boulder County District Attorney’s Office.
The police report said Polis suspected his personal assistant, who had recently been terminated, tried to steal sensitive documents from his office.
The report said Polis drove to his office and pushed the woman with two hands in an effort to keep her from leaving the office until police arrived.
The woman reported having two bruises on her arms and a welt on her thigh from possibly being pushed into a key protruding from a filing cabinet. Police said the bruises were not conducive with Polis’ and Hughes’ statements about the incident, but said the welt could have been from the key in the filing cabinet.
The police report also showed were conflicting reports about who called 911 first. Polis told officers that he called police when she refused to show him the contents in her bag. The woman told officers she tried to call the police multiple times after she was pushed into the filing cabinet, but that Polis hung up the phone twice before her third call got through.
9NEWS in Denver is reporting that court records showed a temporary restraining order was vacated around two and a half weeks after it was first filed.
Officers said they searched the woman’s bag and found multiple files that did not belong to her. She told police that she was in a rush to leave and must have grabbed files that didn’t belong to her. The files that belonged to Polis were returned to him and the woman was allowed to leave with her belongings.
The Polis campaign issued a statement in response to the report, which read in part, “Jared Polis was the victim of a crime, was the person who called police, and was found to have done nothing wrong,”
The Walker Stapleton campaign issued a statement reacting to the story, which read “The fact that Jared Polis doesn’t think there is anything wrong with grabbing and shoving a woman speaks to his character.”
