Jaquez Lewis, a Longmont Democrat, was convicted on Jan. 28 on four felony charges, including attempting to influence a public servant and forgery. She will be sentenced on Feb. 27.
Jaquez Lewis, a licensed pharmacist, resigned in February 2025 following an ethics investigation in which investigators found that a letter of support submitted in her defense was likely written without the knowledge or consent of the former employee it was attributed to.
During the jury trial, her attorney, Craig Truman, said Jaquez Lewis was busy and overwhelmed while trying to defend herself from allegations before the Senate Ethics Committee, according to the Colorado Sun. Truman said she should not have written the letters but was trying to defend herself.
The ethics probe stemmed from a Jan. 10, 2025, complaint filed by the Political Workers Guild on behalf of former aides and staffers. The complaint accused Jaquez Lewis of wage theft, underreporting campaign spending and abusing power dynamics. Jaquez Lewis denied the allegations, calling them “full of distortions and falsehoods” and referring to one claim as “actionable slander” in her formal response to the complaint on Jan. 31.
The Boulder County and Denver district attorneys’ offices began investigating Jaquez Lewis in 2025 after the state Senate referred materials from the ethics probe.
In March 2025, Katie Wallace, a longtime organizer and former policy aide from Longmont, was selected by a Democratic vacancy committee to replace Jaquez Lewis and represent Senate District 17, which includes Longmont, Lafayette and Erie.