As careful readers of this space might have noticed, I’ve been gone the past two weeks. But not to worry. I was neither snatched nor grabbed for the crime of writing MEAN — meaning TRUE — stuff about Donald Trump and then sent to Alligator Alcatraz for deportation.
I was just on an all-American family holiday in the all-American state of Hawaii, which is about as far as you can get from Washington while still being in the U.S. We went looking for calm and solace and found them amid the natural chaos of waves crashing into rocks and of a volcano erupting.
Of course, Hawaii is also the birthplace of Barack Hussein Obama, as Donald Trump calls him whenever he’s attempting to deflect questions about the Epstein files by accusing the former president of treason.
In any case, when I got back — tanned, rested and ready, sort of like Nixon — it seemed that everything was pretty much the same, only worse. Because worse is the general direction the country has taken since the first day of the Trump Restoration.
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SUBSCRIBEBut I’m not here to talk about Trump exactly. I’m here to talk about our governor and his response to what we’ve learned are nine subpoenas sent from various federal immigration authorities to various Colorado agencies, asking for Coloradans’ personal information.
Jared Polis could have said he was outraged by the subpoenas, none of which was signed off on by a judge and, in each case, seemed less like a criminal investigation than a fishing expedition. Instead, he never brought them up.
But when The Sun broke the story on the nine subpoenas — we only knew about the one that a whistleblower had revealed that led a judge to block Polis from cooperating — Polis surprisingly released the text of the subpoenas.
In one case, which the state said it couldn’t respond to because it didn’t have the asked-for information, ICE asked for birth records of everyone born in Colorado between February of 2004 and 2005 — meaning, 20 years ago. No, seriously. How ridiculous is that? Once you’ve seen that subpoena, can you really credit any of the others?
What this most looks like is pure farce. And the question is: Which comes first, the farce or the tragedy?
Polis could have publicly condemned these subpoenas, morally, ethically and legally. Instead, the word is that he never even mentioned the subpoenas to the attorney general’s office, which is where a governor would normally go for advice on what is clearly a legal question.
Why did he keep the AG’s office out of the loop? You can guess. For that matter, why did AG Phil Weiser, who’s running for governor, recuse himself from defending Polis in the whistleblower case? You can guess that, too.
Polis could have said that two recently passed state laws — which he had signed — prohibited him from sharing this information with the feds instead of having officials in his administration respond to four of them, including one looking into Trump’s all-purpose allegation — fraud, abuse and waste.
One of the responses, Polis said, was made in error. He could have publicly apologized, I guess, to those whose lives he has erroneously put at risk. But since those being investigated have no idea they’re being investigated, an apology is, let’s say, problematic.
What I’d like to know is what Polis knows — or should know — about the information he provided to the feds. What manner of personal information did he provide? Has any of it led to arrests? Have there been deportations? Have people been fired? Have families been split up? Is Polis interested in learning whether he has been played?
Polis could have said that ICE under Trump has become the masked avatar for authoritarian thuggery, and that Colorado has no business cooperating with plans to deport millions of migrants. Instead, Polis says he’s glad that ICE is taking violent criminals off Colorado streets, as if anyone believes the mass deportations are about making anyone’s street safer.
Instead, Polis insists that Colorado is not a sanctuary state — in no way, shape or form. But he might like to know that on Friday a federal judge dismissed Trump’s lawsuit against Chicago for being a “sanctuary city.”
The biggest puzzle here is why Polis is cooperating at all, when state law — according to many state legislators involved in passing the bills— says he shouldn’t unless there is an actual criminal investigation underway. The laws were passed — and, not insignificantly, signed by Polis — for just this kind of circumstance. Is there evidence of criminal investigations actually underway? I’d like to know at least that much.
Since I returned from vacation, I’ve been asking around, and the best I can come up with is that a lot of people are asking the same questions about Polis, and many are scratching their heads. They don’t understand either.
I mean, isn’t Polis driving his political future off a cliff with his normalization of Trump, of RFK Jr. and of ICE? Can Polis, who is term-limited as governor after the 2026 election, win a Democratic nomination — for president, as some have guessed, or even as senator — as ICE’s man?
The best explanation I’ve heard is that Polis and at least some of his staff are scared that Trump is going to launch an investigation against him and/or his administration.
This is not an unreasonable concern. There’s plenty of fear to go around these days. Look at Speaker Mike Johnson, a Trump lackey, dismissing the House days before its annual summer break so that there would not be enough time for a vote calling on Trump to release the Epstein files.
Who knows what Trump will do?
Maybe Polis — not exactly a Trump favorite from his days as a surrogate for Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential campaign — has bought himself some grace by selling out unknown numbers of Coloradans. But I doubt it. Caving in to Trump means only that Trump, the give-him-an-inch president, will keep demanding more favors.
Polis, who presumably can afford it, would probably do better by just handing over $16 million to Trump, as Paramount did in settling the 60 Minutes case, while also — just by the way — firing Trump’s funniest critic, Stephen Colbert.
Fear? It’s no laughing matter.
But there’s a chance — however slim — that something brave could come out of this. Weiser recently announced he has filed a lawsuit against a Mesa County deputy sheriff for sharing personal information with federal immigration officials. The information led to an arrest of a Utah college student. Weiser’s office is also investigating the Mesa County sheriff’s department’s participation in a Signal chat with ICE officials.
The case against the deputy seems pretty clear cut. But how different is it from the information that state officials passed on to the feds? The four subpoenas that Polis responded to seem little different from the one blocked by the state judge. Did Polis or his department heads act illegally?
Of course, Weiser is running to succeed Polis as governor in the Democratic primary against Sen. Michael Bennet. How likely is it that he’d take on Polis at this time? How likely is it that Bennet would take on Weiser if he didn’t take on Polis?
When asked by Sun reporter Taylor Dolven, the AG’s office said it couldn’t “confirm or otherwise comment on any investigation.”
Does a non-confirmation leave room for hope for an actual confirmation some day?
I’d like to think so, no matter how long the odds. But, hey, it’s my first column back from vacation, and I’m clinging, at least for the moment, to the notion that good things are still possible.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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