DENVER – Colorado’s two Democratic U.S. senators have recommended Denver’s current city attorney and a former Denver city attorney under then-Mayor John Hickenlooper to be among the candidates to be Colorado’s new U.S. attorney.
U.S. Sens. Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper made recommendations in a letter Wednesday to President Joe Biden on who should be nominated as the state’s top federal prosecutor, the next U.S. Marshal for Colorado, and who should fill a vacancy in the U.S. District Court of Colorado.
Current U.S. Attorney Jason Dunn was nominated by former President Donald Trump and confirmed in October 2018. He replaced Bob Troyer as the U.S. Attorney for Colorado after Trump took office, and the Biden administration is expected to nominate new federal officials for each state as his administration takes over.
Now that the two senators have made recommendations to Biden and the new administration, the candidates will be reviewed before the administration makes nominations — which could include nominees not recommended by the senators. But the Senate will have to approve each nominee before they can take office.
The nominees for U.S. attorney are Kristin Bronson, Cole Finegan and Hetal Doshi.
Bronson has been city attorney under Denver Mayor Michael Hancock since 2016. Finegan is a managing partner at Denver-based law firm Hogan Lovells and formerly served as Hickenlooper chief of staff and Denver’s city attorney from 2003 to 2006. Doshi has been an assistant U.S. attorney in Colorado since 2014 and previously served on the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force under the Obama administration.
Bennet and Hickenlooper also recommended Regina Rodriguez, a private attorney with Denver-based WilmerHale currently, to the bench on the U.S. District Court of Colorado. She previously was the chief of the Colorado U.S. Attorney’s Office’s Civil Division and was appointed by Gov. Jared Polis to serve on the nominating commission for the Colorado Supreme Court.
The senators’ nominees for U.S. Marshal for the District of Colorado are Cassidee Carlson, Sean Smith and Kirk Taylor.
Carlson has been with the Aurora Police Department since 2003 and is currently the Deputy Commander of Internal Affairs. She was selected last year by the U.S. Department of Justice to be a consultant to the Office for Victims of Crime.
Smith has served as the sheriff of La Plata County since 2015, where he led the local response to the Gold King Mine spill in 2015 and has coordinated emergency operations.
Taylor has been the sheriff of Pueblo County since 2007 and was an investigator with the local district attorney’s office beforehand.
“We believe that this diverse group of attorneys and law enforcement officials represent some of the most thoughtful, dynamic, and hard-working leaders in our state. We’re confident that they’ll serve the people of Colorado with humility and integrity,” Bennet and Hickenlooper said in a joint statement.
