Colorado Republicans announced conspiracist Congressman Andy Biggs (R-AZ) as the keynote speaker for their annual fundraising dinner next week in Colorado Springs.
Biggs is an unapologetic promoter of the Big Lie, particularly the debunked conspiracy theory that the FBI instigated the Jan 6 insurrection.
The party’s choice of Biggs stands in contrast to recent statements from Chairwoman Kristi Burton Brown that Colorado Republicans want to move on from questioning the 2020 election.
“What I’m doing as the GOP Chairman is encouraging our candidates and our volunteers to talk about the issues that the average voter is concerned about, and that’s not election fraud,” Burton Brown told Colorado Public Radio’s Ryan Warner in a recent interview. “People don’t want to constantly dwell in the past, they want to dwell in the future.”
Burton Brown also called for conspiracist Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who faces numerous felony charges for her role in leaked election data, to end her campaign for Secretary of State.
Peters’ opponent, former JeffCo Clerk Pam Anderson, who has publicly opposed election conspiracies, did not immediately respond to a voicemail inquiry as to whether she will attend the dinner or has concerns about Biggs. This article will be updated with any response received.
Burton Brown did not respond to an email asking whether she had any concerns about Biggs’ keynoting the party’s biggest fundraising dinner of the year, especially in light of her recent statements.
Biggs is one of a handful of far-right Trump loyalists and House Freedom Caucus members who, according to the New York Times, “bombarded the Justice Department with dubious claims of voting irregularities…pressured members of state legislatures to conduct audits that would cast doubt on the election results, [and] plotted to disrupt the certification on Jan. 6…”
In January, Biggs joined former President Trump onstage in Arizona at his first rally of 2022, which focused on claiming that the 2020 election was stolen and that the Jan 6 rioters were FBI agents.
As part of its ongoing investigation into the insurrection, the House Select Committee on Jan 6 included Biggs’ name as one of the search terms in its subpoena of Trump lawyer and former University of Colorado professor John Eastman’s emails. Last week a federal judge ordered Eastman, author of the infamous “coup memo,” to hand over approximately one hundred emails he’d been trying to keep secret from investigators.
One of the organizers of the “Stop the Steal” rally that preceded the storming of the U.S Capitol, Ali Alexander, named Biggs as one of three members of Congress who helped plan the event and has since repeated that claim under oath to the House Select Committee on Jan 6. Biggs denies that he helped plan the rally, but nevertheless asked President Trump for a pre-emptive pardon for his role in the insurrection, which included recording a video that Alexander played to the crowd.
Former Colorado GOP Chair Dick Wadhams, who recently wrote a column for The Denver Post titled, “Conspiracy obsessed Republicans will hand Colorado to the left,” did not return a voicemail asking if he’ll be attending the dinner or if he had any concerns over the choice of Biggs as keynote speaker.
Last year’s Centennial dinner featured a trio of former Colorado Republican senators, Cory Gardner, Wayne Allard & Hank Brown.
Tickets to this year’s event start at $250 per person, which is double the price of last year’s dinner. Candidates can buy a table for $1,500 to the April 8 event, which takes place at the Doubletree Hotel in Colorado Springs.
