A few weeks ago, the Democratic candidate for Colorado’s Third Congressional District was accused of being blackmailed into changing his position on a matter of city policy while he was a city councilman in Aspen. He’s running against conservative firebrand Lauren Boebert, a person the liberal Aspen elite undisguisedly hate and would love to see beaten by Frisch.

The Aspen newspapers – part of that Aspen liberal elite – have mostly dismissed or buried the blackmail story, to the extent they’ve covered it at all. The Aspen Daily News finally published something over a week after the story broke elsewhere:

“The story — which Frisch, his family and his campaign deny — goes something like this: in May 2017, Frisch rode his bike to the storage unit owned by the local taxi company, which was caught on security footage. A staff member of the company subsequently found Frisch engaging in an extramarital activity in one of those units; a year later, when the city council was considering a “mobility lab” that Gardner found threatening to his business, the taxi company owner blackmailed Frisch into changing his vote, swinging the city council away from moving forward with a contract that would have brought rideshare companies such as Lyft more meaningfully to Aspen.”

The blackmail allegation glossed over by the newspaper is that the taxi owner has a video showing everything in the story except the sex in the storage unit; it’s undisputed that he sent that video to Frisch in an email; and the taxi owner himself says “it absolutely was blackmail.” It should be noted, but the newspaper article does not, that the blackmailer is no Boebert supporter — he calls her “clueless.”

Here are some questions that a real newspaper reporter might ask Frisch after his blanket denial:

• You say you deny the story, but what part?
• Do you deny that it was you in the video?
• Do you deny that you waited for the woman in the video and then went into the storage building with her, as the video seems to show?
• Do you deny having sex with her in the storage unit, as the taxi assistant says she witnessed?
• Do you deny having received the taxi owner’s email attaching the video in the time frame during which city council was considering the mobility lab?
• Do you deny that you failed to respond to the video with something like, “Huh? What’s this video?”
• Do you deny that you failed to contact authorities to report what appeared to be an attempted blackmailing of you, as the taxi owner himself contends?
• Do you deny that the blackmailing was successful – that the video changed your vote, as the taxi owner contends?

A fair reading is that Frisch implicitly admits the entire story, except the last point: He denies that the attempted blackmailing was successful. Rather, he apparently asserts that he was in the process of changing his mind anyway.

What Frisch is obviously eager to change now is the subject. But a real newspaper with real and unbiased reporters would not be so eager to oblige. A real newspaper with real and unbiased reporters would ask Frisch these questions. If he refuses to answer them, then a real newspaper with real and unbiased reporters would report his refusal.

Alas, apparently no such newspaper and no such reporters exist in Aspen.

“Democracy dies in darkness” – Washington Post