Troy Eid - Other U.S. Attorney Service

Other U.S. Attorney Service

In August 2008, Troy Eid charged Marc Garold Ramsey, 39, for sending a threatening letter with a white powdery substance to 2008 Republican Party presidential nominee Senator John McCain. Although the powder was not lethal, Ramsey could face at least five years on charges of knowingly mailing a threat. Later that month, Eid also assessed an alleged assassination plot against then-Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, after alleged plotters Shawn Robert Adolf, Tharin Robert Gartrell and Nathan Johnson were arrested just prior to the 2008 Democratic National Convention. Although the trio were charged with drug and weapon charges, Eid declared that the racist statements the suspects made following their arrests had not risen to the legal standard that would have allowed the filing of federal charges for threatening a presidential candidate. At an August 26 press conference, Eid dismissed the trio as drug addicts and said the "meth heads were not a true threat to the candidate, the Democratic National Convention or the people of Colorado."

Eid was accused by some of showing a political bias by prosecuting Ramsey without charging Gartrell, Adolf and Johnson, but Eid defended the decision; in a letter responding to the criticism, he wrote, “It would have been disgraceful for me or any other prosecutor to charge someone for a crime he didn’t commit. ... There was no probable cause to support such a charge. To the extent you challenge my motives or those of the many investigating agents and career prosecutors who all reached this conclusion in this matter, you’re mistaken.” Eid aides admitted, however, that the decision not to charge was at least in part because they did not believe a jury would convict them based on the reliability of Johnson's testimony; Jeffrey Dorschner, Eid's spokesman, said a defense attorney “would tear him apart.”

Eid also focused extensively on Native American issues while serving as Colorado’s U.S. Attorney. He partnered with the Southern Ute Indian Tribe and the Director of its Justice Department, Janelle Doughty, to create a regional program to train tribal, state and local law enforcement officers to enforce federal criminal law on Indian reservations in Southwestern Colorado. This program later expanded to include officers from more than 35 Indian tribes from 17 states. Eid’s pilot program gained the attention of Senator Byron L. Dorgan, who praised it as a national success story in strengthening criminal justice in Indian Country and used it as the model for the bill’s expanded training provisions.