An affidavit filed with the Denver District Attorney’s office identifies multiple questionable letters of support supposedly written for former Sen. Sonya Jaquez Lewis.

Jaquez Lewis was arrested on July 6 on one count for attempting to influence a public servant, a class 4 felony, and tied to an ethics investigation mounted by the state Senate to look at alleged mistreatment of legislative aides.

Five former aides filed a complaint against Jaquez Lewis through the Political Workers Guild in January. The Guild submitted a request in December for Jaquez Lewis to resign and, in its place, requested an ethics investigation.

The affidavit stated that on Feb. 25, the Denver District Attorney’s office requested an investigation regarding “forged letters” submitted to the state in response to allegations of wrongdoing by Jaquez Lewis and against previous staff members.

That was a week after Jaquez Lewis resigned her Senate seat rather than disclose to the ethics committee whether a letter of support she had submitted had been fabricated. Questions were also raised about the authenticity of four other letters of support.

She was asked to submit documented proof that the letters she submitted were authentic, with a deadline of 2 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 17. She resigned that night.

The affidavit outlined the allegations presented to the ethics committee: that she violated Senate rules regarding legislative ethics and official conduct by committing wage theft, asking staffers to sign non-disclosure agreements despite the practice being illegal, using campaign funds to pay staffers to do yard work and other non-duty related tasks, underreporting campaign funds, abuse of power dynamics by continually demoting staff without reason, and an overall lack of accountability and continuation of repeated behaviors.

In a Jan. 31 reply, Jaquez Lewis alleged that staff complaints were based on “internal office management issues and should have never been assigned by the Ethics Committee.” That response came with six letters allegedly from her former staffers.

When the ethics committee discussed the letters on Feb. 11, one of the former employees was “shocked” to hear her name mentioned and told the ethics committee she hadn’t written it. She was “horrified to see that my name was being used to indicate public support of Senator Jaquez Lewis without my consent or knowledge,” according to the affidavit.

The affidavit stated that Jaquez Lewis had attempted to contact the former employee on the same day.

On Feb. 18, Jaquez Lewis sent an email to the ethics committee, stating that the letter in question should not have been sent and that she apologized to the person whose name was attached to it.

The investigator spoke to the woman on March 13 and was “adamant” she hadn’t written it. She said Jaquez Lewis had been trying to contact her since January, but she ignored the messages, finding the “sudden contact to be odd.” She Googled Jaquez Lewis’ name and discovered the ethics investigation, and she didn’t want to be involved.

She also told the investigator she did not have “great things” to say about Jaquez Lewis and did not want to be a witness for the senator.

That same day, the investigator spoke with a second person who allegedly submitted a letter of support. The former staffer said she “absolutely 100% did not write that letter,” and that it was not written in her “verbiage.”

A third person, who allegedly wrote a letter, told the investigator that the letter submitted by Jaquez Lewis was not the one she wrote.

Jaquez Lewis had asked her to write a letter, and the former staffer suggested Jaquez Lewis write a draft. The former staffer would then revise it and send it back.

Jaquez Lewis sent the letter. The former staffer revised it and sent it back, noting that some of the information wasn’t pertinent and other facts were incorrect. But the wrong version was allegedly sent to the committee. The former staffer sent the version she approved to the investigator.

A fourth person who spoke to the investigator “laughed” when that letter of support was read to her. The former staffer said she would not answer whether or not she wrote the letter and then hung up the phone.

Jaquez Lewis is scheduled to appear in court on Aug. 7.