(NEW YORK) — Colorado Gov. Jared Polis told “The View” Tuesday that the state should take a second look at how local sheriffs are using the red flag law to protect citizens in the wake of the deadly mass shooting at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs.

On the eve of Transgender Day of Remembrance on Saturday, Nov. 19, gunfire erupted at Colorado Springs’ LGBTQ nightclub, Club Q. According to police and officials briefed on the investigation, suspect Anderson Lee Aldrich allegedly walked into the club with a legally purchased assault-style rifle and began shooting, leaving five people dead and 17 injured.

Aldrich was arrested and is facing five counts of murder and five counts of bias-motivated crime causing bodily injury, which is Colorado’s hate crime law.

In June 2021, prior to the LGBTQ nightclub shooting, Aldrich allegedly threatened his mother with a homemade bomb. After his mother’s neighbors evacuated the surrounding area, bomb squad and crisis negotiators persuaded him to surrender. Still, charges against Aldrich were dropped and there were no public records that indicated police or relatives attempted to trigger Colorado’s red flag law.

“The View” co-host Joy Behar pressed Polis on Colorado’s low-rate of using the red flag law and questioned why authorities never took away Aldrich’s weapons. Noting that everyone is currently focused on the shooting victims and healing, Polis said that “if there’s one law to focus on,” it’s Colorado’s red-flag law, a bill which he signed on April 12, 2019.

Polis went on to explain that while Aldrich did allegedly make a bomb threat in the past and was apprehended at the time, charges were never pressed.

“What this should trigger is law enforcement can then seek a red flag or extreme risk protection order just to remove custody of guns from somebody who might be dangerous,” he said. “That’s what we’d like to see more of.”

“This is a new law in Colorado,” he continued. “But it’s really up to local law enforcement, and in this case it really looks like we should take a second [look] at how our local sheriffs used this law to protect people when there’s these kind of threats and danger.”

During a press conference Monday, police identified patrons Thomas James and Richard Fierro – who was in the U.S. Army for 14 years – as the heroes who stopped the suspected gunman. Polis mentioned that the two patrons who attacked the gunman are still recovering and calls their act of heroism “a tremendous thing,” adding that “they were lucky to be at the right place at the right time and make the right decision, otherwise dozens more people would be in mourning.”

After speaking with the families of the five victims who were fatally shot at Club Q, Polis said that the families “are in a complete state of shock.”

“These were people who were just out being who they are in a part of the state, a part of the country where it isn’t always easy,” he continued. “This is a somewhat conservative area. This was a refuge, this Club Q the largest LGBT club in Colorado Springs.”

Polis said that he told the owners of Club Q that he wants to be there to show solidarity.

“There’s never gonna be any motive that makes sense to any of us. It’s an act of evil,” he said of the mass shooting. “People should talk about our love and respect for one another rather than ever trying to set one group of people against another as unfortunately some do.”

“It will take time to heal and to come back from that, but we’re strong,” Polis said. “I’m committed to working with Colorado Springs and the LGBT+ community to make sure that we can heal in a good way.”

Since January 2019, Polis has been serving as Colorado’s governor, making him the first openly gay man to win a U.S. gubernatorial election. As the first openly gay man to govern a U.S. state and Colorado’s first Jewish governor, co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin asked him how it feels to be a part of groups being targeted.

Polis explained that while he usually tries to ignore hateful rhetoric directed towards him or his communities, not everything can be overlooked.

“Sometimes we need to speak out more when people cross the line, and I think that’s a lesson I’m going to take from this, just to be more outspoken,” he said.

“You can have your opinions, left, right, conservative, liberal, you know, whatever they are is fine. But there’s a line to cross when you denigrate people just based on who they love or their faith or their race, and that’s never okay,” Polis continued. “We need the to be very clear in saying that.”

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(ATLANTA) — A federal appeals court on Tuesday seemed poised to grant a Justice Department request to rescind the appointment of a special master in the investigation into the handling of classified material seized in August from former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

In a hearing Tuesday afternoon, a three-judge panel from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals questioned an assertion from Trump’s attorney that “this is an extraordinary case” that warranted intervention from an outside arbiter to review all the materials seized in the August search.

“Other than the fact that this involves a former president, everything else about this is indistinguishable from any pre-indictment search warrant,” Judge Andrew Brasher said.

The attorney for Trump, Jim Trusty, insisted Trump was looking for no special treatment but asked the court to consider “a political rival has been subjected to a search warrant where thousands of personal materials have been taken.”

Arguing for the Justice Department, Sopan Joshi of the Solicitor General’s office called the appointment of a special master by a district court judge an “extraordinary judicial intrusion into a core executive branch function.”

The judges pressed Joshi and Trusty as to whether there was any similar case where a judge has exercised such jurisdiction to intervene in an ongoing criminal investigation prior to indictment with any showing of “callous disregard” for the rights of the potential defendant.

Neither could name such a case, but Trusty suggested that by having the process play out they could perhaps find evidence that Trump’s rights were violated.

Trusty also sought to take issue with how agents conducted the search, noting that in addition to presidential records and documents with classification markings they also seized items like “golf shirts and pictures of Celine Dion” which he said should have no relevance to their criminal investigation.

But Chief Judge Bill Pryor noted it wasn’t unusual for such personal items to be swept up in a court-authorized search.

“I don’t think it’s necessarily the fault of the government. If, if someone has intermingled classified documents in all kinds of other personal property,” Pryor said.

DOJ is urging the appeals court to overturn special master Raymond Dearie’s appointment and have the roughly 13,000 documents returned to investigators examining whether Trump unlawfully retained highly sensitive documents involving national defense information after leaving the presidency, and potentially obstructed justice in resisting the government’s efforts to retrieve them.

The appeals court previously granted a request from DOJ to stay portions of a ruling by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon that had blocked the government from using roughly 100 documents with classification markings recovered from Mar-a-Lago in its investigation and demanded they be handed over to special master Dearie.

The Justice Department then moved for an expedited appeal to end Dearie’s review in its entirety, saying its inability to access the non-classified documents seized from Mar-a-Lago was also significantly hampering its ongoing criminal investigation.

It was the first in-person meeting between top department officials and Trump’s legal team since Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith last Friday, which Garland said was warranted in part because of Trump’s announcement he would again run for president in 2024.

Smith has been tasked with overseeing the continuing criminal investigation of classified records seized from Trump’s estate in August as well as the separate probe into efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn his election loss to President Joe Biden.

In a filing Monday afternoon, the Justice Department formally notified the court of Smith’s appointment and stated he had reviewed the filings in DOJ’s case and that he “approves all of the arguments that have been presented in the briefs and will be discussed at the oral argument.”

Last week, officials said Smith was preparing to make his return to the U.S. from the Netherlands where he was serving as a chief prosecutor of war crimes at the Hague.

In a filing last week, officials from the department accused Trump and his legal team of engaging in “gamesmanship” in their fight to retain the roughly 13,000 documents in Dearie’s possession by asserting that when he ordered the packing of materials in the White House that were then transported to Mar-a-Lago, they were in effect automatically designated as his own “personal” records.

But at the same time, his attorneys said if Dearie rejected that argument for certain documents, they should have the opportunity to claim they are covered by executive privilege and should be shielded from the government.

They argued Trump’s legal team has put forward a “sweeping and baseless theory” to support their claims over the documents under a reading of the Presidential Records Act, saying Trump “appears to be claiming that he can unilaterally ‘deem’ otherwise Presidential records to be personal records by fiat.”

And even if Trump were correct in his claims, DOJ says, it would amount to a “red herring” regarding their right to access the documents as part of their ongoing criminal investigation.

“Documents commingled or collectively stored with the classified materials located at Plaintiff’s premises were lawfully seized by the FBI in accordance with the terms of the court-authorized search warrant because of their relevance to the government’s ongoing investigation,” top DOJ counterintelligence official Jay Bratt said. “That relevance exists irrespective of whether they were personal papers or government records. In the absence of a valid and substantiated claim of privilege, all such documents must now be made available to the investigative team.”

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