The top Republican in the Colorado House of Representatives, as he was sitting in the back of a police vehicle two years ago, asked a state trooper not to disclose his arrest on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol to the media.
“If there’s anything we can do to kind of keep the press out of this, that would be great,” House Minority Leader Mike Lynch said, according to footage from inside of a Colorado State Patrol vehicle during the arrest in September 2022.
The State Patrol released the footage Friday to The Colorado Sun in response to an open records request. The agency initially said the video wouldn’t be available for many months.
Lynch’s arrest didn’t become public until Wednesday, when it was first reported by The Denver Post. The news came a few weeks after he announced a bid to represent Colorado’s 4th Congressional District, which spans the state’s Eastern Plains into Loveland and Douglas County.
Lynch was driving an electric Ford Mustang Mach-E when he was pulled over by a state trooper on Interstate 25 between Fort Collins and Wellington on Sept. 30, 2022, for speeding. He was traveling 90 mph in a 75 mph zone, according to a summons.
A trooper smelled alcohol on Lynch’s breath, and the Wellington lawmaker’s blood-alcohol level, when tested by a Breathalyzer, was about 0.16 — double the state’s driving limit of 0.08.
The video footage shows that when the trooper asked Lynch if he would be willing to do roadside maneuvers to test if he was intoxicated, he immediately asked the officer to call Mike Honn. Honn is the Colorado State Patrol’s legislative liaison — effectively a lobbyist — at the Capitol.
“Who is Mike Honn?” the trooper asked Lynch.
“Uh, nevermind,” Lynch said. “Yes, sir. I will do whatever you want me to do.”
“Who is Mike?” the trooper asked.
“Mike is a captain with the State Patrol,” Lynch said.
“Why do you want me to call Mike?” the trooper asked.
“Nope, I don’t want you to call anybody. I’m sorry. I did not say that,” Lynch said.
“Well, you did,” the trooper said, laughing. “I take it you’re friends with Mike?”
“Yes,” Lynch said. “I’m a state representative.”
Lynch then appeared to try to tell the trooper not to think that the he was asking for special treatment.
He was arrested and put in handcuffs. As he was being transported in the back of a state patrol vehicle, Lynch asked the officer not to reveal the arrest to the media. The trooper replied: “I’m not calling the press.”
“They’ll find out,” Lynch said. “This will be a big deal.”
Lynch was charged with driving under the influence, speeding 10-19 mph over the speed limit and being in possession of a gun while drunk. He pleaded guilty to driving while ability impaired, a lesser offense, and the gun charge. Prosecutors dropped the other charges.
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The representative was sentenced in December 2022 to 18 months probation and 150 hours of community service. Lynch told The Sun he still has some community service hours to complete and that his probation term — during which he is prohibited from possessing a gun — will end in June.
Lynch told The Sun this week he didn’t disclose his arrest to members of the House Republican caucus before he was elected minority leader about two months later following the sudden death of then-House Minority Leader Hugh McKean. However, he said that some in the caucus knew about it before news of the arrest was first made public Wednesday.
“This happened out of session, in between elections,” Lynch said. “I’m not running away from this. I’ve taken full responsibility for it.”
He called the arrest an embarrassing mistake that he’s learned from. Lynch said he hadn’t been arrested prior to Sept. 30, 2022, and that he hadn’t been arrested before or since.
“I didn’t realize that I was over the limit,” Lynch said in an interview with The Sun, adding that he had just left a nonpolitical fundraiser when he was pulled over. “It was a bad call, man. Bad call on my part.”
Lynch is one of nearly a dozen Republican candidates running to represent the 4th District, including U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, state Rep. Richard Holtorf and former state Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg.
The trooper who pulled Lynch over wrote in an incident report that he was driving a marked patrol vehicle equipped with emergency lights when Lynch sped past him on I-25.
“I thought the Mustang might either be trying to race me or baiting me into a motor vehicle pursuit,” the trooper wrote.
The trooper wrote that he pulled Lynch over when he was driving 90 mph.
“As soon as the window came down I could smell the strong odor of an unknown alcoholic beverage,” the trooper wrote.
MORE: Read the Colorado State Patrol incident report.
According to the incident report, Lynch’s “gait was unsteady.” The trooper saw that Lynch was carrying a pocket knife and went to secure it, at which point the representative said he also had a gun in his pocket and began to pull it out.
“I told him numerous times to stop and not move,” the trooper wrote. “For a moment, I was certain that Mr. Lynch was either purposefully pulling the gun out of his pocket or was so intoxicated that he did not realize what he was doing. … I asked Mr. Lynch what kind of gun he had in his pocket. He told me he had a little .380 and said ‘it’s not a big deal.’ I informed him that pulling a gun out of (your) pocket when in contact with the police was, in fact, a big deal and people get shot that way.”
According to the trooper, Lynch told him he was a supporter of law enforcement and “fought for ‘us.’” The trooper said that when he asked Lynch how much alcohol he had consumed, the representative said one beer and a “sip of a margarita.”