Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser says he will press congressional nominee Melat Kiros over refusing to label Boulder firebombing as antisemitic

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said he plans to directly confront congressional candidate Melat Kiros after Kiros refused to label a deadly June 1, 2025 firebomb attack on Jewish activists in Boulder as antisemitic. Weiser, who is Jewish and now the Democratic nominee for governor after defeating Sen. Michael Bennett in Colorado’s Democratic gubernatorial primary, said in an interview that he intends to raise the matter with Kiros when the two speak.

Weiser’s comments followed questions about whether the Boulder attack should be characterized as antisemitic hate violence. According to The Hill, the firebombing killed one person and injured several others. Weiser said the attack was an antisemitic act and that if someone would not acknowledge that, he was concerned.

In the same interview, Weiser said Kiros had declined to condemn the attack as antisemitic. The Hill reported that when Kiros was asked about the firebombing, she said she did not know what motivated the perpetrator, and on that basis refused to label it antisemitic. Weiser said he had not yet discussed the matter with Kiros directly, but that when they eventually meet, he will raise it and reiterated his view.

Weiser also compared the issue to public messaging around other forms of hate crime recognition. The Hill reported that he said Jewish victims’ lives should be affirmed without qualifiers and described support for victims as a straightforward message, saying, “Black Lives Matter, period. Jewish lives matter… You don’t put a comma, an and, or a but. Period. That’s the message.”

Kiros, a Democratic congressional candidate, has also faced scrutiny for earlier comments about Israel and related attacks. The Hill reported that she previously described the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas as an “inevitable consequence of apartheid,” while also saying Israel did not deserve the attack. She also faced questions tied to her characterization of the Sept. 11 attacks, which The Hill said she described as “inevitable” in connection with U.S. military actions.

The dispute is unfolding as Colorado Democrats prepare for the next stage of their competitive races. The Hill reported that Kiros won an upset in Colorado’s Democratic congressional primary against incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette, who has held the Denver-based seat since 1997. Weiser’s remarks add friction within the party over language used to describe a specific violent attack and what candidates should say about antisemitism.

Weiser’s statement also puts the federal campaign timeline into a narrower focus for voters and activists, since the dispute centers on how candidates should characterize a past attack and whether uncertainty about motive is compatible with recognizing antisemitic targeting. For Kiros, the immediate stakes are whether her explanation of why she would not apply the antisemitic label continues to draw scrutiny as she advances from the primary contest.

For Weiser, the episode is part of the final stretch of his own party contest posture. As the Democratic nominee for governor, he is positioning himself on a matter of hate-violence recognition that directly involves a past case in Colorado, while indicating he plans to address Kiros’s position personally rather than leaving it solely to surrogates or public debate. The Hill reported that Weiser had not yet met with Kiros about the issue. The next public step would come when the two eventually speak and Weiser asks Kiros again to clarify or adjust her framing.