Four days before Barry Morphew was arrested, Linda Stanley and a YouTube host texted each other about her appearance discussing the case on his show, which is called “Profiling Evil.”

Mike King appeared to be congratulating her on a decent performance. “You’ll be so popular that when we get a different president we’ll get you in as AG (attorney general),” texted King.

“I wouldn’t want to be AG. Too much politics, but Supreme Court justice, hey count me in,” Stanley responded by text.

That conversation and several others were revealed in court on the seventh day of often adversarial testimony in the disciplinary hearing for the former district attorney in the Morphew case.

Stanley took the stand Tuesday afternoon to defend her behavior as district attorney, which has garnered at least five complaints from law enforcement personnel, a judge on the case, and a citizen who searched for Suzanne Morphew in the days after she went missing. Complaints against her claim she spoke too freely with the media about the Morphew case and about the Fremont County murder case of a 10-month-old baby, that her prosecution team had continual discovery violations, and that she was a poor leader.

Stanley, who has decided not to run for the 11th Judicial District for a second term, was on the defensive after being hammered during nearly seven days of testimony. She often corrected and questioned the accuracy and intent of Senior Assistant Regulation Counsel Erin Kristofco’s line of questioning.

Of appearing on the podcast, Kristofco asked, “You believed Mr. Morphew was guilty and you wanted to get others to agree with you, right?”

“Untrue,” replied Stanley.

She added, “There were only 1,000 people in Colorado who watched that (the podcast ‘Profiling Evil’).”

She said that the chances of potential jurors hearing her comments were the same as winning the lottery.

Stanley could be disbarred if found to have displayed professional misconduct.

The state’s Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel brought the charges against Stanley after it discovered enough evidence to possibly support ethical violations.

Suzanne Morphew, 49, went missing from her remote mountain home, about a 15-minute drive west of Salida, sometime on May 9-10 in 2020. Thousands of people turned out to look for her on horseback, on foot and in the streams and rivers.

Barry Morphew was arrested nearly a year later — on May 5, 2021 — on suspicion of first-degree murder and tampering with physical evidence in her disappearance. Then-Judge Ramsey Lama agreed to dismiss all charges against Barry Morphew, without prejudice, just nine days before he was to stand trial for the first-degree murder of his wife and mother of their two daughters. “Without prejudice” means that prosecutors can re-file charges in the future.

Suzanne Morphew’s remains were found last September, three years after she went missing. No new charges have been filed and the investigation is ongoing.

In a second Fremont County case, charges against a Colorado man accused of killing a baby were dismissed because of comments Stanley made to a Colorado Springs television station that may have violated prosecutorial ethics.

Stanley has sat quietly through testimony from investigators and prosecutors who worked on the Morphew case with her — from former U.S. Attorney, Attorney General and Colorado Springs mayor John Suthers, and Lama, the former 11th Judicial District judge who last oversaw the Morphew case.

Called to the stand before Stanley’s testimony was Mike King, the host of the true crime podcast, newsletter and webcast who communicated with Stanley over text about the Morphew case leading up to Barry Morphew’s arrest and after he was bound over for trial in September of 2021.

“I reached out to Linda before she was sworn in (as district attorney) and said I’d love to chat with her,” King said.

After three months, they started communicating over text, but he said Stanley never told him “secrets.” At times, he appeared to cheerlead her appearances on his show. “Good job Linda,” he wrote in the summer of 2021 of her appearance on his show. He then suggested that, if she needed an ear to listen, she could call him.

Kristofco said that Stanley appeared on “Profiling Evil” three times — in June, August and September 2021 — to discuss the Morphew case, which the Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel said violates prosecutorial ethics.

King testified that his conversations with Stanley often involved their personal lives and were not solely about the Morphew case.

“If I ever got anything close to the sun, she’d say, ‘You know I’m not going to talk about that,’” he said.

Still, in June 2021, Stanley texted King in response to a Barry Morphew video he sent her, “We got him. No worries.”

Stanley’s Sept. 30, 2021 appearance on “Profiling Evil” has 23,000 views. “Love DA Stanley. Wild respect,” wrote one viewer.

But the title brings up ethical problems for a district attorney discussing an active case, said former Boulder District Attorney Stan Garnett during testimony last week.

“Appearing on this show is a problem,” said Garnett. “Talking about a case on a show called ‘Evil’ is in and of itself a statement.”

“No. I’m not saying anyone is evil,” countered Stanley Tuesday, who said she did not name the podcast.

Earlier, Tom Raynes, executive director of the Colorado District Attorneys’ Council, said that early on in the case, Stanley called him for help with more attorneys to help with a case that was overwhelming for a small district like the 11th, which is responsible for prosecuting crimes in four counties.

Unable to help her out because there were no attorney in other districts to borrow, he told her to hire some, which she did.

it was her extra-judicial statements which worried Raynes.

“Is it concerning to you that an elected DA has been admonished several times and continued to conduct herself this way in the media,” asked Kristofco.

“Yes,” Raynes said.

Raynes testified that he co-filed one of the ethics complaints against Stanley with the Colorado Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel when he saw an interview Stanley did with Colorado Springs television station KRDO.

Stanley’s testimony will continue Thursday. Courts are closed Wednesday for the Juneteenth holiday.