Last week, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s office discovered they exposed for weeks the addresses of more than 130,000 “confidential voters” — including victims of sexual assault, domestic violence — and her political opponent in the attorney general’s race, District Attorney Michael Allen. The act itself, another in a growing list of acts of bonkers-level incompetence, is not the most outrageous part of this failure of leadership. Griswold’s deliberately delayed, politically minded and inexplicable response to her latest failure commands greater scrutiny.
Acts of incompetence are a chronic theme of Griswold’s tenure as an elected official, but they are escalating in seriousness and potential negative consequences. Griswold’s sending of voter registration cards to 30,000 noncitizens in 2022 was laughable and sad. Her 2024 posting of passwords for the voting machines in more than half Colorado’s counties was shocking. Griswold’s ability to unite an otherwise divided U.S. Supreme Court to rebuke her decision to ban the president from our ballots in a unanimous 9-0 decision against her was head-shaking. Her false claim of having personally argued that disastrous case before the Supreme Court was offensive.
None compares to this. Griswold’s latest exposure of victims’ and first-responder confidential addresses to anyone on the planet with internet access is dangerous. Her response to doing it is unforgivable.
Gong-Show Griswold has major league experience setting herself on fire and then putting out the flames with little consequence from Colorado voters and passing interest from legacy media. That experience — and her dominant personality trait of “politics above all else” — has led her to adopt a contemptuous approach to the notion of public scrutiny and accountability.
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold speaks during an Aug. 12 news conference in Denver about an election-breach investigation.
When Griswold posted our voting machine passwords to the Planet Earth, her initial reaction was to keep that revelation from the same Planet Earth, including Colorado’s county clerks, who possess and operate those machines. Those clerks, the backbone of our election system, found out about the fiasco from a press release after Griswold was confronted with someone else revealing it.
This time, with Griswold’s weekslong exposure of addresses of the vulnerable and fearful to any maliciously minded or vengeful ex-boyfriend, rapist or disgruntled convicted felon, her response was similarly Jena-centric. The timeline — dependent on Griswold’s own rendition — is damning.
On Tuesday, Aug. 25, Griswold claims she was alerted to the potential catastrophe. For two days, the Democrat nominee for — gulp — attorney general — told nobody. Not the clerks. Not the victims whose addresses were searched for while exposed. Not law enforcement who are skilled in risk assessment and investigation.
The following two days of undeniable risk saw Griswold focused on damage control, her go-to move. Her staff crafted emails and calls to the 59, hoping against hope all exposed voters would concede they searched their own records and thus, maybe nobody else would have to know.
That evening, Griswold’s staff — completely inadequate to conduct any investigation involving risk to victims — contacted the 59. The emails sent contained no revelation Griswold’s office left their addresses unprotected for weeks. The email — which gave no sense of urgency — merely stated the confidential voter’s profile “had been accessed” and then asked if they had been the one to do it. Numerous of the 59 indicated they had not and responded they were concerned anyone had done so. Those concerns were not immediately turned over to law enforcement. In fact, Griswold did not even notify the clerks of this potentially dangerous issue; they found out from — you guessed it — a press release that night.
Did Griswold enlist the help of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation? The FBI? District attorneys from across the states who prosecuted the cases involving victims? Nope. In fact, her office refused to provide any of the list of 59 and the IP addresses to any district attorney. I personally requested those in my jurisdiction — information Colorado law mandates be given to me — and Griswold’s office refused.
Instead, Griswold turned to the Colorado State Patrol — the organization that provides her protection.
CSP is a top-shelf organization of professionals who tirelessly and expertly work to keep our roads safe. Their work is dangerous — I have personally prosecuted two cases involving the death of state troopers in our jurisdiction and have attended the funeral of several others. They are massively underfunded by a legislature that has grown the public defender’s office to be larger than they are. I love CSP. They are not equipped to address the risks to these 59 in the timely and comprehensive manner needed here.
Griswold did not even give CSP the list of 59 until Saturday, day four after her initial discovery. CSP cannot access case information that would connect any of the 59 with criminal cases in which they were victims. Only DAs can do that. The Colorado District Attorneys Council was not given the list until Sunday — day five.
We do not yet know who accessed the once-confidential records. Griswold did not provide those IP addresses to CSP with the list of 59. Instead, she sent them late on Sunday. CSP did not — could not — investigate those IP addresses. They were provided to my office this past Monday — nearly one week after Griswold knew confidential records of victims and first responders were accessed. We have been working to identify them ever since. God willing, there will be no tragedy while we do.
Remember who Griswold prioritized here and everywhere.
When you get your ballot in the mail next month, before you vote, close your eyes and picture what Jena Griswold could do as our next attorney general — a position far more powerful than the one she has now.
George Brauchler is the 23rd Judicial District attorney and former district attorney for the 18th Judicial District. He has served as an Owens Early Criminal Justice Fellow at the Common Sense Institute. Follow him on Twitter @GeorgeBrauchler.