December 13, 2024 • 8 mins
THE LIGHTWEIGHT INVESTIGATION OF JENA GRISWOLD Jimmy Sengenberger writes about it here, including the part where leadership wasn't even INTERVIEWED for the investigation. Of course they weren't, they are Democrats. Jimmy is right when he says this:
Let’s be serious: If Jena Griswold were a Republican, or not a high-profile Democrat eyeing the state’s top office, would they have brushed this aside so easily?
We all know the answer to that. Jimmy joins me at 1 to discuss.
Let’s be serious: If Jena Griswold were a Republican, or not a high-profile Democrat eyeing the state’s top office, would they have brushed this aside so easily?
We all know the answer to that. Jimmy joins me at 1 to discuss.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome, Welcome to the second hour of the show. And
if there's a harmonica, that means Jimmy, Seng and Murger
can't be that far behind. He's got a great column
in the Denver Gazette today about the Patty Cake investigation
of Jenny Griswold. My words, not his, Jimmy, welcome back
to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hey, Mandy. Yeah, it's quite a doozy when they say, oh,
we're doing an investigation and there are a lot of
questions that weren't even considered or even asked.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
I mean, well, let's get into it. Let's give it
because I haven't even really talked about this because honestly,
when I saw the kind of news coverage it was getting,
we're essentially it was yeah, mistakes were made, but nobody
meant to make them. It was just all by accident,
and so we all just need to move on. I mean,
that was kind of the coverage. I was so disgusted,
(00:51):
not surprised, but disgusted. So do a quick breakdown of
what they did find or and then we'll get to
what they didn't do.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
So Baird Quinn LLC is a law firm that was
hired to dive in supposedly and look into the origins
of this BIOS computer password leak that while they were
most of the counties, the vast majority of the counties
were involved in the lake. It was thirty four counties
that had vulnerabilities as a result of these passwords getting
(01:24):
out there. And in essence, what the reports included is
that a former employee in May of twenty twenty two
had created an Excel spreadsheet which included listings for all
the different equipment and the various counties across the state,
and had some hidden tabs where those worksheets in the
tabs which you can hide in an Excel spreadsheet, included
(01:49):
passwords for a number of these machines across the state.
And in May of twenty twenty three, she left. This
former employee left the position, but did not let anybody
else in the staff know that she had hidden tabs
in this Excel spreadsheet. And so eventually a while later,
(02:12):
they had been putting up TDF versions. You know, when
you open up PDF file, they don't have these hidden fields,
so nobody had any clue that these were going to
be in there. So they've been putting up these PDF
files and eventually decided, you know what, for transparency, it's
June of twenty twenty four, let's put up this Excel
(02:34):
spreadsheet instead. And without reviewing the spreadsheet, they put the
raw thing up with these hidden fields, and lo and
behold the league happened.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Yep, And instead of taking any kind of responsibility for it,
Jennack Griswold was essentially like, oh, it wasn't.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
That big a deal. It wasn't that big a deal
at all. Let me ask you this, where did they
not do enough? In this investigation?
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Are where to begin? Well? Number one is interviewing the
Secretary of State herself, Jenna Grizswald. Number two is interviewing
the Deputy Secretary of State himself, Christopher Beale. Number three
is looking at the fallout. What happened once they learned
of this breach? What did they do? What didn't they do?
Why did they not notify clerks, county clerks, or the
(03:24):
public of what they had discovered? Those are some basic questions, Mandy,
that you would expect any investigation to consider, and they
didn't even do that, let alone sit down Jenna for
an interview.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
That is absurd to me.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
I mean, how do you have an interview about what's
happening with this department, and not interview the head of
the department to find out really and I don't want
to say the blame the culpability, but what part did
she have? Where did where did her office fail? In
her eyes? She's never answered those questions. She's never taking
(04:00):
an iota of responsibility for this. That's the part that
frustrates me the most, because if you screw up something,
you say, oh, I'm sure you say, oh, I screwed
that up.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
And I'm not asking her to fall on her sword.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
I'm just saying it would be nice if instead of oh,
this problem isn't a big deal, somebody said, wow, we
really screwed up and we regret this happening.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
And that has not happened at all exactly.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
And a few things can be true at the same time. One,
it can be an inadvertent accident. This former employee was
using these hidden tabs as like a sort of piece
of scratch paper to just keep notes. Now, you shouldn't
do that, but that was the way that she approached things,
and it was accidental on the part of people. That
can be true, But at the same time, it can
(04:46):
also be the case that it is a serious vulnerability. Yes,
they can mitigate the vulnerabilities through a lot of security checks.
That's why we can take confidence in the election results,
and they should have been certified, but they're still were
serious risks when if somebody had a password, a bio's password,
they could go in and change settings, critical settings to
(05:09):
the computers. And one other thing can be true at
the same time too, Mandy, and that is that even
if Jenna Griswold wasn't involved, didn't know that this was
going on, her leadership failures and the systemic issues that
the department going back to when she took over in
twenty nineteen need to be investigated as part of what happened,
(05:32):
because you can't separate them.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Right exactly exactly right. And you know this department should
be if it was operating properly and the way it
operated for so many years here in Colorado, we shouldn't
be giving this a second thought, right, This should be
so unquestionably sound in the way it's run. And this
is my big frustration is that this isn't the first
(05:55):
time we've had a major incident with Jenna Griswold.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
It's not the first.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Time her office has made a significant mistake. And so
in a vacuum, this one incident, as you laid it out,
it could be easily explained away. But when you factor
in the fact that twice she sent postcards to people
who are not in the were not citizens, telling them
to register to vote, I mean, it's a pretty big deal.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
And she blew it off both times.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Yes, and in another instance where the county clerks had
to do what they consistently have to do, which is
clean up her messes, ballad reminders also went out to
people who'd already voted, and then county clerks had to
scrambled figure out what they were going to do. And
so I make the point in my column that now
cleaning up Griswold's messes might as well be a part
(06:43):
of a clerk's shout description, which is absolutely the case.
And here's the thing, the rumor mill, and I think
it's more than the rumor meal. It's pretty clear that
she is on the precipice of announcing a run for
governor as soon as next.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
I'm sorry, that's so comically bad.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
It's it is ab third, but this is the kind
of thing that needs to be addressed. And you got
to wonder how the State Legislative Audit Committee passes on
looking into this in a party line vote, Democrats sweeping
this under the rug. There This investigation is a sham
(07:20):
in terms of the things that they didn't consider that
they needed to look into. And she's running for governor.
Is that a coincidence? Maybe? But is it surprising? I
think not.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
I gotta tell you, if she ends up being the
candidate from the Democratic side, surely there's somebody else that's
going to step up on the left and run for governor.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Surely.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
I mean, I'm guessing Phil Wiser is going to throw
his name into the hat as well, don't you think absolutely?
Speaker 2 (07:47):
There's a question as to whether Congressman Jonah Goose might
decide to run, But without question, you're going to have
a Wiser and Griswold both among the list of candidates,
no matter who else is added in. But I want
to add something else of sourd to your attention, Mandy.
You might not be aware of this, but I reported
on it as far back as twenty twenty one. In
twenty nineteen, the Colorado Democrats named Jenny Griswold their rising
(08:13):
star Democrat rising star. The following year, in twenty twenty,
their rising star was none other than a former Denver
school board member named Kay andrews Oh Fat Year, great tale,
Tay Anderson. Doesn't that fit and show at least a
little bit of consistency.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Consistency is the right word, Jimmy. It is the right word.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
If you want to hear more from Jimmy, you can
hear him Monday as he's filling in for Ross from
nine to noon. You can always read his columns on
the Denver Gazette. And I know he fills in for
me as well when I'm off. So Jimmy, good to
talk to you, my friend. I'll see you Monday.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Thank you, Mandy.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
See all right, that's fantastic.
Welcome, Welcome to the second hour of the show. And
if there's a harmonica, that means Jimmy, Seng and Murger
can't be that far behind. He's got a great column
in the Denver Gazette today about the Patty Cake investigation
of Jenny Griswold. My words, not his, Jimmy, welcome back
to the show.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Hey, Mandy. Yeah, it's quite a doozy when they say, oh,
we're doing an investigation and there are a lot of
questions that weren't even considered or even asked.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
I mean, well, let's get into it. Let's give it
because I haven't even really talked about this because honestly,
when I saw the kind of news coverage it was getting,
we're essentially it was yeah, mistakes were made, but nobody
meant to make them. It was just all by accident,
and so we all just need to move on. I mean,
that was kind of the coverage. I was so disgusted,
(00:51):
not surprised, but disgusted. So do a quick breakdown of
what they did find or and then we'll get to
what they didn't do.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
So Baird Quinn LLC is a law firm that was
hired to dive in supposedly and look into the origins
of this BIOS computer password leak that while they were
most of the counties, the vast majority of the counties
were involved in the lake. It was thirty four counties
that had vulnerabilities as a result of these passwords getting
(01:24):
out there. And in essence, what the reports included is
that a former employee in May of twenty twenty two
had created an Excel spreadsheet which included listings for all
the different equipment and the various counties across the state,
and had some hidden tabs where those worksheets in the
tabs which you can hide in an Excel spreadsheet, included
(01:49):
passwords for a number of these machines across the state.
And in May of twenty twenty three, she left. This
former employee left the position, but did not let anybody
else in the staff know that she had hidden tabs
in this Excel spreadsheet. And so eventually a while later,
(02:12):
they had been putting up TDF versions. You know, when
you open up PDF file, they don't have these hidden fields,
so nobody had any clue that these were going to
be in there. So they've been putting up these PDF
files and eventually decided, you know what, for transparency, it's
June of twenty twenty four, let's put up this Excel
(02:34):
spreadsheet instead. And without reviewing the spreadsheet, they put the
raw thing up with these hidden fields, and lo and
behold the league happened.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
Yep, And instead of taking any kind of responsibility for it,
Jennack Griswold was essentially like, oh, it wasn't.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
That big a deal. It wasn't that big a deal
at all. Let me ask you this, where did they
not do enough? In this investigation?
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Are where to begin? Well? Number one is interviewing the
Secretary of State herself, Jenna Grizswald. Number two is interviewing
the Deputy Secretary of State himself, Christopher Beale. Number three
is looking at the fallout. What happened once they learned
of this breach? What did they do? What didn't they do?
Why did they not notify clerks, county clerks, or the
(03:24):
public of what they had discovered? Those are some basic questions, Mandy,
that you would expect any investigation to consider, and they
didn't even do that, let alone sit down Jenna for
an interview.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
That is absurd to me.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
I mean, how do you have an interview about what's
happening with this department, and not interview the head of
the department to find out really and I don't want
to say the blame the culpability, but what part did
she have? Where did where did her office fail? In
her eyes? She's never answered those questions. She's never taking
(04:00):
an iota of responsibility for this. That's the part that
frustrates me the most, because if you screw up something,
you say, oh, I'm sure you say, oh, I screwed
that up.
Speaker 3 (04:11):
And I'm not asking her to fall on her sword.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
I'm just saying it would be nice if instead of oh,
this problem isn't a big deal, somebody said, wow, we
really screwed up and we regret this happening.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
And that has not happened at all exactly.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
And a few things can be true at the same time. One,
it can be an inadvertent accident. This former employee was
using these hidden tabs as like a sort of piece
of scratch paper to just keep notes. Now, you shouldn't
do that, but that was the way that she approached things,
and it was accidental on the part of people. That
can be true, But at the same time, it can
(04:46):
also be the case that it is a serious vulnerability. Yes,
they can mitigate the vulnerabilities through a lot of security checks.
That's why we can take confidence in the election results,
and they should have been certified, but they're still were
serious risks when if somebody had a password, a bio's password,
they could go in and change settings, critical settings to
(05:09):
the computers. And one other thing can be true at
the same time too, Mandy, and that is that even
if Jenna Griswold wasn't involved, didn't know that this was
going on, her leadership failures and the systemic issues that
the department going back to when she took over in
twenty nineteen need to be investigated as part of what happened,
(05:32):
because you can't separate them.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Right exactly exactly right. And you know this department should
be if it was operating properly and the way it
operated for so many years here in Colorado, we shouldn't
be giving this a second thought, right, This should be
so unquestionably sound in the way it's run. And this
is my big frustration is that this isn't the first
(05:55):
time we've had a major incident with Jenna Griswold.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
It's not the first.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Time her office has made a significant mistake. And so
in a vacuum, this one incident, as you laid it out,
it could be easily explained away. But when you factor
in the fact that twice she sent postcards to people
who are not in the were not citizens, telling them
to register to vote, I mean, it's a pretty big deal.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
And she blew it off both times.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
Yes, and in another instance where the county clerks had
to do what they consistently have to do, which is
clean up her messes, ballad reminders also went out to
people who'd already voted, and then county clerks had to
scrambled figure out what they were going to do. And
so I make the point in my column that now
cleaning up Griswold's messes might as well be a part
(06:43):
of a clerk's shout description, which is absolutely the case.
And here's the thing, the rumor mill, and I think
it's more than the rumor meal. It's pretty clear that
she is on the precipice of announcing a run for
governor as soon as next.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
I'm sorry, that's so comically bad.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
It's it is ab third, but this is the kind
of thing that needs to be addressed. And you got
to wonder how the State Legislative Audit Committee passes on
looking into this in a party line vote, Democrats sweeping
this under the rug. There This investigation is a sham
(07:20):
in terms of the things that they didn't consider that
they needed to look into. And she's running for governor.
Is that a coincidence? Maybe? But is it surprising? I
think not.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
I gotta tell you, if she ends up being the
candidate from the Democratic side, surely there's somebody else that's
going to step up on the left and run for governor.
Speaker 3 (07:41):
Surely.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
I mean, I'm guessing Phil Wiser is going to throw
his name into the hat as well, don't you think absolutely?
Speaker 2 (07:47):
There's a question as to whether Congressman Jonah Goose might
decide to run, But without question, you're going to have
a Wiser and Griswold both among the list of candidates,
no matter who else is added in. But I want
to add something else of sourd to your attention, Mandy.
You might not be aware of this, but I reported
on it as far back as twenty twenty one. In
twenty nineteen, the Colorado Democrats named Jenny Griswold their rising
(08:13):
star Democrat rising star. The following year, in twenty twenty,
their rising star was none other than a former Denver
school board member named Kay andrews Oh Fat Year, great tale,
Tay Anderson. Doesn't that fit and show at least a
little bit of consistency.
Speaker 3 (08:31):
Consistency is the right word, Jimmy. It is the right word.
Speaker 1 (08:35):
If you want to hear more from Jimmy, you can
hear him Monday as he's filling in for Ross from
nine to noon. You can always read his columns on
the Denver Gazette. And I know he fills in for
me as well when I'm off. So Jimmy, good to
talk to you, my friend. I'll see you Monday.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Thank you, Mandy.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
See all right, that's fantastic.
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