‘Code Red’: Colorado Sec. of State Warns ‘Extremist’ Steve Bannon is Recruiting Election Deniers into Local Government

Secretary of State Jena Griswold (D-CO) joined CNN’s Newsroom on Thursday morning to discuss Republican Party efforts to elect candidates who support former President Donald Trump’s debunked allegations of widespread election fraud in the 2020 election.

CNN anchor Jim Sciutto introduced Griswold as someone who has sounded the alarm on this issue before, likening this Republican strategy to “electing an arsonist to oversee the Fire Department.”

Griswold, who is running for reelection in 2022, explained, “We’re seeing extremist candidates run for Secretary of State in every swing state where there’s a race to further suppress the vote, to push this information and ultimately to tilt potential future sections in the favor of their party.”

She continued, pointing the finger specifically at the more extreme elements within the pro-Trump movement:

But it’s not just that. We’re also seeing extremist insiders like Steve Bannon recruit election deniers into local election administration, and there’s a door wide open because there is so much vitriol that many election workers are throwing up their hands and saying, “you know what, I did not sign up for death threats in simply administering elections.” This is Code Red for the country.

Griswold, who heads the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, then went on to explain the real-world implications of putting “Big Lie” supporting officials into power, noting that Colorado has already had to deal with one such instance.

“So the Mason County clerk compromised voting equipment working, if you can believe it, with it seems to be QAnon and the Pillow Guy [Mike Lindell] to try to prove the ‘Big Lie,’” Griswold explained. “I was there. We decertified the voting equipment, and I asked my Republican opponent from 2018 to oversee that election in 2021.”

“A grand jury was just impaneled this morning,” she noted to continue to look into charges in the case.

“Are you finding Republican allies on the state level?” Sciutto asked of Griswold in her efforts to shore up election integrity.

“Absolutely. There’s good Republicans in this fight with us,” she responded.

“I think they’re largely in the states at this point. Like I said, my former opponent from 2018 agreed to oversee an election after a ‘Big Lie’ county clerk tried to undermine security.”

She concluded the segment on a less optimistic note:

“However, this corrosiveness of the Big Lie, it is seeping into the states. Colorado saw five bills to suppress the vote last legislative session. We killed them all. We are seeing fake audits across the nation, over 500 bills across the nation to take away Americans’ freedom. Were at a code red for democracy, attacks on election administration are at every level.”

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