Colorado secretary of state: Fulton County raid is ‘weaponization of the justice system’

Like many state election leaders, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold (D) was shocked, but not totally surprised, to see FBI agents raid an election center in Fulton County, Georgia earlier this week.

“It’s very likely that this is a continued weaponization of the justice system, the levers of the federal government, against our democracy and elections,” Griswold told Democracy Docket in a recent interview. 

As Colorado’s chief elections officer, Griswold has been at the forefront fighting against the Trump administration’s unprecedented assault on voting and elections, from the U.S. Department of Justice’s quest to obtain sensitive voter data from every state, to reigniting dangerous 2020 conspiracy theories.

Griswold discussed Attorney General Pam Bondi’s recent letter extorting voter roll data from Minnesota, how Democratic secretaries of state are preparing for the possibility of the Trump administration to interfere in the midterms, and the new GOP anti-voting bill in Congress. 

This interview has been edited for clarity and length

Republicans in Congress just unveiled a new supercharged anti-voting bill that goes even further than the SAVE Act. What do you say about the GOP’s continued efforts to suppress votes and wrest control of elections from the states?

I just think the MAGA movement is so unpopular they’re doing anything they can to try to suppress the vote — and that includes their corrupt mid-district redistricting. Democrats need to wake up and fight fire with fire. That’s why I believe Colorado should do mid-decade redistricting too. These guys are so unpopular they’ve suppressed the vote so much over the last decade, and it’s not even enough. They want to do it more. That’s why Trump is growing so extreme. He knows there’s about to be a wipe out, and the American people are going to reject his authoritarian power grab.

How concerned are you about the raid by the Trump administration on Fulton County, Georgia’s election hub? What does this say about the independence of states to run elections?

We’ll have to see what Fulton County is all about. But it’s very likely that this is a continued weaponization of the justice system, the levers of the federal government, against our democracy and elections. I think the biggest concerning thing happened a couple days before that — and that’s Bondi’s letter to Minnesota leaders coercing them to engage in unlawful demands, based on election conspiracies. Or else ICE will stay and continue to kill innocent Americans. 

It’s a gross abuse of power, and Trump has told us exactly who he is. He’s someone who believes that we may not even need elections. He has been trying to break American democracy now for over a decade, and he is absolutely the biggest threat to this country.

Since that letter came out, there’s been swift pushback across the aisle against the Trump administration trying to extort Minnesota for their voter data. Has there been any sort of talks among your fellow secretaries about what can be done?

In terms of conversations among secretaries of state, I’m not sure that there have been any. Our solutions are litigation. Litigation and the power of protests in the American people. 

Trump is trying to retreat because he knows that Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem went way too far, that his White House has gone way too far. They’re killing soccer moms, grabbing five-year-olds and then telling people to disbelieve what their eyes see. That doesn’t mean he had — and I don’t think we should mistake his little retreat as — some type of moral clarity. It just means he’s regrouping. 

Honestly, I think attorneys general need to be very aggressive. We see the Minnesota attorney general leading various lawsuits against the Trump administration, ICE, the Department of Homeland Security, to try to get them out of there. It’s one of the reasons I’m running for attorney general. We have to hold these people accountable and try to stop the unlawful use of federal power as quickly as possible.

I want to turn back to Fulton County and the FBI raid. As you know, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was there, which suggests all kinds of bonkers reasons as to why the Trump administration is trying to get their hands on 2020 election records. The concern is that this is setting the stage for the Trump administration to interfere in the midterms in some ways. I talked to Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon (D), who said he’s been having conversations with other Democratic secretaries about preparations if that were to happen. 

If what were to happen?

If the Trump administration were to meddle into the midterms in any way.

Well what does that mean?

Trying to block people from voting in some way, trying to mess with the vote in some ways.

Democratic secretaries of state have been talking about all types of contingencies now for some time and running through disaster simulations, including political disaster simulations that Trump could decide to pursue. So I do think we’ll be as ready as one can be in many of our states. 

With that said, Trump has made our elections less safe. One of the things brought up by Maine Secretary Shenna Bellows this morning was information sharing on election day, real time-threat sharing. That is now gone. So we don’t have as many resources, but I do think people are taking everything very seriously.