April 04, 2024 02:47 PM UTC

Silly Stillborn Griswold Impeachment Resolution Will Get Its Hearing

• 3 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

As Bente Birkeland reports for Colorado Public Radio, a small-potatoes standoff between the Democratic supermajority in the Colorado House and the nineteen Republicans in the minority determined to make noise disproportionate to their numbers has been resolved, with House leadership agreeing to send a Republican resolution calling for the impeachment of Secretary of State Jena Griswold to certain death in the House Judiciary Committee next week, accommodating Republicans who had been inexplicably clamoring for this guaranteed embarrassment since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Trump v. Anderson ruling:

A GOP impeachment resolution against Griswold is expected to be introduced at the statehouse this week, according to a source close to Democratic leadership. The Democratic-controlled House Judiciary Committee is planning to hear the resolution as early as Tuesday and take a vote.

Griswold has long been a polarizing figure on the right, since taking office in 2019. But it’s her vocal support of the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision to remove Trump from the state’s primary election ballot that has moved Republicans to actively work to oust her.

Now, faced with the threat of an impeachment hearing, Griswold said she wants to be there in person to defend herself.

“Republicans can try to attack any way they want, but they’re going to lose. They’ll lose because their attacks are baseless and they’ll lose because I will not be intimidated from doing my job from stunts like this,” Griswold told CPR News.

Early last month, 9NEWS’ Kyle Clark tried exhaustively to get GOP Rep. Ryan Armagost to explain the specific grounds for impeaching Secretary Griswold for her role as a defendant in the case that sought to remove Donald Trump from the Super Tuesday ballot in Colorado, under the 14th Amendment prohibition of insurrectionists from holding office. After several minutes of inartfully dodging the question, Armagost conceded that the reason for the whole effort was to “help [Republicans] in the next election cycle.” The assumption, since this resolution has absolutely zero chance of surviving its first vote, is that voters would sympathize with Republicans even though their impeachment resolution is the epitome of pointless wishcasting.

The problem with this assumption is that a majority of Colorado voters actually supported the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling that Trump should be disqualified. The Mountaineer poll in February found that 56% of Coloradans approved of the decision, and 60% agree that Trump engaged in insurrection. Republicans don’t have public opinion on their side on the basic facts, and are forced to egregiously misrepresent Griswold’s role in the case to justify retaliating against her. The revenge quest against Griswold is at least as factually misguided as the U.S. House’s impeachment crusade against Joe Biden, with the difference that Colorado House Republicans don’t have anywhere near the votes to pass their resolution. And Griswold is just as allowed to express her opinion as, for example, the House Republicans who signed a letter calling for lenient treatment of January 6th rioters.

With all of this in mind, the possibility of next Tuesday’s hearing in the House Judiciary Committee backfiring massively on the GOP micro-minority is very high. Griswold has proven more than capable of shredding Republican election misinformation in her six years as Secretary of State, and she’ll have all the backup she needs from the committee’s majority-plus Democratic majority. On the other side, House Judiciary Committee Republican Rep. Gabe Evans, running for Congress in swing CO-08, risks embroiling himself in Donald Trump’s endless relitigation of 2020–which assuming he gets past his MAGA primary opponent Janak Joshi will be the last thing he needs.

Like the Colorado GOP’s actions to short-circuit the presidential primary, the hopeless revenge quest against Griswold has an audience of one–Trump himself. Especially in Colorado, no one else benefits.