The controversy regarding the release of election system passwords by Secretary of State Jena Griswold’s office is not over. At least, it should not be. Important questions remain unaddressed by the two investigations that have taken place.

To catch up: on June 21, the Colorado Department of State posted to a globally accessible website 650 passwords impacting 225 election machines from 43 counties in Colorado. More than four months later, on Oct. 24, Griswold and the Colorado Department of State were made aware of this unprecedented, significant and self-inflicted security breach. Griswold chose to keep the breach a secret from Coloradans, and more importantly, from the county clerks who are processing ballots for the general election.

The Colorado GOP lets the cat out of the breach bag, which leads to an Oct. 29 televised interview of Griswold by Kyle Clark that is reminiscent of the interrogation in the opening scene in the movie “Zero Dark Thirty.”

The following day, Griswold appears to throw an employee under the bus by saying “a civil servant made a serious mistake” and further said that “the employee responsible …no longer works with the department….” The obvious and intended suggestion to Coloradans was that Griswold had taken action. At this point, in full damage containment mode, Griswold — the subject of the prematurely launched “Jena for Governor website” — intended to do nothing more.

Two days later, on Nov. 1, the Gazette published my column, “Griswold cannot be trusted to investigate herself,” the first sentence of which began, “Our Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold and her office should immediately be investigated for violating numerous Colorado laws related to the publication of election-related passwords.”

Later that day, Denver District Attorney Beth McCann’s office assigned an investigator to do just that. She should not have. Of course, McCann has jurisdiction over such potential crimes committed by the Colorado Department of State and there is likely no true conflict, but she should have sought the appointment of a special prosecutor, because the optics leave reasonable Coloradans skeptical of the process and the outcome. Last week, McCann announced that no charges would be filed in this matter. That is not to say the result was legally infirm. That is not the issue.

Griswold is a Democrat. McCann is a Democrat. McCann has contributed to Griswold. Griswold has contributed to McCann. It looks horribly political. So, why not seek a special prosecutor? If McCann were to seek the appointment of a special prosecutor, the DA for the 18th Judicial District would have been appointed. That’s no nonsense DA John Kellner. A Republican. A Republican DA who McCann opposed in his 2020 election. He might have come to the same conclusion, but Coloradans would have been certain that political favoritism played no role in it.

Nearly two weeks after The Gazette column and after the Denver DA began their investigation, Griswold used taxpayer funds to handpick Baird Quinn, an employment law firm, to investigate the Colorado Department of State and the password debacle, but not whether laws were broken. Beth Doherty Quinn, a multiple-time contributor to McCann and AG Phil Weiser, is the partner who conducted the investigation. Coloradans should know that this law firm has no obligation to Colorado voters or taxpayers or anyone other than Griswold. Her office hired them. They work for her.

The investigation included interviews of Colorado Department of State employees, but each of them knew their remotely conducted interviews were being actively monitored by a “CDOS Legal Policy Advisor” (unidentified to the public) who reports directly to the employees’ boss — Griswold. The investigation included a review of emails related to the password crisis, but treated emails about how Griswold and the Colorado Department of State responded to the crisis as outside the scope of their task — so they did not look at them.

Given Griswold’s conduct, Coloradans deserve to see those email communications. They should be able to request other electronic communications, specifically those related to the decision about whether and when to reveal to the county clerks that their election machine passwords were made available to the planet earth.

The Dec. 8 report revealed something else: Griswold misled Coloradans about the former employee. The outside investigation concluded that the employee did not violate Colorado Department of State policies, let alone a “serious” one. Further, and more concerning, is that the employee did not leave Griswold’s employment after — or as a result of — this nonserious whatever-she-wants-to-call-it.

The employee left on good terms on May 19, 2023 — more than 13 months before a different Colorado Department of State employee posted the document with the readily available passwords to the WWW. The document with the passwords “was never updated or manipulated” since the employee resigned, and remained unchanged from its posting in June until it was removed in October.

The report found that Griswold and the Colorado Department of State violated Colorado Information Security Policy — a rule and regulation related to her office — by failing “to train authorized individuals to ensure that publicly accessible information does not contain nonpublic information and to review the proposed content of information prior to posting onto the publicly accessible Information System to ensure that non-public information is not included.” The reason Griswold’s office created this serious data breach was because “there are no written or unwritten procedures or policies for approving web requests and that the approval is almost completely a ministerial act.” Griswold failed in her duty to follow the rules.

In light of the hyperaggressive approach Griswold took toward Tina Peters’ data breach, as well as her spearheading of Jena’s Law — creating a felony law to punish compromising voting equipment — Griswold’s failure to have a policy training her staff how to identify and prevent such leaks seems arbitrary, even capricious.

There is one last chance at the full truth: a legislative audit. Democrats have voted against it. Coloradans are right to wonder why.

George Brauchler is district attorney-elect for the 23rd Judicial District 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(X): @GeorgeBrauchler