Colorado Secretary of State and AG candidate Jena Griswold misleads voters about an outhouse and more
Three former Colorado Attorneys General are weighing in on what it takes to be the state's chief legal officer, and casting doubt on whether Secretary of State Jena Griswold is qualified.
Griswold is one of four candidates in this month's primary election vying to be the Democratic nominee for attorney general, and there are questions about her professional experience as well as some of her personal experiences.
"I grew up in a cabin with an outhouse outside on food stamps," Griswold told the Longmont Area Democrats earlier this year.
Over the last 8 years, she has repeatedly talked about using an outhouse as a kid to take care of business. She's also used it as a candidate to illustrate just how far she's come.
She told the Longmont Area Democrats, "I'm running for Attorney General because every Coloradan deserves that same shot."
Her campaign sent a picture of her posing beside the outhouse to prove its real.
But so is the home's indoor plumbing, according to Larimer County records, which show a 1,250-gallon septic tank installed in 1990, five years before Griswold moved in.
Her campaign says she used the indoor and outdoor toilet because of "the often significant expense of septic tank pumping. At no point, did the Secretary claim she didn't have indoor plumbing." She just left it out. The outhouse is more compelling. Critics argue she has similarly emphasized certain aspects of her background while omitting others when discussing her resume.
She says her first job after law school was at a D.C. law firm where she practiced international anti-corruption law for 2 years. But according to a timeline provided by her campaign, Griswold was there for no more than 15 months. That includes the period before she passed the D.C. bar exam. She was there just five months after earning her law license.
Her campaign says she represented one client while at the law firm, in family court, before she was licensed to practice in D.C. That is the only client Griswold has ever represented in court, according to her campaign. It says she left the law firm in April 2013 but didn't say why.
There is also little information about the small business Griswold says she operated from 2015-2018 before becoming Secretary of State. After repeated inquiries, her campaign said it was a consulting firm with no employees and 6 clients over 3 years.
There are conflicting reports of what she did as Director of then-Gov. John Hickenlooper's D.C. Office. She has said she was "instrumental in bringing back hundreds of millions of relief dollars to help the Colorado communities hit by the 2013 flood." The campaign provided a statement from Hickenlooper saying she was a "key part of the team in ensuring Colorado received funding to rebuild and recover after the historic 2013 floods."
But her direct supervisor at the time, Alan Salazar, says Lisa Carpenter oversaw her work and Carpenter's recollection differs from Hickenlooper's.
"She didn't really do a lot of what her job entailed so to say that she went above and beyond that and delivered for the State is wildly inaccurate," Carpenter said.
Carpenter says Griswold is taking credit for the hard work of others.
"It is offensive to me and to the work that those people did. I mean, it was a really hard time in the governor's office and to make light, or lie about something, or be untruthful about something so important to the state is pretty incredible to me."
As secretary, Griswold apparently has also inflated her role by claiming, for example, that she argued before the U.S. Supreme Court to keep President Trump off the ballot when she's not even credentialed to appear before the U.S. Supreme Court. Her campaign says she "worked on strategy and tactics" with the AG's office, an office she now wants to run after working at one law firm for roughly one year and representing one client in court more than 14 years ago.
"The attorney general requires the best of lawyers," former Democratic AG Ken Salazar told CBS Colorado. "Anyone elected to that office should have the highest legal qualifications."
His Republican successor, John Suthers, agrees.
"You need to be smart enough about the law to be able to evaluate the streams of information that are coming to you and make the appropriate decision. And you don't learn that outside of a law office, in my opinion. If you're running and saying, 'I'm going to run the office,' you darn well ought to have the background to be able to do it."
Based on the qualifications outlined on the Colorado Attorney General's website -- including a litigation background and ability to handle trials independently -- it's unclear if Griswold meets the minimum criteria for an entry-level attorney, let alone the top job.
If she wins, she will oversee more than 700 attorneys and staff and manage legal manners spanning consumer protection, civil rights, constitutional, criminal, water, and environmental law.
Salazar says the AG is responsible for "upholding the rule of law and representing the people of Colorado in thousands of cases in all state and federal courts."
Former Republican AG Cynthia Coffman says it's an awesome responsibility.
"You have to understand how law is practiced, how briefs are written, how arguments are structured, what happens when you go to court. If you're not experienced and able to make complicated legal decisions, then you put the office at risk; you put the state of Colorado on the line," she said.
Griswold's campaign says the AG's responsibilities go beyond the courtroom, saying: "The AG is an executive who manages a large office, provides direction and makes strategic decisions. Griswold has that experience."
But her record as Secretary of State has been marred by controversies. Before the 2024 presidential election, her office leaked hundreds of passwords to election equipment online and didn't alert county clerks. Griswold said she "needed to determine the size and scope of the issue" first. Her deputy attorney general told clerks Griswold was worried about the leak "becoming a media storm."
She also came under fire in 2022 for using $1 million in taxpayer dollars to appear in ads, as she ran for re-election. She said the ads were vital to fight election misinformation.
Perhaps the loudest criticism of Griswold is that she's politicized an historically non-partisan office.
Coffman says the AG is an advocate not activist.
"People will leave. Excellent lawyers will leave because they don't want to be in a partisan environment. And the state attorney general's office will be weaker for it," she said.
Coffman says look no further than what's happened at the Department of Justice over the last year. Thousands of attorneys have quit as politics has seeped into the office.
CBS Colorado requested an interview with Griswold. Her campaign said she wasn't available.
Your Political Reporter, Shaun Boyd, talked to dozens of Democrats, including attorneys, judges, and people who know or have worked with Griswold. They all said she is not equipped to be AG. But none of them agreed to be interviewed out of fear of retaliation.
The other Democrats in the race are Boulder District Attorney Michael Dougherty, former Assistant U.S. Attorney and Deputy Assistant U.S. Attorney General Hetal Doshi, and consumer protection and workers' rights attorney David Seligman, who is Executive Director of Towards Justice. CBS Colorado also looked at their resumes and couldn't find any discrepancies.
Visit all four of the candidates' campaign websites below to learn more about who has endorsed them in the race:
