Colorado GOP Drops Bombshell Audio Exposing Secretary of State’s Office Covering Up Voting Machine Password Leak to Avoid a ‘Media Storm

The Colorado GOP has released an audio that reveals Secretary of State Jena Griswold and her team deliberately concealed the exposure of sensitive voting machine passwords to avoid a media firestorm.

The Gateway Pundit reported that Griswold’s office inadvertently published approximately 600 BIOS passwords for election equipment across 63 of Colorado’s 64 counties, according to the Colorado GOP affidavit.

This alarming breach, which first came to light in August, is believed to have occurred as early as June—right before the state’s primary election. Surprisingly, these sensitive passwords remained accessible on her website until late October.

Griswold did not notify the county clerks of this breach, and they only found out when the Colorado GOP released it.

During an interview with Kyle Clark of 9News, Griswold attempted to downplay the severity of the leak, referring to the exposed passwords as “partial.” She claimed that they were only one of two passwords required to operate the election systems, a dubious assertion that does little to assuage fears about election security.

Critics point out that unlike the redacted, outdated passwords from the case of former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, Griswold’s passwords were not outdated and posed a real risk.

The Colorado GOP’s audio recordings, released Thursday, reveal a disturbing conversation among Griswold’s staff, where they strategized on how to avoid a “media storm” over the breach.

In one particularly telling exchange, Deputy Secretary Christopher Beall admitted, “We were not going to tell the clerks because doing so would have created the media storm we’re now facing.”

Transcript:

Adams County Clerk, Josh Zygielbaum: What level of training do these individuals have on our specific servers and other equipment that qualifies them to do this work?

Christopher Beall: All of these individuals are cybersecurity technicians. Your equipment is off-the-shelf equipment loaded with election software. In all respects, it is no different from any other computer equipment. We do not believe more training is needed than what we have already provided for changing passwords on the equipment.

Josh Zygielbaum: Second thing, Chris—honestly, I’m not confident in this process. What the Secretary’s office should have done upon discovering this issue was deploy people immediately to change the passwords instead of keeping it a secret. It’s completely unacceptable that this is our process now, five days before the election. What guarantee do we have that these people won’t crash our system somehow?

Christopher Beall: Josh, I appreciate that you’re upset.

Josh Zygielbaum: I’m not upset, Chris. I’m pissed off. It’s really hard not answering media questions the way I actually want to.

Christopher Beall: Okay. All I can do is be as transparent as possible. We were not going to tell counties because doing so would have created the media storm we’re now facing.

Josh Zygielbaum: That’s bullsh—t, Chris.

Christopher Beall: We are sending staff to change passwords. I believe in Adams County we’re sending someone from our staff. Regardless, there is no possibility that these password changes will crash the system. This is at the BIOS level and has nothing to do with operating software. Josh, suggesting otherwise is irresponsible.

Josh Zygielbaum: It’s not irresponsible. We’re in the middle of a presidential election, and we’re having someone come in and mess with our server. Small setting changes have caused major issues in the past.

The Republican Party is now calling for Griswold’s immediate resignation, accusing her of jeopardizing the integrity of Colorado’s elections.

Watch the video below:

Timestamps:
0:00 Deputy Secretary Christopher Beall and Adams County Clerk Josh Zygielbaum Cyber Security -Technicians and We were not going to tell the clerks.
3:10 Hillary Rudy and Deputy Beall – These are just computers.
5:00 Secretary Griswold – All passwords are replaced verified no settings were changed, 22 people from Gov 8 from SOS office that usually don’t do this work.
6:35 Rich Schliep SOS employee- They did not pull the BIOS event logs
7:08 El Paso Clerk Steve Schleiker and Secretary Griswold – The Secretary has lost complete credibility

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