Secretary of State Wayne Williams, who took heat from Democrats for cooperating with a voter fraud commission set up by President Donald Trump last summer, issued a statement Wednesday after the White House announced the commission was being dissolved.

Democrats also weighed in, including Sen. Michael Bennet, a Denver Democrat, and Jena Griswold, who is running for the secretary of state post in November.

In his announcement, the president said “despite substantial evidence of voter fraud, many states have refused to provide the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity with basic information relevant to its inquiry. Rather than engage in endless legal battles at taxpayer expense, today I signed an executive order to dissolve the Commission, and have asked the Department of Homeland Security to review these issues and determine next courses of action.”

The claim of voter fraud has never been proven by the White House and was believed to be an attempt by Trump to prove that he won the popular vote in 2016. The commission, led by Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, was hit with multiple lawsuits over concerns about the privacy of voter information. The commission sought information that in Colorado is not legally available, such as Social Security numbers and birth dates.

At the time the commission was formed, Williams said he would provide voter information to the commission that is publicly available. But more than 5,000 Coloradans canceled their voter registrations, rather than see it turned over to the Trump administration.

Bennet referred to those voter registration cancellations Wednesday evening. Thousands “canceled their voter registrations because they knew that the President’s voter fraud commission lacked any objectivity or credibility,” Bennet said. “Rather, it was a taxpayer-funded fishing expedition aimed at validating the President’s conspiracy theories about voter fraud.”

Bennet noted that he asked the Government Accountability Office to look into the commission’s motives; the GAO has since launched that investigation. 

Williams also weighed in Wednesday, pointing out a letter sent to the commission last July said there are few instances of voter fraud in Colorado. The most notable case of recent voter fraud was that of former state GOP chair Steve Curtis, who was convicted last month of fraudulently voting his ex-wife’s 2016 ballot.

“As we said in our July 14 letter to the commission, there are far better ways to effectively assess the accuracy of voter rolls and voter integrity than looking at publicly available data,” Williams said Wednesday. “We are always happy to work with other states, which have the authority over elections, on voter roll accuracy.”

Williams has long maintained that Colorado’s elections are safe and secure. He said his office works with all of Colorado’s county clerks to ensure election integrity, and recently completed “the nation’s first statewide risk-limiting audit designed to catch mistakes when ballots are tabulated.”

Griswold said Wednesday night that the commission was a “sham,” intended to justify the disenfranchisement of voters across the country and that its “chilling effect” on Colorado voters remains. She continued to criticize Williams for cooperating with the commission, “even in the face of multiple lawsuits that challenged the legality of the commission’s request” for information.