Secretary of State Jena Griswold escaped a close one. She was accused of malfeasance in office leading to a resolution for impeachment for stating the obvious: President Donald Trump incited his fans to insurrection resulting in a takeover of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Griswold used Twitter, now X, to praise the Colorado Supreme Court for deciding in Anderson v. Griswold that Trump should not be allowed on the Colorado Republican primary ballot in the March election. According to Republican sponsors of HR24-1006, the impeachment resolution, the Secretary of State should not have asserted in December after the Colorado court decision that “the Supreme Court got it right.” That statement means she cannot be trusted.

As if Republicans don’t have plenty of other reasons they’ve ginned up to distrust Griswold. She went after Tina Peters, former county clerk in Grand Junction, for tampering with voting machines. Peters and her buddies did tamper with voting machines. According to resolution sponsors Rose Pugliese, House minority leader from Colorado Springs, and Ryan Armagost of Berthoud, if Griswold could remove Trump from the ballot, “what would stop her from removing other candidates? Fear should be in all of us, Republicans and Democrats.”

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That’s fear taken too far. She would not remove other candidates from the ballot. She did not remove Trump from the ballot, as every Republican and unaffiliated voter who received a Republican presidential primary ballot knows. Trump will be on the November election ballot if he’s nominated by his party.

When asked by judiciary committee members to specify Griswold’s malfeasance, resolution sponsors cited “countless opportunities and examples” such as rhetoric using her position on social media. “She called Trump an insurrectionist!” According to the Colorado Supreme Court, he is an insurrectionist.

Griswold injected herself into the anti-Trump legal battle, sponsors asserted. She actually didn’t start the fight. She was corollary as she was named in the lawsuit on Trump’s side, with the Anderson side being Trump’s opposition. The Anderson side was composed of Republicans tired of Trump’s endless complaining and his “Big Lie.” They didn’t want the guy who incited thousands of people to attack the U.S. Capitol to be placed on the Colorado presidential ballot.

Griswold, as resolution sponsors stated, is the state’s “chief election officer.” Though she was elected first in 2018 by a significant margin and re-elected in 2022 by a much larger margin as a Democrat, she is supposed to be “unbiased” and “neutral.”

Her riposte is that her Twitter “speech,” in the First Amendment sense, represented the fact Trump did lose the election, he was spreading a Big Lie and he did incite an insurrection. In other words, she spoke truth.

Her job, Griswold says, is to make sure everyone who has a right to vote can vote. She has added ballot boxes, supported more in-person election sites, rigorously defended our mail-in ballot system, and provided oversight of the elections that put the resolution sponsors into office. She will “continue to ensure that we will have free and fair elections.”

As Democrats on the judiciary committee pursued the Republican case, they noted the Resolutions did not specify unlawful acts. Armagost seemed to agree, saying Griswold’s “ethics violated constitutional rights and thus the rights of Coloradans.” Democrats replied her ethics followed Colorado Supreme Court orders. That is, she did what the court told her to do.

“This is a political stunt and it will fail,” Griswold said. Republican claims are “intended to destabilize elections and incite election threats. Thirty percent of clerks have stepped down due to threats. Lies have an effect in election administration. I’ve received over 800 violent or death threats.”

Democratic judiciary members had enough of the impeachment after a five-and-a-half hour hearing. As one member told sponsors, “You are a super minority not because of anything our Secretary of State did.”

Committee Chair Mike Weissman summed up the hearing. “This is the worst assault on the rule of law that I have seen during my time in office…Impeachment is a constitutional mechanism that should be treated with respect, gravity, even fear. This falls far short.”

The judiciary committee vote wasn’t really close. That was a Big Lie for a little political theater. The resolution lost 8-to-3 on a party line.

Paula Noonan owns Colorado Capitol Watch, the state’s premier legislature tracking platform.