The firm hired by Secretary of State Jena Griswold to conduct an “outside investigation” into the massive password leak by her office also employed lawyers who had donated to her campaign.
Oops.
Colorado Public Radio reports the Denver firm of Garnett Powell Maximon Barlow & Farbes also had “deep ties to the Democratic Party.”
From the report:
One of the partners at the firm, Stan Garnett, is the former Democratic District Attorney for Boulder. His son, Alec Garnett, is the former Speaker of the Colorado House and previously served as Gov. Jared Polis’ Chief of Staff. Stan Garnett donated $2,250 to Griswold’s campaign between 2017 – 2022. Another partner, Hubert Farbes, donated $2,400 to Griswold’s campaign, while a third partner, Josh Maximon, donated a small amount.
So now Griswold has dismissed that firm and instead hired Beth Quinn and J. Mark Baird to investigate her office’s security breach.
PeakNation™ will recall yesterday that we reported Griswold decided to launch her own investigation and call it independent, in spite of calls from the governor and GOP lawmakers for a real external investigation.
We wrote:
We expect those findings will serve as damage control to protect her political career and aspirations to move into the governor’s mansion.
An outside investigation outside of Griswold’s outside investigation and Democrat operatives needs to begin ASAP.
We were unaware at the time of what appears to be a blatant conflict of interest in her selection of the first firm.
Interestingly, Griswold claims she only switched law firms because the first firm with her political backers could not begin the investigation in a timely manner.
In other words, she was not concerned about the perceived conflict of interest in hiring a firm friendly to the Democrat Party that included campaign contributors.
We don’t know how much this so-called external investigation of hers is going to cost taxpayers, but we hope she at least got the retainer back from the first firm she hired.