On Thursday, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold sent an order to Douglas County Clerk and Recorder Merlin Klotz to provide information about a possible “a full image backup of our server” done “before a trusted build was done this year.” If this sounds familiar, Griswold’s office has been conducting a similar investigation of Mesa County Clerk and Recorder Tina Peters for a similarly serious security breach.

Klotz becomes the third Republican county official being investigated for actual election malfeasance, not the made-up stuff Trump and his grifters continue to offer up with no evidence. Griswold’s office writes that this investigation into Klotz comes after the Douglas County clerk boasted on conservative social media site Telegram that he had created the server image.

The secretary of state’s office is asking for Klotz to answer a few questions about this apparent breach of security protocol, questions that might expose how much of a security breach Klotz orchestrated. One of the telling questions being asked by Griswold is about “all dates on which Douglas County, yourself, or a third party created an image of any hard drive in any component of the ClearVote voting system.” In the case of Peters, she went so far as to bring in an outside person, completely unvetted, and then turned off security cameras while he did whatever he wanted to the voting machines.

This security breach led to Mesa County having to scrap its elections equipment since the chain of security could not be verified and the equipment is now considered compromised. It is also one of the reasons why Griswold continues to be successful in her pursuit of a permanent ban from elections duty for Peters.

Griswold’s office says that like Peters, Klotz has been tightly connected with MyPillow grifter and prodigious liar Mike Lindell.

The Colorado Sun reports that Klotz joins Peters and Elbert County Clerk Dallas Schroeder, all GOP operatives, in breaking security protocols and safety by allowing copies of elections equipment software and data to be disseminated to shadowy third parties.

It is also no surprise that in November, Klotz, Schroeder, and state Rep. Ron Hanks sued Griswold in the hopes of getting one of those catastrophically unsafe circus-style Cyber Ninja audits—the ones that waste resources while making strange MAGA-supporting third parties wealthy. To be clear, Schroeder already told Newsline back in August that he oversaw a hand recount of Elbert County’s ballots shortly after the November 2020 election. Guess what this conspiracy theorist who may have broken the law and security integrity found? 

In fact, the only three discrepancies were attributed to human error, not some ghost of Hugo Chavez in the machine. Klotz has until Feb. 10 to provide the information requested.