Secretary of State Jena Griswold wants Colorado voters to make her governor. While the state’s top campaign finance cop hasn’t thrown a swanky launch party yet, she’s already announced her run — allegedly by breaking the very rules she’s supposed to enforce.

As The Denver Gazette reported, the Public Trust Institute filed a complaint on Jan. 14, alleging Griswold “expended funds on a gubernatorial campaign and had a website dedicated to a gubernatorial run but has not registered a committee or filed a candidate affidavit for governor.”

The domain — jenaforgovernor.com — was purchased on Aug. 8. A placeholder webpage went live the next day, copyrighted by “Jena for Governor,” declaring “Launching Soon” and asking visitors to submit their email addresses “to be the first to get updates.”

The site remained up until Dec. 20, when 9News first reported its existence — and the likelihood Griswold skirted legal requirements by not reporting the expenditures or filing paperwork for her gubernatorial run.

“Jena Griswold announced her candidacy for governor when the website in support of her gubernatorial candidacy became available to the public,” the Public Trust Institute’s complaint says. “By collecting the email addresses of supporters, she was actively engaging in campaign activities.”

All of this, the complaint added, should have been reported as campaign expenditures. It wasn’t.

But wait — there’s more!

Griswold’s trusty campaign sidekick has long been her brother, Chris Griswold. When 9News asked him about the site, Chris initially denied involvement. “Definitely not a domain that I set up,” he claimed. That was a lie.

That same week, Chris issued a statement on Jena’s behalf: “I have not decided how that service will look beyond 2026,” she said.

When 9News reporter Marshall Zellinger signed up for alerts, he received an automated reply — from Chris’s email address. The political mastermind listed himself as the forwarding contact.

Chris only came clean after being confronted with the evidence and promising to “research” his own actions — insisting he bought the domain to keep others from snatching it up and that Big Sis still hadn’t decided on running.

Pro-tip for the Griswold siblings: If you’re trying to be sneaky, don’t leave a trail of fingerprints at the scene.

Jena Griswold loves keeping secrets — until her hand is forced. When she discovered sensitive BIOS passwords for election equipment statewide were inadvertently posted online by her staff, she didn’t notify county clerks. Instead, they learned about the breach through the Colorado Republican Party and the media.

Asked by 9News whether she’d planned to inform clerks and the public, Griswold admitted, “I had not made that decision.” Translation: She acted solely because she had no choice.

On Thursday, Griswold testified before a joint legislative committee, pretending she acted quickly and decisively. When Republicans pressed on her failure to inform clerks, she grew defensive and combative.

Here’s the kicker: In December 2020, Griswold appointed herself one of four “Final Decision Makers” for campaign finance complaints. The move torched a firewall created by her Republican predecessor, Wayne Williams, to keep politics out of campaign finance enforcement.

Ironically, she’d championed firewalls the year before. In 2019, Griswold testified in support of a law to formalize internal safeguards, arguing they would “make sure that decisions are being made by the civil servant staff.” The following year, she quietly dismantled the whole thing.

Now, the self-anointed top campaign finance cop finds herself accused of violating those same rules.

“It’s hard to tell what’s worse — (her own) campaign violations while conducting year-long investigations against Republicans for far less, or that she fully intended to lie about it,” Suzanne Taheri, the attorney representing the complainant, told me.

Taheri, a former deputy secretary of state, knows the office well. She served under Secretaries of State Scott Gessler and Williams — part of an office that saw just one other deputy hold the role from 1999 through 2019.

Griswold, on the other hand, has churned through three deputies herself since taking office in 2019 — including one who left with a confidential settlement agreement. Her tenure has become synonymous with staff turnover and glaring double standards in campaign finance enforcement. Complaints against Democrats and liberal causes are often treated with kid gloves, while Republicans and right-leaning groups face the full brunt of her office’s scrutiny.

Griswold isn’t just Colorado’s secretary of state — she’s also the hyperpartisan chair of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, an organization that’s raked in millions of dollars in dark money since she took over in 2021.

Who else played a starring role in this story? Brother Chris. Hilltop Public Solutions, where he’s a partner, pocketed $27,000 in five payments from DASS starting just two months after Jena took over. Those payments continued until a new executive director was hired. Sweet deal, no?

Let’s be real: Jena Griswold has entrusted her brother with everything from her campaigns to the national organization she leads. Meanwhile, under her watch, Colorado has faced a significant breach of election security and a parade of partisan stunts, unforced errors and outright failures that have eroded public confidence.

If nothing else, her botched campaign launch is proof positive that “Governor Griswold” are two words Coloradans never should have to hear.

Jimmy Sengenberger is an investigative journalist, public speaker, and longtime local talk-radio host. Reach Jimmy online at Jimmysengenberger.com or on X (formerly Twitter) @SengCenter.