March 04, 2026 01:22 PM UTC

Jena Griswold Gets Out Over Her Skis

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• by: Colorado Pols

Democrat Jena Griswold has the name ID and the fundraising chops to be the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination for Attorney General, which is why we’ve had her listed on the top spot on The Big Line for many months. But being the frontrunner doesn’t always mean that you’ll be first across the finish line, and Griswold is stumbling at the wrong time.

The current Secretary of State is running for AG and seems to be nervous about the perception that she doesn’t possess the same legal chops as Democratic opponents such as Boulder DA Michael Dougherty and attorneys Hetal Doshi and David Seligman. As 9News reported on Monday, Griswold is overcompensating for her lack of courtroom experience to a troubling degree:

Secretary of State Jena Griswold, who is seeking the Democratic nomination to replace term-limited Attorney General Phil Weiser, is falsely claiming that she has argued a case before the United States Supreme Court.

Griswold has not argued a case before the United States Supreme Court. [Pols emphasis] Griswold was a party to Trump v Anderson, in which anti-Trump Republicans and unaffiliated voters in Colorado sued Griswold as Secretary of State to force her to remove Trump’s name from the ballot for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol by Trump supporters…

…During a virtual appearance on March 2 with the group Longmont Area Democrats, Griswold appeared to be reading from the same script.

“I followed the Constitution and argued at the Supreme Court that Donald Trump should not be eligible for President,” Griswold said.

This is not a small exaggeration. It is a great point of pride among lawyers who get to argue a case, in person, in front of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Dougherty, the Boulder DA and former AG candidate in 2018, jumped on Griswold’s claims in a new video ad:

Griswold’s campaign compounded this problem with an overly-defensive response to 9News:

To argue a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, an attorney must first join the Supreme Court Bar. Griswold’s campaign did not answer questions from 9NEWS about whether she joined the Supreme Court Bar.

Griswold’s campaign defended her comments in a statement to 9NEWS that read, in part, “The word ‘argue’ does not exclusively mean oral argument.”

As a general rule of thumb, if your argument in response to a negative story is to pull out a dictionary for additional parsing…you’re doing it wrong. It would have been smarter for Griswold’s campaign to acknowledge that her wording is unclear but that she was still heavily-involved in the case.

It would have been better still if Griswold didn’t exaggerate this point in the first place, because it opens her up to additional damaging reporting that makes things even worse:

When 9NEWS asked Griswold’s campaign if she had ever argued a case before any court, the campaign pointed to a single case before the Superior Court of the District of Columbia in 2011 or 2012.

Griswold graduated from law school in 2011 and records indicate she was admitted to the DC bar in September 2012.

The campaign did not provide details about the case that would allow 9NEWS to confirm Griswold’s account, citing the involvement of minors in the case.

A search of cases before the court in 2011 and 2012 did not show any involving Griswold, though some court records are sealed.

Gah!

When current AG Phil Weiser was first running for the job in 2018, his Republican opponent George Brauchler tried hard to make the case that Weiser’s lack of courtroom experience should be disqualifying for voters. This argument didn’t work — in part because of Weiser’s impressive academic background (as well as a clerkship with former Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg) — but mostly because voters were more interested in the candidates’ visions for leading the office of Attorney General.

Griswold is still the likely Democratic nominee for Attorney General, so long as she stops shooting herself in the foot (er, ski boot). The lesson here for any candidate is that embellishing your resume usually ends up causing more problems than it is worth.