Jury convicts man for threatening secretary of state

2021,” Griswold said.

BY SANDRA FISH THE COLORADO SUN

A Denver jury has convicted a 52-year-old man of retaliating against an elected o cial for threatening Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold in a phone call to the Democrat’s o ce.

Kirk Wertz told Colorado State Patrol troopers investigating the threat that he called the Elections Division of the Colorado Secretary of State’s O ce on June 30, two days after the 2022 primary, and told a worker to “tell the secretary that the angel of death is coming for her in the name of Jesus Christ.”

Wertz has been held in the Denver Downtown Detention Center since July 6 on a $2,000 bond, jail records show. At one point, a mental health stay was instituted in the case and later lifted, court records indicate.

Authorities traced the cellphone from which the call came and saw that it was moving from Kansas toward Colorado. e threat prompted the Colorado State Patrol to provide Griswold with round-the-clock protection.

“It made me feel like a sitting duck,” Griswold testi ed in court on April 11. “All I knew is that someone said they were going to come kill me and started driving toward this state.”

Troopers eventually tracked Wertz to a Je erson County convenience store. ere, Wertz told the troopers his call was protected by his First Amendment right to free speech.

“I have a right to call,” he said, “and disagree and give her a piece of mind.”

Public defenders and the prosecutor trying the case refused to say where Wertz is from, though voting records from 2022 list his address as Littleton.

Wertz’s conviction marks the second time a man has been found guilty of charges after threatening Griswold.

In October 2022, a Nebraska man was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison after he pleaded guilty to federal charges stemming from threats he made against Griswold on social media. at was among the rst cases pursued by federal authorities as they tried to protect election o cials and workers across the country from a rise in threats stoked by former President Donald Trump’s false and baseless claims that he won the 2020 election.

Wertz was tried under a state law passed in 2021 that made it a crime to threaten elected o cials.

Griswold told jurors that she received few threatening messages before the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. She said that event “changed the atmosphere for election workers and secretaries of state.”

“ e onslaught of threats toward me happened in the summer of

At the time, she had enacted a rule prohibiting third-party audits of election results or equipment. e prohibition was aimed at preventing rogue actors from following through with demands for audits from Trump supporters.

“Congresswoman Lauren Boebert tweeted out falsely that I was stopping all audits,” Griswold said. “ at was retweeted by (U.S. Sen.) Ted Cruz and the threats started to come in. It was really scary. I was receiving 10 threats a day.” is story is from e Colorado Sun, a journalist-owned news outlet based in Denver and covering the state. For more, and to support e Colorado Sun, visit coloradosun.com. e Colorado Sun is a partner in the Colorado News Conservancy, owner of Colorado Community Media.

Griswold has been outspoken against election deniers, often posting to social media and speaking out on cable TV news shows about the safety and security of Colorado’s elections. She is chair of the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, a political organization. is isn’t the rst time the 2021 law has been used in Colorado courts.

A Colorado man accused of making numerous calls to U.S. Rep. Joe Neguse, D-Lafayette, and his sta in January pleaded guilty to threatening an elected o cial. A Denver man was also arrested last week for threatening Neguse over the congressman’s support for gun control.