Earlier today, a Denver judge denied a request by the Colorado Libertarian Party to stop all use of voting machines over an inadvertent password disclosure on the Secretary of State’s website. The judge ruled that the state’s rapid response to the incident by dispatching staff to change passwords, which are just one aspect of the multi-layer security process elections officials use to update voting machines, addressed the problem sufficiently to prevent bringing the state’s election to an immediate halt.
Colorado Newsline first reported on the fact that one of Colorado’s most fervent election denier played a key role in revealing the security breach by the Secretary of State. Shawn Smith is best known for calling for Colorado’s top election official, Jena Griswold, to be hanged over what he believes was a stolen election in 2020.
He believed the Big Lie so fervently in 2021 that he participated in the Jan. 6 insurrection- video shows him clashing with Capitol Police.
The Colorado Times Recorder has reported extensively on Smith’s election fraud conspiracy promotion over the years, so here’s a look back at some of his previous statements and activity.
Smith was one of the original members of U.S. Election Integrity Plan (originally U.S. Election Integrity Project), an election conspiracy group founded soon after the 2020 election by Trump supporters who refused to believe the results. USEIP focused on election fraud conspiracy but is also linked to many other popular conspiracies, including the dangerous QAnon conspiracy. Both USEIP’s website and the first page of its volunteer manual proclaim, “We Are The Plan,” a QAnon conspiracy slogan intended to encourage followers to stay active despite Trump no longer holding office. USEIP also organized a caravan of conspiracists and pro-Trump activists from Denver to Washington, D.C. to participate in the Jan. 6 insurrection, as Smith did.
Once USEIP caught the eye of MyPillow CEO and Trump ally Mike Lindell, Smith, along with two other original members Ashe Epp and Holly Kasun, began expanding their conspiracy promotion nationally, sometimes traveling on Lindell’s private jet.
At the time Smith said he was on the board of Lindell’s new group, Cause of America (CoA), serving as an unpaid adviser. In yesterday’s hearing Smith testified that he is retired from the Air Force but is working full-time for the group. Smith did not respond to an email request seeking clarification as to his status as a paid or unpaid employee of Lindell’s group. This article will be updated with any response received.
Smith frequently appears on CoA Zoom calls and podcasts. In September he interviewed former Michigan state legislator and election conspiracist Patrick Colbeck, who also works for Lindell, about his attempts to get county clerks across the country to send his group information about their security procedures in advance of today’s election.
Over the summer Smith joined with other election fraud conspiracists to try to convince the Rio Grande Board of County Commissioners to force their clerk and recorder to not use the Dominion Voting machines and instead hand count the election results. They failed.
Smith expressed his frustration by tweeting that the actual election administration professionals who argued against him “deserve due process,” which is Smith’s code for execution by hanging.
Smith’s social media posts show his affinity for both conspiracies and violence going to back to the first days after the 2020 election.
On Nov. 7, he posted support for disgraced Trump attorney Sidney Powell’s infamous promise to “release the Kraken,” a reference to a debunked conspiracy that Trump won the election, and called for “gallows big enough for everyone involved.”
