Grenell to Newsmax TV: Not Much Confidence in Sec. of State on Newsom Recall Effort

Ric Grenell, the Acting Director of National Intelligence in the Trump administration and former U.S. Ambassador to Germany, says he doesn’t have much confidence in the newly appointed California Secretary of State to properly verify the 1.95 million signatures received by the effort to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom.

“Alex Padilla, who was our secretary of state, is now the U.S. senator appointed by Gavin Newsom, so Gavin got to appoint another position as the new secretary of state. So, we have a brand-new secretary of state with no experience when it comes to elections, but she is now in charge of counting the signatures and making sure that we get 1.5 million verified signatures. Now, she is an appointee of Gavin Newsom. I would like to know if she in interviewing for this job, because she interviewed during the recall and got the job, I’m wondering if the recall or the verification of signatures came up in her interview. …

I’m still not convinced that we’re going to get the 1.5 million. We have another week to go. And I think that we should really shoot to try to get another 100,000 signatures. We cannot be sure that this brand-new secretary of state … is not going to lead an effort that a state senator in California has already tipped off a reporter and said, ‘our collective view is that we’re going to make sure we don’t achieve the magic number.’

• Politico: California Gov. Newsom Recall Now 'Unavoidable'
• Newsom Recall Effort Now Has More Than 1.5 Million Signatures