New Mexico Democrat Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham called protesters at the launch of her re-election campaign “QAnon Lizard People” on Thursday.
Outside the Albuquerque Museum’s outdoor amphitheater, Grisham formally announced her pursuit of a second term. Her speech was often drowned out by protesters who, according to the Albuquerque Journal, forced the governor to cut her remarks short and end early.
“I know it’s going to be loud, and I just have to say I’m sorry that we picked the same location that the QAnon lizard people meeting was at,” Grisham said after she emerged on stage to supporters chanting “MLG.”
“In spite of that,” she continued, “I’m running for re-election for another four years.”
Grisham, who officially launched her re-election campaign, acknowledges the noise:
“I’m sorry that we picked the same location that the QAnon lizard people meeting was at.” #NMGov pic.twitter.com/h5YP9pIs5M
— aaron navarro (@aaronlarnavarro) June 4, 2021
The announcement for a second term in the governor’s mansion, where she ordered staff to deliver more than $6,500 in groceries out of a state fund while residents were forced to wait in lines at capacity-limited stores under Grisham’s orders, comes on the heels of another scandal raising questions about the administration’s compliance with state transparency laws.
On Thursday, The Federalist reported the Grisham administration’s use of encrypted messaging apps in potential violation of New Mexico’s public records law likely goes beyond the Children, Youth, and Families Department, which fired two senior employees who rose concerns about such communications last month.
The governor’s office, which did not respond to The Federalist’s request for comment, issued guidance to agency employees to delete messages every 10 days or “more often if you wish” in the encrypted messaging app Signal.
The guidance declares such communications “transitory records” to circumvent New Mexico’s public records law, but such exemption does not exist, according to an IPRA guide by New Mexico Democrat Attorney General Hector Balderas.
Shortly after news broke of the agency’s use of Signal, the Children, Youth, and Families Department admitted the department used Microsoft Teams, a similarly encrypted service that allows management to automatically delete records after a select period of time.
According to the below email screenshot from the governor’s Department of Information Technology shared with The Federalist, agency staff instructed to use the Microsoft software were informed that their communications would be deleted every 24 hours.
The policy appears to have been implemented on Jan. 24 this year, barring the type of oversight afforded to National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci, whose emails from January to June of last year were released under a Freedom of Information Act request by BuzzFeed this week.
Grisham’s first term has also been defined by a near-religious adherence to the Faucian prescriptions of strict lockdowns followed by her leftist peers in New York and California to the states’ detriment. In May of last year, Grisham became the face of elite hypocrisy over the lockdowns when she opened up a jewelry shop shut down under her own order to purchase expensive jewels, as reported by a local Albuquerque outlet.
