Couy Griffin, the founder of ‘Cowboys for Trump’ and an elected county commissioner in New Mexico, was convicted on Tuesday of breaching the grounds of the U.S. Capitol during the January 6th riot. He was acquitted of a more serious charge, disorderly conduct.
Griffin is the second 1/6 defendant to lose at trial. He faces up to a year in prison. His case is thought to be a litmus test for other Capitol rioters because the charges he faced were less severe than those levied at other 1/6 defendants. In addition, the judge delivering the verdict – Griffin waived his right to a jury – had routinely expressed criticism of the Department of Justice’s handling of the case.
But ultimately U.S. District Court Judge Timothy McFadden ruled that Griffin knowingly trespassed and therefore violated the law.
POLITICO reports:
“He crossed over three different walls,” McFadden said, noting that they were tall enough to require assistance to surmount. “All of this would suggest to a normal person that perhaps you should not be entering the area.”
Business Insider adds:
At one point, McFadden pressed [prosecutor Janani] Iyengar about whether someone could be prosecuted for having to jump over the stone wall — a permanent fixture outside the Capitol – to retrieve a hat blown off their head.
Iyengar stressed that Griffin didn’t jump back over the fence but instead remained on the grounds and advanced toward the Capitol, eventually reaching the inauguration stage. Griffin, she said, used a metal bike rack as a ladder to climb over one of the stone walls outside the Capitol.
During the course of Griffin’s two-day trial, a U.S. Secret Service agent testified that then-Vice President Mike Pence was moved to a loading dock underneath the Senate side of the Capitol plaza as rioters breached the Capitol. It was the first time Pence’s hideout was confirmed.
The Washington Post provides more context on Griffin:
Griffin, a former Disneyland Paris rodeo cowboy and self-styled preacher, is a stone mason who created a social medial following as a political provocateur. His racially charged mockery of Native American rites got him banned from Mescalero Apache Tribe lands, and he condemned people who view the Confederate flag as racist as “vile scum.” In July 2020, when the National Football League began playing “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” what is referred to the Black national anthem, before games, Griffin suggested that players “go back to Africa and form your little football teams over in Africa and you can play on a[n] old beat-out dirt lot and you can play your Black national anthem there.”
His in-your-face partisan style won him a spot on the ruling council in Otero County, with 65 percent of the vote in 2018, and a personal call from President Donald Trump, who later promoted Griffin on Twitter when he said on video: “The only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.” Griffin asserted he was speaking metaphorically. Twitter suspended both Trump’s and the Cowboys for Trump’s accounts in January 2021.
