Former New Mexico Commissioner Convicted for January 6th BEGS For Donations

     Couy Griffin is a name that won't ring a bell for most Americans, and the role he physically played in the events of January 6th is relatively minor. However, the role he played in how the story of the insurrection will be told can't be overstated. Griffin was only the second January 6th defendant to go on trial, the first on misdemeanor offenses alone, and the first to go on trial before a judge.

     Griffin got the luck of having his case assigned to Judge Trevor McFadden, who is notoriously sympathetic toward January 6th defendants. At trial, McFadden asked an asinine hypothetical question: if he had just entered restricted Capitol grounds to retrieve a hat he had dropped, would he still have been charged? The only response prosecutors could give to the question was to say that he was charged with a lot more than that. Griffin, a member of the Otero County, New Mexico Commission and the founder of "Cowboys for Trump," climbed a barricade to get to a restricted area of the Capitol building and posted a video to Facebook saying he had a "front row seat." Griffin went on to describe his experiences on a January 14th meeting of commissioners, and he planned to return to D.C. with firearms on the day of President Biden's inauguration.

     As it turned out, Griffin would also be the first mixed verdict in a January 6th case, being acquitted of one charge and convicted of another in March 2022. In spite of the fact that he remained defiant after his conviction and rode a horse to the courthouse for his sentencing with a parade of supporters, McFadden gave Griffin another break. He sentenced the insurrectionist to time served (21 days he had spent behind bars), one year of probation, 60 hours of community service, and $3,500 in fines and restitution. 

     Griffin's troubles, however, were only beginning. In 2021, a recall petition was issued against Griffin not for January 6th, but because of other alleged misdeeds. This included using county funds to further Cowboys for Trump, improperly filing a travel voucher for a trip to New York and Washington, D.C. that resulted in travel allotments being increased specifically for Griffin and expenses being reimbursed by donations from local business owners, and behavior that got Griffin banned from the Mescalero Apache reservation. The petition fell short, gathering 1,229 of the necessary 1,574 signatures over the course of three months.

     In 2022, Griffin and the other county commissioners hired a firm run by Shiva Ayyadurai, an anti-vaccine activist who had worked on the 2021 Maricopa County audit, and refused to certify the election results in their county despite finding no evidence of fraud. The case went to the New Mexico Supreme Court, which ordered the commissioners to certify the results. They eventually did by a vote of 2-1, with Griffin casting the dissenting vote.

     Karma came for Griffin in September 2022, when a district court judge ordered him to be removed from office and banned from holding office for life under the 14th amendment, which bars those who engage in insurrection from doing so. The New Mexico Supreme Court dismissed his appeal in 2023 on procedural grounds, and, in March 2024, the Supreme Court of the United States allowed his ban to remain in place. Griffin is now barred from holding office in the United States for life, making him the first public figure to be disqualified under the 14th amendment since socialist Victor Berger in 1919.

     That hasn't stopped Griffin from getting into trouble. From September 2022 to March 2023, Griffin was on trial for failing to register Cowboys for Trump as a political action committee (PAC). Griffin was acquitted. He got arrested again in May 2023 on five misdemeanor charges of trespassing and harassment over Griffin's attempted eviction of a renter. The latter case remains pending.

     In May 2024, Griffin rode on horseback outside the Trump 2016 election interference trial in Manhattan, where DA Alvin Bragg secured the successful felony conviction of Trump on 34 charges on May 30th; Trump is set to be sentenced on September 18th.

     Now, the washed-up criminal and adjudged insurrectionist has sunken to a new low in his bid to stay relevant. Griffin started a fundraiser on "GiveSendGo," the go-to fundraising site for January 6th defendants, and begged for donations without explicitly stating what the money would be used for. The fundraiser raised $1,825 when I checked last and included the expression "WWG1WGA," short for "Where We Go One, We Go All." This is a common expression among followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory, who believe that Trump was sent by God to save America from Democrats, who are actually a cover for a cannibalistic, child-murdering organization of pedophiles. Griffin has since unpublished the fundraiser, but the screenshots of his shame will remain. What a pile of garbage.