A New Mexico state judge on Thursday ordered convicted Capitol rioter Couy Griffin to be removed from his county commissioner seat, ruling that the Cowboys for Trump founder's involvement in the January 6, 2021, insurrection disqualified him from holding public office.

In a blistering 49-page opinion, Judge Francis Matthew formally labeled the Capitol attack as an insurrection and found that Griffin's involvement fell under the so-called Disqualification Clause of the 14th Amendment, which bars anyone from holding office if they took an oath to uphold the Constitution and then "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" or gave "aid or comfort" to insurrectionists. 

Matthews delivered a stern rebuke of Griffin's participation in the Capitol attack and his subsequent efforts to "sanitize" his involvement.

"His protestations and his characterizations of his actions and the events of January 6, 2021 are not credible and amounted to nothing more than attempting to put lipstick on a pig," Matthew wrote.

Matthews' ruling came six months after a federal judge in Washington, DC, found Griffin guilty of trespassing on restricted Capitol grounds. In June, Griffin avoided a period of incarceration on that misdemeanor conviction, as Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, sentenced him to 14 days in prison but credited him for the 20 days he had already served behind bars.

In March, a day before Griffin's conviction, a group of New Mexico residents filed a lawsuit under state law arguing for his removal from the Otero County commission. The group was represented by the government watchdog group Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington, which hailed Thursday's ruling as marking the first time since 1869 that a court has disqualified a public official for taking part in a rebellion or insurrection.

Read More...