A New Mexico county commissioner and “Cowboys for Trump” leader who was arrested for breaking into the Capitol last month has met with former President Donald Trump “several times” in recent years, court documents say.
Couy Griffin, a 47-year-old Republican who represents the 2nd district of Otero County, was accused on January 17 of intentionally entering or staying in any restricted building or land without legal authority after filming on Capitol steps during the 6th January uprising. He promised to return to Washington, DC, for the inauguration of President Joe Biden, armed with weapons to “embrace” the Second Amendment, according to a criminal complaint.
“Do you mean it was a crowd? Do you mean it was violence? No, sir, ”Griffin said in a video posted on the Facebook page“ Cowboys for Trump ”the day after the insurrection. “No, Madam. No, we could have a 2nd Amendment rally in the same steps that we had at that rally yesterday. You know, and if we do, then it will be a sad day, because there will be blood running out of that building. , you can mark my word, let’s plant our flag on the table of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and Donald J. Trump if it comes down to that. ”
At a hearing on Monday afternoon, Judge Zia Faruqui ordered Griffin to remain in custody pending trial.
“This is an offense that, at heart, was an attempt to prevent democracy from advancing because people were dissatisfied with the result of the election,” said Faruqui. During the hearing, prosecutors also revealed that Griffin was arrested outside the Capitol on January 17 with a firearm.
Griffin’s lawyers insisted that he should be released because he simply “got caught in the crowd” on January 6 and that “He believed he needed to carry firearms to protect himself and his family – not to harm people in Washington, DC”
In a Friday memo defending his release before the trial, Griffin’s lawyers released several transcripts of interviews between the FBI and the county commissioner. In these interviews, Griffin revealed his intention to attend a January 20 protest that he hoped would be non-violent – although he added that “no option that is off the table for the sake of freedom”.
Griffin told FBI agents that he met the former president twice: once in September 2019 inside the White House and again in Albuquerque. He also attended the lighting of the inaugural tree on Capitol Hill in 2018.
But Griffin’s relationship with Trump seems to go deeper. In March 2019, Griffin said he had a 30-minute phone conversation with the then president after he organized a week-long horseback ride from Maryland to the nation’s capital in the name of border security.
During the call, Trump welcomed him to the White House that summer, and the meeting seemed to take place in September.
“He said, ‘Couy, that looks incredible’ … ‘If you do that, whenever you get here, there will be 20 acres on the south lawn and the gate will be open for you at the White House, where you can ride your horses straight, ‘”Griffin told the Alamogordo Daily News. “So he said jokingly that he may have to ride my horse whenever I get there.”
In February 2020, Griffin had another audience with Trump in the Oval Office, The Washington Post first reported. Photos of the meeting were posted on Facebook’s “Cowboys for Trump” page, which was suspended, along with his Twitter account.
“These photos are not being used for ‘political purposes’,” he wrote in a Feb. 18 post with images of the meeting. “I am simply posting these pictures of myself with a friend. The friend you can recognize. Do not copy and paste these photos for ‘political purposes’. If you do, the snowflakes all over the land will start to melt. But I post them only for personal reasons to show friendship with a great man and leader !! “
The photos show Trump and Griffin sitting and standing together near the Resolute Desk and another from Griffin watching Trump leave at Marine One from the South Lawn.
Three months later, Griffin released a video entitled “The only good Democrat is a dead Democrat”, in which he insisted that he was speaking only theoretically. Trump promoted the controversial video on Twitter, writing: “Thanks, Cowboys. See you in New Mexico! (Trump’s Twitter account was suspended in January after the Capitol riots.)
In an interview with The Daily Beast, Griffin insisted that he referred only to Democrats who were killed “in the political sense” and suggested that Democratic officials who insisted on strict blockades amid the coronavirus pandemic should be guilty of treason.
“You choose your poison: you either go before a firing squad or you take the end of the rope,” said Griffin.
Since his arrest, Griffin has continued his defiant behavior. In a memo on Friday, a federal judge revealed that for two weeks Griffin refused to take the COVID-19 test or attend a virtual hearing.
“Simply doing a COVID-19 test, something that hundreds of millions of people have done safely around the world, will allow the defendant to come out of isolation,” wrote US magistrate judge Zia M. Faruqui on Friday.