Otero County Commission Chairman and Cowboys for Trump co-founder Couy Griffin rides his horse on 5th Avenue on May 1, 2020 in New York City.
Jeenah Moon | Getty Images
A judge in New Mexico declared Tuesday that the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was an “insurrection” as he ruled that Otero County Commissioner and “Cowboys for Trump” founder Couy Griffin must be removed from office for participating in the attack.
Griffin is barred for life from holding any federal or state office — including his current role as county commissioner, from which he will be ousted “effective immediately,” Judge Francis Mathew ruled.
Griffin became “constitutionally disqualified” from those positions as of Jan. 6, 2021, the judge concluded.
On that day, a violent mob of former President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, forcing lawmakers to flee their chambers and disrupting the transfer of power to President Joe Biden. Griffin was convicted in March on a misdemeanor charge of breaching restricted Capitol grounds.
The riot and the planning and incitement that led up to it “constituted an ‘insurrection’” under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, Mathew wrote in the ruling in New Mexico’s 1st Judicial District Court.
The ruling marked the first time that any court found that the Capitol riot met the definition of an insurrection, according to the nonprofit government watchdog group CREW, which represented the plaintiffs who filed the lawsuit to disqualify Griffin.
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