Bench trial starts for Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin

Aug. 15—Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin, facing a bench trial on a petition requesting he be removed and disqualified from public office for participating in the 2021 breach of the U.S. Capitol, raised the possibility of appealing the decision only hours into the proceedings.

Griffin's trial started Monday in Santa Fe, with the judge telling the controversial Cowboys for Trump founder he planned to refer a man who helped Griffin prepare documents for the case for discipline for practicing law without a license.

Griffin — convicted of trespassing during the rioting in the nation's Capitol — is defending himself against a petition filed in March by three men from Northern New Mexico.

When asked by District Judge Francis Mathew who had prepared a motion to quash the complaint, Griffin said under oath he and a friend had done so.

"A friend of mine in Roswell, N.M., whose name is Hiram," Griffin said in replying to Mathew's question. "As God as my witness, I do not know his last name."

Griffin argued in part the men who filed the petition — two from Santa Fe, one from Los Alamos — had no standing in the case because they were not from Otero County and it would be "unfair" and "un-American" to allow the case to go forward.

After Mathew denied the motion, Griffin walked away from the podium shaking his head — setting the tone for the morning session of the trial.

The embattled commissioner — wearing a shiny black suit jacket but sans his trademark cowboy hat — repeatedly telegraphed his frustration with the process via verbal asides, tone of voice and body language.

"Thank God for the opportunity to appeal," he said. "I can only trust and have faith ... that the next court will be less judgmental towards me."

The trial is scheduled to continue through Tuesday.