Prominent Trump supporter Couy Griffin, a member of New Mexico’s Otero County Board of Commissioners and founder of a group called Cowboys for Trump, was arrested on Sunday by Capitol Police over an arrest warrant covering his participation in the recent deadly rioting at the U.S. Capitol. In an interview that aired on Inside Edition in recent days, Griffin insisted that he and fellow Trump supporters were “not going to allow” a Biden presidency, and in a Facebook video, he further elaborated what he meant, insisting that “there’s going to be blood running” at the Capitol.
Authorities have set up checkpoints surrounding critical areas in D.C. Griffin faces a charge of knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds in connection to the Capitol rioting. In the time before his trip back to D.C. from New Mexico, he insisted to fellow Otero County Commissioners that he’d be bringing his guns with him to Biden’s inauguration, suggesting that he could also be facing consequences for possibly illegally carrying firearms in D.C., although authorities apparently didn’t immediately indicate whether they’d found guns when taking Griffin into custody.
In recent remarks to the Otero County Board of Commissioners, Griffin insisted that the recent presidential election “was stolen by Communist China,” which is, in every respect, a deranged statement. He belligerently added as follows:
‘I’m gonna be there on January 20… and I’m gonna take a stand for our country and for our freedoms. I’ve got a .357 Henry Big Boy rifle, lever action, that I’ve got in the trunk of my car and I’ve got a .357 single-action revolver, the Colt Ruger Vaquero, that I’ll have underneath the front seat… and I will embrace my Second Amendment.’
This agitation for violence is, in large part, the work of outgoing President Donald Trump. He has incited these people with his delusional lies about the presidential election, which he claimed was rigged in favor of President-elect Joe Biden, despite the fact that no court anywhere in the country has, at any point, accepted the claims from the president and his allies of systematic election fraud. Trump has openly justified the violence that his supporters have perpetrated — after the recent Capitol rioting, he insisted via his since-removed Twitter account that “these are the things and events that happen” when an election victory is stolen, which, of course, did not actually take place, no matter Trump’s claims otherwise.
New Mexico state Attorney General Hector Balderas said on Sunday that, unless Griffin immediately resigns from his post on the Otero County Commission, his office “will seek his removal” from the commission.
I am demanding that Couy Griffin immediately resign from the Otero County Commission or my office will seek his removal. https://t.co/kwwwm0BfA0
— Hector Balderas (@HectorBalderas) January 17, 2021
