Couy Griffin, an Otero County commissioner and co-founder of Cowboys for Trump, answers a question from the prosecution Monday at the First Judicial District Court in Santa Fe. Griffin, representing himself, initially tried to have the case dismissed, but the judge denied the motion.

Couy Griffin, an Otero County commissioner and co-founder of Cowboys for Trump, answers a question from the witness stand Monday at the First Judicial District Court in Santa Fe after watching a video of himself on the U.S. Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, 2021.

Couy Griffin, an Otero County commissioner and co-founder of Cowboys for Trump, answers a question from the prosecution Monday at the First Judicial District Court in Santa Fe.

Couy Griffin, an Otero County commissioner and co-founder of Cowboys for Trump, answers a question from the prosecution Monday at the First Judicial District Court in Santa Fe. Griffin, representing himself, initially tried to have the case dismissed, but the judge denied the motion.

Couy Griffin, an Otero County commissioner and co-founder of Cowboys for Trump, answers a question from the witness stand Monday at the First Judicial District Court in Santa Fe after watching a video of himself on the U.S. Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, 2021.

Couy Griffin, an Otero County commissioner and co-founder of Cowboys for Trump, answers a question from the prosecution Monday at the First Judicial District Court in Santa Fe.

The chaos of the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol building dominated the first day of a bench trial in which Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin — the Cowboys for Trump leader convicted of trespassing during the rioting — faces removal and disqualification from public office for his actions in the attack.

Griffin is defending himself against a petition filed in March by three men from Northern New Mexico — two from Santa Fe County and one from Los Alamos. The two-day trial began Monday is expected to conclude Tuesday.

Griffin, who represented himself, argued in part the men had no standing in the case because they were not from Otero County and it would be “unfair” and “un-American” to allow the trial to go forward.

After Judge Francis Mathew denied the motion, Griffin walked away shaking his head. The exchange set the tone for the morning session of the trial, during which the embattled county commissioner — wearing a shiny black suit jacket but sans his trademark cowboy hat — repeatedly telegraphed his frustration via verbal asides, tone of voice and body language.

“Thank God for the opportunity to appeal,” said Griffin, who wore a mask in court. “I can only trust and have faith … that the next court will be less judgmental towards me.”

The three plaintiffs in the case — Marco White and Leslie LaKind of Santa Fe and Mark Mitchell of Los Alamos — argue in a 259-page petition that Griffin should be disqualified from holding public office on the basis of a clause in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which holds that anyone who has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution be barred from office for engaging in insurrection or rebellion or giving aid or comfort to the nation’s enemies.

In his opening statement, attorney Joseph Goldberg told the court Griffin brought multiple firearms to Washington, D.C. and stopped along the way to give speeches “encouraging people to go to Washington and stop the transfer of power.”

Upon arriving in Washington, D.C., Goldberg said, Griffin breached three separate barriers to get closer to the Capitol building on Jan. 6, using a scooter seat to help him climb over one concrete wall and a police barricade resembling a bicycle rack to clear another.

He showed photographs of Griffin scaling one wall and mounting the rack to climb higher in another.

Goldberg said after Griffin gained access to a platform where President-elect Joe Biden was scheduled to be sworn in, he “took up a prominent leadership position within the mob” and stayed there for more than an hour, continuing to “foment people to resist the transfer of presidential power by suggesting further violence at the Capitol.”

When the trial began, Mathew asked Griffin who had prepared a motion to quash the complaint.

“A friend of mine in Roswell, New Mexico, whose name is Hiram,” Griffin replied. “As God as my witness, I do not know his last name.”

Mathew told Griffin he planned to refer his friend for discipline for practicing law without a license.

In his opening statement, Griffin said he wasn’t as prepared as he should be, having expected the judge to throw the case out based on his motion to quash the complaint.

Griffin said he went to Washington not to storm the Capitol but to “peacefully protest … illegitimate election results.”

“I had no intention of breaking the law on that day,” he said. “We used to call it ‘The People’s House.’ I thought it still was.”

Griffin said he never saw any signs telling him he couldn’t go to certain areas and didn’t participate in any unruly activity that day.

“I was in a crowd of people, and they weren’t chaotic and they weren’t violent,” he said. “I didn’t break anything. I didn’t assault anybody. I just walked up to the top of the Capitol. It was a beautiful day.”

Goldberg showed video when questioning Griffin about comments he made in speeches on his way to Washington and after the attack, including one calling it “a shot across the bow” and another warning that about “unleashing the whirlwind.”

Griffin said his comments had been taken out of context and peppered his answers with political statements, which prompted the judge to admonish him.

“Mr. Griffin this is not a conversation,” Judge Mathew said. “Answer the questions.”

The judge repeatedly admonished Griffin throughout the afternoon not to embellish his answers or make speeches when cross-examining witnesses.

One of the plaintiffs’ first witnesses was freelance photographer Nate Gowdy, who told the court he was on assignment for Rolling Stone magazine when he encountered Griffin in the crowd and shot multiple photographs of him.

Gowdy said protestors became a mob when they breached barriers meant to keep them from the Capitol. Griffin, he added, was “attempting to insert himself in a leadership role” and appeared to be “reveling in everything that was happening, smiling and pumping his fist.”

Goldberg illustrated Gowdy’s testimony with images and video showing an increasingly brutal melee in which demonstrators used their bodies against outnumbered police officers and attacked them with makeshift weapons, including flagpoles and hockey sticks.

During his cross-examination of Gowdy, Griffin asked the photographer if he’d known who Griffin was before that day.

“I did,” Gowdy answered. “You were that dude that has the Cowboys for Trump group and is very outspoken and open.”

“Would you say I was part of the mob on that day?” Griffin asked.

“You were the most outspoken person I saw on the west terrace that afternoon,” Gowdy answered.

“What actions did you see me take on that day that you would classify as violent or unruly?” Griffin asked.

“You had a front-row seat to the violence, and you were seemingly cheerleading it,” Gowdy replied.

The plaintiffs’ final witness Monday was Washington, D.C. Metro Police Officer Daniel Hodges, who testified demonstrators punched and pushed him, attempted to steal his baton and nearly gouged his eye out.

Hodges’ breathing was labored and his voice was shaky as he testified he’d feared for his life that day after his face mask was pulled up over his eyes and he was crushed by the mob. He said he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result.

Other officers had cuts, broken teeth and bones and one was shocked with a cattle prod, Hodges said. One died of a stroke, the officer added, and others have died by suicide since.

While Hodges was on the stand, Goldberg played footage taken from the officer’s lapel camera, which brought the confusion and chaos of Jan. 6 into the quiet third-floor courtroom.

Hodges said officers were badly outnumbered and said he considered the event “a terrorist attack on the Unites States of America, a coordinated attempt to install a dictator.”

Even people who were not violent impeded his ability to do his job, the officer said.

“Do you feel those people should be punished for peacefully protesting?” Griffin asked.

“If they broke the law, yes,” Hodges said.

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