WASHINGTON (Washington Insider Magazine) – On Tuesday, a judge found a New Mexico county commissioner, who founded the Cowboys for Trump group, guilty of breaching the US Capitol during the January 6 incident, marking the US Department of Justice’s second consecutive trial victory.
The defendant, Couy Griffin, was found guilty of one of the two misdemeanor offenses after a two-day non-jury trial.
The decision backs up a crucial theory advanced by prosecutors in hundreds of similar cases.
They said that on January 6, 2021, the Capitol grounds were firmly off-limits, and that this should have been obvious to the thousands of supporters of Donald Trump who breached them, attempting to stop Congress certifying Joe Biden’s election.
Griffin was found guilty of accessing a restricted area guarded by the US Secret Service, but not of disorderly conduct, according to the judge.
Griffin should have known better than to scale walls and enter the Capitol grounds, according to McFadden, but he was not guilty of disorderly conduct since he never tried to whip up the Capitol audience or participate in violence.
Griffin faces up to a year in prison, and McFadden has set a June sentencing hearing for him.
Before the crowd rushed the Capitol, Trump delivered an impassioned speech in which he erroneously claimed that his election loss was due to widespread fraud, a claim that has been debunked by various courts, state election officials, and members of his own administration.
Approximately 800 people are facing criminal charges in connection with the incident, which forced Vice President Mike Pence and members of Congress to run for their lives. Over 200 people have already entered guilty pleas.
Griffin’s bench trial is considered as a key test case as the Department of Justice works to convict the hundreds of defendants who have refused to take plea deals.
Earlier last month, prosecutors won a decisive victory in the first jury trial for a 6 January defendant. A jury unanimously found a Texas man guilty of all five felony charges he faced, including bringing a pistol onto Capitol grounds and interrupting an official proceeding, after a brief deliberation.