In Campbell County, the right embraces a convicted January 6 figure
FROM WYOFILE:
Local GOP embraces controversy to raise $12,500 while cheering on Trump’s possible return to White House.
Men, women and children, many dressed in cowboy hats, jeans, leather boots and clothes patterned with stripes and stars, gathered Saturday afternoon in the auditorium of the Cam-Plex Heritage Center, where an arc of red, white and blue balloons had been erected on the stage. The occasion was a pie auction fundraiser organized by the Campbell County GOP and titled “A January 6 Prisoner’s Story.”
The guest speaker was Couy Griffin, a former New Mexico politician and ardent Donald Trump supporter who was convicted of trespassing on restricted grounds of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
As it happened, the fundraiser took place three years to the day that a mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, and at the dawn of an election year that promises to be one of the most contentious in the nation’s history, owing, in large part, to Trump’s candidacy in the presidential race. Scott Clem, a former lawmaker and the Campbell County GOP chairman, referenced this race in his welcome speech to the crowd. “I’m hopeful that we will take back the office in 2024, what do you think?” People whooped and cheered.
Rather than shy away from the controversy of Jan. 6, the far-right of Wyoming’s Republican Party has shaped the events of that day into its own narrative of injustice, martyrdom and spiritual struggle. Indeed, these Republicans seem to have embraced Jan. 6 as a righteous call to action propelling them into the 2024 elections, wearing as a badge of honor — a sign of noble struggle — the pushback that comes with giving figures like Griffin a platform to speak.
Griffin fit well into that narrative, presenting himself as a man of faith, a man of conviction, a man who has been wronged by forces working against him. After the trial concerning his activities on Jan. 6, Griffin told reporters, “I wear Jan. 6 as a badge of honor.”
Wearing a black suit and black cowboy boots on Saturday, he gave thanks to the crowd. “Campbell County, I can’t thank you guys enough for, you know, inviting me to come here, one of those tainted lepers from Jan. 6, you know? The unclean ones, you know?”
The Facebook announcement advertising the Campbell County GOP fundraiser “blew up and went everywhere,” Clem, the Campbell County GOP chairman, said. He received phone calls and messages from people opposing Griffin’s presence at the fundraiser. A man from Texas had even called to protest the event. “It’s just been totally unreal,” Clem said gleefully from the stage. “The Left has gone absolutely bonkers because we have the gall to actually talk about what actually happened on Jan. 6.”
But it’s not just “The Left” that has protested. Clem acknowledged that the Campbell County GOP hasn’t officially taken a position on the events of Jan. 6 and that some people in the county party didn’t want Griffin to speak at the fundraiser. “I totally understand that,” he told WyoFile. “My personal mantra is that truth isn’t afraid of examination.” More than that, Clem said he had hoped the buzz would draw more people, and that more people would bring more money. A few days after the fundraiser, Clem said the event brought in about $12,500, which includes upwards of $4,500 in donations that went directly to Griffin, the speaker. (Clem didn’t know how these numbers compared with typical Campbell County GOP fundraisers but said he was pleased with the outcome.)
About 150 people attended the event, hailing from as far as Tennessee and Missouri. Some said they didn’t know Griffin but were interested in “hearing his side of the story.” A man shared with an air of frustration that he was tired of accounts of Jan. 6 from “the media.” One woman recounted meeting Griffin before at a Patriot Voice gathering in Dallas. Several state lawmakers also made an appearance: Wyoming Freedom Caucus Chairman Rep. John Bear and Sen. Troy McKeown — who represent Gillette — as well as Reps. Allen Slagle of Newcastle, a named member of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus (some members are anonymous), and Ken Pendergraft of Sheridan.
The first auction item was a Granny Smith apple pie made by Campbell County GOP State Committeewoman Janet Mader. “Open your pocketbooks!” David Holland, the Wyoming GOP vice chairman and designated auctioneer, cried. “We have to be ready to face everything and anything this year.”
The bid started from $50. Two hands went up. “Sixty dollars!” Holland cried. “Anybody else? Sixty dollars, keep that hand up. Sixty dollars! Seventy dollars!”
“I’ll pay a hundred dollars!” someone from the crowd shouted.
The apple pie went to Bear, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus chairman. Soon, the money was flowing. McKeown took another dessert for $150. Campbell County GOP State Committeeman Greg Bennick put down $80 for a key lime pie. There was a German chocolate cake ($290), cream puffs ($140), a chocolate charcuterie board wrapped in clear cellophane ($180).
Toward the end of the auction, Clem presented a gargantuan red, white and blue cake inscribed with “USA 45” and topped with a red fondant MAGA cap ($290). Holland called it a “Donald Trump cake.” “If you buy this you better cover it up when you go outside, because the [Gillette] News Record might be covering this, and if they see you walk out with that red thing you might get reported to Joe Biden,” he said. People broke into laughter. The one non-edible auction item was a framed photograph of Griffin and Trump in the Oval Office, smiling together at the camera. (It sold for $130.)
It was Patricia Junek’s idea to invite Griffin. Junek is a Republican, but she ran as an independent in last year’s general election against Gillette Republican Sen. Eric Barlow. She was in Washington, D.C. with her husband on Jan. 6, 2021, and there she encountered “patriot after patriot, Christian after Christian, red, white and blue everywhere you looked.” She described the experience in rapturous terms. “The next couple of days were absolutely the most amazing days of our lives,” she told the audience. “I will never forget the feeling of standing side-by-side with fellow God-fearing, country-loving Americans.” She described Griffin as “an incredible man, a true American patriot, a fighter for the American Constitution, for the American freedom we should all expect to be rendered in this beautiful God-founded nation.” Then Junek lowered her voice: “Keep in your mind as you listen that — but for the grace of God — this could be any one of you. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you my very, very special friend, Couy Griffin.” People stood and clapped as the man himself strode briskly onstage.
Griffin grew up rodeoing in New Mexico. He moved to France to work for a remake of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show when he was 24 and remained there until he was almost 30, at which point “the Lord really began to move” in his life, and he “rededicated” himself back to Christ, returning to the U.S. to share the gospel on horseback, traveling from San Francisco to New York City, and then venturing abroad again to preach in Ireland, England, France, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and Israel, where he rode on horseback through the Old City of Jerusalem.
Then he returned to the U.S. to pastor a Cowboy Church and start a food business, where the “heavy taxes” and “regulations” nudged him into the realm of politics. He became a county commissioner in New Mexico’s Otero County. During his time in that office, he began to watch Trump’s “efforts on the border” and decided to “get behind” the former president. He co-founded the group Cowboys for Trump, which organized horseback rides to promote Trump’s policies.
Griffin said he didn’t intend to walk to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. “I was just gonna go to the rally at the Ellipse,” he said. “I didn’t know what to expect. I was really hoping and praying there was going to be something that was going to be unveiled and some new information that was going to be shared.”
Then he got a text from a friend who encouraged him to go down to the Capitol and pray with people. He took that message as “coming straight from the Lord.” So he walked down to the Capitol, borrowed someone’s bullhorn and led people “in a prayer for our country.” He claimed not to have known that he was on restricted grounds. (Prosecutors alleged he climbed over a wall and up a temporary staircase to an outside terrace of the Capitol.)
On Saturday, Griffin tried to distance himself from insurrectionists who acted violently on Jan. 6, some breaking into the building and attempting to halt Congress from certifying the presidential election. “I saw some different altercations from a distance,” he said. “People are accountable for their own actions, and if somebody acts stupid over here on the side of the crowd, I don’t feel like I’m responsible for a stranger’s actions on the other side, you know?”
Griffin returned to the Capitol on Jan. 17 to watch the inauguration. “I’ve come to a point where I hardly don’t believe anything anymore unless I’ve seen it with my own eyes,” he said. “Amen,” a woman sitting in the crowd said quietly. “I still don’t believe Joe Biden won,” Griffin continued, and people clapped. The woman said “amen” again, a little louder.
Griffin was arrested on the day of the inauguration and charged in federal court with entering a restricted area and disorderly conduct. The disorderly conduct charge was dropped. In the end, he was sentenced to 14 days in jail, 60 days of community service and a $3,000 fine, all of which he said is now behind him. In a separate lawsuit, a New Mexico judge removed Griffin from his county commissioner seat and permanently barred him from holding public office — the first time in over 100 years that a public official has been removed from office on the grounds of insurrection.
Griffin has seized these events as his fuel. He had come to the right place to share his story. A place where the state GOP reelected Converse County rancher Frank Eathorne — who was also on restricted grounds on Jan. 6 — for a third term as the state party’s chairman last year. A place where the same group had voted to not recognize former congressional Rep. Liz Cheney as a Republican after she denounced Trump for his role in the Jan. 6 riot, and where she was later ousted from her position in favor of Trump-endorsed attorney Harriet Hageman. A place where about 70% of the electorate had voted for Trump in the 2020 general election. Now the Campbell County GOP has used Griffin’s “side of the story” as its fuel, too.
“We have to get involved,” Griffin told the gathered people on Saturday, who sat in the dark watching him attentively. “We have to sacrifice like we’ve never sacrificed before. And we can’t back down. We’ve got to win.”
In his opinion, the “only one” to get behind is Trump, a declaration that received claps and whoops and whistles from the audience. “A lot of people say, ‘Well, I don’t like his mean tweets, and I don’t like the way he talks and I don’t like this and I don’t like that.’ Well, you know, sometimes you need somebody to rattle the cage every once in a while. And we’re in the cage-rattling stage right here.”
Clem and Junek told the audience that Griffin hadn’t charged a speaking fee. Instead, people collected donations for him in upturned cowboy hats at the auditorium’s entrances as the crowd left. The hats soon brimmed with bills.
WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.
This story was posted on January 11, 2024.
