InFocus – Mike Morris

Our District II Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin has been in the news a lot this year. From assertions that the only good Democrat is a dead one to suggestions that unhappy blacks head back to Africa to claims that Holloman AFB stacks the contracting deck against white men Griffin never disappoints. The problem is that Couy Griffin is a textbook carpetbagger with no ties to the community and articulated plans to return home to Reserve. That is a problem because District II is not inhabited by idiots though they can be fooled by a conman like Griffin. Let’s have a look at Griffin so we can better distinguish between fact and fiction regarding our intrepid self-styled cowboy.

After a string of drunken encounters with police early in adulthood Couy Griffin, son of a timberman, secured a job as a cowboy in a European amusement park show. After returning to the states Griffin and his family launched Griffin Brothers Wild West Show and Rural Ministries Inc., a nonprofit corporation. It is in that context that most of the community learned of Griffin’s existence when they were hired to perform at the Otero County Fair. Now don’t get me wrong. Couy wants to be a cowboy in the worst way. He wants to be a roper, but he sucks at it. Contemporaneous with the wild west show Griffin was inheriting a storefront church from his uncle. It was around that time Griffin met his current ex-wife.

Being a NM county commissioner doesn’t pay all that well. In order to supplement this stipend Griffin opened Cowboys for Trump LLC as a front for fundraising activities. The for profit LLC acts as an identity for Griffin, however a closer look at these fundraising operations reveals that the legal beneficiary and/or recipient of the funds raised is generally not Cowboys for Trump LLC, but rather individuals with no connection to the LLC. This is what tax evasion and money laundering look like.

Fortunately Couy Griffin lacks any morality in the way the term is generally understood. At the same time he is arrogant and not the sharpest tool in the shed. For our purposes this is the gift that keeps on giving. See it seems that Griffin lied about his income in a child support matter. There is currently a motion in that case to compel production of some financial documents from Commissioner LoudMouth. While it is unlikely these documents will become public their contents should trigger recognizable events in the record and serve as the basis for a perjury charge. That would be one easy avenue to pursue to scrape this barnacle from our hull. This would simply require a concerted effort to encourage prosecutors to apply some of that equal protection to this criminal.

While we are on the subject there is no way to sugar coat this – in order to avoid the appearance of a political hit job the case must not only establish the elements of the crime(s), but also be easy to understand by the very casual observer. The simplest way to work within this confine is provide the prosecutor with the evidence and the public an explanation of what is going on. I mean it is pretty hard to ignore a complex scheme to hide the loot in the context of child support determination.

In the end it will probably be the IRS that puts Couy Griffin in chains, but even that relies on a coordinated effort encouraging that agency to do its job. Ultimately it is up to the concerned citizens of Otero County that will make this happen or fail.

This would be so much easier if the mini crime wave would resign under his own steam, but this probably will not happen, so it is time to up the ante. Let’s do this thing.