 miles to go on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, here on American Issues Take Two. And we have a special guest from New Mexico, which is a very important state right now today, Heather Ferguson of Common Cause, who wrote a Common Cause email that went around today, which we're going to talk about, namely, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, and Stephanie Stull Dalton, who has read that and the decision in the New Mexico court. Wow, we are ready to go. So let's see where we start. Heather, why don't you tell us what we're talking about here today in terms of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment? Well, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment essentially, the language just states that federal officials, federal elected officials, who participate in insurrectionist activities, seditious activities, treasonous activities, are no longer eligible to not only serve in their elected office, but they are prohibited from running for office again. And so what we have done is working with the folks at the Citizens for Responsible Ethics Watchdog Group out of DC, and their fantastic team, led by Donald Sherman, I've got to give him props, he's a brilliant attorney, came up with the novel idea of doing a lot of research and finding an 1869 case based out of North Carolina, where that section of our federal constitution was applied to a state or local official. If that state or local official had also, in taking their oath of office, sworn to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution, as well as the state's Constitution. And for now, former Commissioner Cuy Griffith, who has been the head of Cowboys for Trump for a number of years, and well-established, well-documented insurrectionist, he is now barred from not only holding his current office, but from running for office again. And he had been planning on running for sheriff, because he sworn to the U.S. Constitution as well as the state. Okay, here's a picture of the section involved, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. Can you read that Heather, take your time and parse the language as it appeals to you? Sure. So it says, no person shall be a senator or representative in Congress, or an elector of president or vice president, or hold any elected office, civil or military, under the United States or under any state who having previously taken an oath as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of the state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof, but Congress may only by a vote of two-thirds of each house remove such disability. So this case in New Mexico announced what yesterday is really amazing. Stephanie, you've read the decision. Can you summarize that for us? Well, I've read the amicus brief and the press release. It was this person, Mr. Griffin, I believe you say his first name is Kui, and he was a county commissioner in Otero County in New Mexico, and that is considered an executive office of the state. And he had just completed serving his sentence from his conviction in the January 6 insurrection for his trespassing there. And he came out and he continued to be conspiratorial and to spread lies and to try influence people to his way of thinking about it. And the state, I believe, would produce some rits to him to get back on the job and do his job and do his duty. And they warned him. And then finally, he just continued to do it. And that's why they then brought him to trial. For being against the oath that he made to the state and also to the Constitution of the U.S. So then it went on to talk about the features of that case. And I know you, Heather, can talk about those much more culturally than I can. Well, if you want to summarize in sort of an expansive way, in other words, covering all the ground, what does this case represent for the future for other participants in the insurrection similarly situated? Well, one thing I want to be clear for the public just to make sure that they understand this was a decision that came out of our state court. And so this is not precedent setting in the way that it would be if a federal court had made this determination. But that was also part of the reason why we filed things in state court. We are dealing with a local official and a state court would have jurisdiction over a local official at the county level, at least here in New Mexico. So what we are hoping is that this will serve as a model that other states who have elected officials, especially at these local and county levels, if they have language in their state statutes that will allow for a similar challenge, this can be used as a citation for those attorneys who are filing those complaints to go after the same result. And that way it's something that's current. It's really hard to go into a courtroom and say, hey, we have a case that was decided way back in 1869. And we wanted to base all the precedent on there. We needed something more recent. And this gives everybody that recent case citation. And in all 49 pages, or 47 pages, I believe, of the decision by the judge, he was incredibly detailed so that it can be utilized by other states in the way that he approached it, how he determined that he was in fact should have been guilty of insurrection. And interestingly, there was one other new point that nobody expected, which is that Judge Matthews also made it so that he removed him from office effective January 6, 2021, which surprised us all. We thought it would be something where he was going to let him, it would be removal upon that day. You know, that sounds quite appropriate to me. That's when he violated section 3 of the 14th Amendment. It is. So he pays back the state for salary and expenses that he took? Another question. This is actually what's happening. This is never happened before. It led to a number of questions. We have questions that are floating around. Otero County mentioned this morning in their first County Commission meeting without Kui that, you know, they might need to revisit all of the votes that they've taken since he was there. I mean, he's been an active voting member. If he was the deciding vote that was cast and any of their decisions, they've got to take another look at that. You're going to have to take a look at, you know, his salary and he also had a lot of things that were coming up. I believe this month he actually has a criminal trial right now because he was utilizing PAC funding that he was raising supposedly under his Cowboys for Trump thing to fund all of his adventures around the country. So he has a criminal trial pending because he hasn't been compliant with that court order. Is that like the other Trump offender who's in court today, Bannon, who was going to build the wall and got all the money to build the wall but used it for personal means? Are you implying that that's what he's doing or maybe what? It is not dissimilar except that this is hinging upon the fact that Mr. Griffin did not register his PAC. And in a binding arbitration, they determined that he should have registered his PAC and then they assigned fines to him accordingly. And he's refused to pay the fines, which amount to about $5,000, I think. So he's now in contempt. He's real rascal. Can you feel this ruling? So with a bench trial, is that any more secure than a jury trial? I think that Judge Francis Matthews or Frank Matthews was incredibly detailed in that decision because he knew it was going to go up on appeal. We anticipated that although Mr. Griffin has not received the benefits of any counsel for a long time, it's my understanding that he lost his ability to have counsel because either the bills were being paid or he they didn't want to have someone that is non-compliant with their requests and just kept acting out and doing things against their orders. But there are counsel now that are coming in because they can see that this is something that is about to be used across the country. Now when you say that, have you all had response that shows interest? Is there a stimulation now? I know you've put this out, but have you've gotten any feedback? Is that why you're saying this? Yes. Yes, we've gotten feedback on all of our social media sites. We've gotten phone calls and emails requesting how did you do this? They'd like to get in touch with the attorneys. They'd like to figure out how they can do it. I think there's 95 currently sitting elected officials who participated in the insurrection that I think a lot of people would like to be able to take the words out of the citizens of Otero County this morning because they had their first county commission hearing without Mr. Griffin being present. And they expressed nothing but gratitude that the county could actually focus on doing business of the county. They could talk about the taxes, the emergency services. They wanted to get back to business and they didn't want to have to keep focusing on conspiracy theories and all of the temper tantrums and drama that Griffin used to bring. And I feel like that is probably the sentiment of many of these local agencies. Well, you think about all of the officials who have given comfort, I forget the exact language in section three, but given comfort to the insurrection, there's a lot of people, including people in Congress right now today. There are police officers, military officers, hundreds of military officers on active duty were involved. The states, should they care to mount these cases, have a tremendous opportunity here. And it can happen right now. And Matthew's decision to go back to January 6 is an extraordinary opportunity for all those prosecutors or corporation council people who mount these cases. And I think it's actually a really good deal that it was a jury wave trial because jury wave trials are not so easy to appeal, especially when the judge takes the time to write a detailed decision. With jury trials, there's so many mistakes that are possible, and that so many appeals of jury trials are based on silly errors, and they get turned over for that reason. This is a judge jury wave trial. It's not as likely that there'll be a silly error, especially if he wrote it up. The question is, where does the appeal go? And my guess is it'll, I don't know where it'll go. Maybe the state Supreme Court of New Mexico, maybe the federal court in that district. And I suppose that the powers that be on the Trump side of the equation will want to appeal it right up to their favorite court, which is the Supreme Court. And I'm looking forward actually to a ton of cases. And I hope Common Cause can get the word out, is getting the word out, to let everyone know, because there were thousands of people who would fit in the category of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. This really puts some flesh on the bones. Nobody did this until this week. They obviously say that the arc of justice bends. It just takes a long time, right? I'm butchering how to say that, but it's really, it bends slowly, but it gets there. And this is something that we were really excited to be able to do because especially when he, the longer he's been sitting in office, I mean, one of the reasons that really added some gasoline to this fire was in June, the very beginning of June, when we had our state primary, because he is an election denier because he wants to continue to spread lies and disinformation about how safe and secure our elections are. He was refusing to certify the primary election, which again is in a county that was only affirming members of his own party to hold office or to run in the general election. And so that idea and his grandstanding started to send other counties into the pattern of following him. And that's something where if he's using, he was continuing to use his platform. And unfortunately, our state attorney general was not willing to take the action. The state attorney general could have used our state statutes and removed him from office after January 6th. But we had to go through this step because having him in office was continually becoming more and more dangerous to the democracy. And he's working with David Clements, who is another huge election denier who runs around doing shamballot reviews all over the country, calling out Dominion voting machines. So I mean, this is really trying to get to the root of people that are going to continue to try to stir things up and create a politically violent atmosphere, which is not how our democracy should be working. No, but the effect of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment doesn't require all those things to be a conspiracy theorist, to engage in the big lie, to distract the government process with all of that. And it seems to me, I'm interested in your view of this, Stephanie. What do we actually need? We only need somebody who has participated or comforted, I forget the exact language, comforted an insurrection or rebellion against the United States. That's all. Correct. And so even if, what's his name, Kui Griffin had not been as obnoxious as he has been over the past year or longer, even if he had simply participated in the insurrection or given comfort to it, he would theoretically be subject to the same result. And I think that's an interesting question for him to raise on appeal. That it only addresses people who have done what he did. And there are other people who will probably be subject to this kind of lawsuit. And the question is whether some judge will make a distinction to say, well, okay, Griffin, Griffin was very obnoxious. This fellow wasn't so obnoxious. So the criteria is how obnoxious was he. And I don't think that's correct at all. I think the language of the, they didn't, they weren't kidding. They weren't testing. They wrote this out in some detail. And it's never had judicial gloss that I know of, except now. And it doesn't call for an indictment. It doesn't call for a conviction. It doesn't even call for a judicial statement that its terms have been met. As if the authority involved believes that its terms have been met, that's it. And let me add Heather, you know, just one other thing before we get to a more detailed discussion is if I'm running against Griffin in the next election, okay, I'm candidate. He's candidate. He hasn't been disqualified yet. Matthew has not written his decision. Oh, okay. Okay. I can, I can, it's a standing question. I can go to court. I can say he's not entitled to run. He cannot hold this office. No judge has found that he has been involved in conspiracy or that he's given comfort to the conspiracy, rather than the insurrection. But in fact, I can show you and I will show you some evidence of the fact that he was. And so I'm asking him to be disqualified from running against me. By the way, this could happen at a presidential level too. Well, exactly. Yes. It's that category of the 95 that you bring up plus one, because the criteria from what I read is that you have to have taken the oath, okay, to defend and protect the constitution. And then you have to break it. And dissipating in an insurrection and those activities show and being conspiratorial show that kind of breakage. So I was thinking when you made the comment about getting some meat on the bones that this 1869 law Heather out of North Carolina from Eons ago comes forward as maybe the first piece of meat to get back on, to get on the bones, Jay, in relation to and Heather to the fact that we have no domestic terrorism scheme. We don't have it from what I've heard. We do not have law about domestic terrorism in treating it as as we have for international. So I would say that this is another big step forward on that. And that response you're getting might be a reaction to let's get going on this we've got to build the law the case law or however you describe what you build to get to get that to happen. And then I did want to just ask you Heather and it's okay we don't know of course but the 1869 law in North Carolina in case you do know it was related to slavery. So that this person who was convicted then was wanting to keep on with the slaves even after that was no longer the state nor was it the fed and the federal law had come in and canceled all of that. So that was so then there's that dog leg to whatever is the particular activity that can then demonstrate like the slavery would demonstrate that he was acting against the federal and the state law that would put him under the jurisdiction of this 1869 law right right. So how many so what's on that whole list of things that you can do Jay is that one of the things maybe we're pointing to is what are the things that they can do that will bring them under the jurisdiction of that 1869 law so that they're eligible to be convicted or tried. Well I mean as Heather pointed out you have to have something in the state law that incorporates the provisions of the U.S. Constitution on this and and I think most states have that or at least a great number of them have that. That's one thing but you know there's a primer here don't you think there's a primer and it's probably in Judge Matthew's decision. In other words everybody who wants to bring an action either to disqualify or right now a sitting official or to disqualify a candidate for a sitting official has to look at that decision and see what he said and how he handled it. I think he intended it to be a primer we have to tell everybody that's where the primer is. So that's why I mean our expert witness Rachel Kleinfeld who New Mexico is very interesting in that the we have some incredibly talented people here she just happens to be a senior fellow at Conner G. Mellon and she just happens to be one of the world's foremost experts in political violence. Judge Matthews went to great lengths especially during the day two of the trial when she testified to get all of those different statements and to also make the contrasts between what Mr. Griffin was stating were his activities. He was there to pray he was there to just raise his voice in a First Amendment type of you know speech issue. He was trying to draw parallels with the BLM movements and she was there to absolutely clarify dispel and counter all of those arguments and he was very articulate in his decision to lay all of those pieces out. So that is exactly right Jay it is a primer that they can utilize and go back to and say well I can see my elected official did all of the things that are listed very explicitly right here that a political violence expert has already deemed to be insurrectionist activity and be able to utilize that as an exhibit to move forward as well. You know it strikes me that that the more cases that come up that follow that primer the more successful you know orders decisions judgments that that are issued by state courts around the country the better it is for this initiative that is to disqualify people who were involved in the insurrection. Because there will be a lot of judicial loss in all that they're not going to say exactly what Matthew said but they'll say things like that and so you know Griffin will appeal he'll have a lot of friends with PAC money to appeal he'll go he'll go to the Supreme Court and it strikes me you know if I'm sitting on the supreme court this is a big problem if I want to turn over the Griffin case or other cases similarly situated what do I say and there's no question this is an insurrection this is no quite there's no question that he was involved in it there's no question that he gave comfort also there's no question that he's covered by that provision and that provision does not call for any heard the proceedings only a declaration by a judge in fact it doesn't call for a declaration by a judge either but we have here you know a rose garden we have a declaration by a judge where he finds traditionally that the section you know is applicable so I think it's very hard for either a district a federal district court or a court of appeals or the supreme court who shove that aside because it is an amendment it is also difficult to deal with it because it is it is an amendment to the united states constitution theoretically you can't change it unless you have another amendment right correct it's been quite some time since we have one of those so so you know it was a sleeper until now now it sounds you know pretty strong medicine and I you know I think it's hard to say what our crazy federal judiciary will do going forward as we have seen in Florida but but you know there's a fair chance this could stick and if it sticks you know a it's going to be a clear president don't do insurrections they won't get you anywhere and if you hold public office you got to be out of your mind because you can lose your pay you know you can lose votes that you made you can lose all your influence and all your authority on the in the fell swoop that's that's that's a pretty powerful medicine for somebody who is in you know in public office and the other thing is it's a statement to the country isn't it that's why this case is so important it's a statement to the country yes the constitution matters and even a state judge can step forward and enforce it wow I think that that statement is really important Jay I think that that is something that you know over I think that you know in in dealing with a lot of folks in the public and some of our members you know I mean there has been a feeling of until the January 6 committee you know started holding their hearings you know a feeling of of hopelessness because sometimes you know as I said justice takes time especially when it comes to the DOJ it takes a lot of time and that's because they do really in depth detailed airtight cases and when it comes to this too people you know even in speaking to my mother a few months ago you know she asked doesn't the constitution matter anymore to people other than the people in your line of work and I said yeah it does and I think that that is exactly what this case re-emphasizes is that yes it does matter laws do matter enforcement will happen um you've just got to give it a little bit of time and continue engaging in the system because it does matter and it is important well that raises still another effect of this of this case the griffin case and that's this you know you could have a direct decision like in the in the case of uh koi griffin um you could have a situation as I mentioned earlier where one candidate is running against another candidate who is subject to section three of the 14th amendment and can get you know just on the asking a judicial decision of similar import to the griffin case and and disqualify the other candidate but there's also a sort of cycle of course and we talked about how it encourages you know belief in the constitution encourages the whole country that yes we still have one but there's something else too and that is you all these people who might run for office are going to have to think twice before they do if they have this particular impediment because they could run right to the end you know and wind up being disqualified after spending tens of millions of dollars running for that office I mean it would be very cute if you wait for them to do that and at the last moment you're in court you know with a seeking a matthew's type of decision so they would be well advised to stay out of the stay out of the fray if they're going to go nowhere with that this is the the beauty of that provision is that it's out there lurking on every single insurrectionist well it goes to I want to thank New Mexico people that worked on this and I mean it is so right to the matter Jay and anybody that goes into work as a clerk or whatever with the federal government you take that oath and now to get back to focusing on that and also to give the tool back to us from early from well that was all reconstruction time give us a tool out of that difficult period that came to be useful and now maybe it's got better even better and more use to come in the future and that perhaps looking back during that difficult time of reconstruction where some of these cases came up and they did they did some maybe they did other things there that are tools that we can pull up into the present but what happened with this one is thank you New Mexico people who did this work for us I really made makes me feel a little safer or maybe maybe a little more prospects that we can get this time to go back to Santa Fe and see some more opera opera yes please we always absolutely anytime you just give me a holler when you're out here and we'll get you hooked up there's some great there's some amazing operas that are coming out so well is the common cause office there is that a a major common cause office or am I getting confused here no it's an albuquerque we're based in albuquerque and then the state legislature of course is up in Santa Fe so we are up there very often and as you mentioned with the opera our former justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg used to come up every summer so that she could come and see the operas up there she was a fabulous yeah it's just it's an unbelievably world-class opera up there and beautifully I think one of the interesting aspects of this is that you know this guy was physically in you know the insurrection but you don't have to be physically in the insurrection or rebellion to qualify for being disqualified under section three of the 14th amendment all you have to do is give comfort and that term could go far beyond the people who were physically involved in the insurrection in January 6th so it depends on the prosecuting authority and let me add one little thing before we close and that is this you know it doesn't say you need a conviction it doesn't say you need an indictment it doesn't say you need a even a trial I think you could get along on rule 56 and most states have this declaratory judgment with it with the judge declares without more that just as Matthews did that this person is subject to that provision end of story and so we could have a lot of a lot of people out there who are subject to that even if they were not in the in the insurrection and furthermore we could have the media okay out them we could have the media out a candidate in other words this candidate took the oath this candidate is now running for office this candidate is he's an official and we are we know this we researched it we investigated it we lay our evidence so to speak out in a news story on the front page of the the albuquerque news okay that would get you a long way and you wouldn't have to go theoretically you wouldn't have to go to court at all him it's you would out him or her and embarrass him or her and then seek to have you know prosecutorial or you know government attorneys find that from the front page and take it from there one can hope i think that would get blocks jay that that's that's devious uh devious no it's not devious it's it's if the government is not going to do anything about it the media can do something about it that's what i'm saying so in the investigatory type um okay let's let's say goodbye heather um what what what message would you like to leave with our audience today um i think that the message that i would leave is that this has been it's been a pleasure meeting with all of you and being able to have the opportunity to speak to hawaii i really hope that everyone votes in the upcoming election no matter what party you are from that is coming up in november um i know that you know no one should feel intimidated there's actually joy in participating in our democracy and we shouldn't forget that and we should also make sure that we are always holding power to account that is the work that we do and if you are not staying engaged this is the time to do so you know democracy is really in a fragile state and i think that we are seeing some real hope on the horizon and now is the time to get involved i hope we can revisit with you heather because uh you know this this decision going down the pike well we'll be followed by other decisions and we would like to talk to you about what happens i thank you so much for coming on yeah thanks for having me thank you sephine what about your closing remarks oh i just wanted to to thank heather for bringing this to our attention and being so specific um and and hopeful about its its prospects for helping us through these challenges that we have and that just must be addressed because as you say there are 95 other people out there in positions in executive positions that are are influencing our government and that's where we are the government's fragile and we need to make sure we protect it so all you said heather in your closing statement i support and again thank you new mexico for this if this is the beginning of a of a round of this in the country jay and i'll be very happy and the rest of the thing thank you mom okay you guys thank you so much for watching think tech hawaii if you like what we do please like us and click the subscribe button on youtube and the follow button on vimeo you can also follow us on facebook instagram twitter and linked in and donate to us at think tech hawaii dot com mahalo