A New Mexico state judge ruled on Thursday that the Cowboys for Trump founder's involvement in the January 6, 2021, insurrection disqualified him from holding public office and ordered that he be removed from his county Commissioner seat.
The Disqualification Clause of the 14th Amendment, which bars anyone from holding office if they took an oath to uphold the Constitution, was found to have been a factor in the Capitol attack.
Matthews rebuked the man for his involvement in the Capitol attack and his subsequent attempts to "sanitize" his involvement.
Matthew wrote that his protestations and characterizations of his actions and the events of January 6, 2021 were not credible and amounted to trying to put lipstick on a pig.
A federal judge in Washington, DC, found the man guilty of being on Capitol grounds. In June, the judge sentenced him to 14 days in prison but credited him for the 20 days he had already spent in jail.
A group of New Mexico residents filed a lawsuit in March arguing for his removal from the Otero County Commission. The group was represented by the government watchdog group Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington, which hailed the ruling as marking the first time since 1869 that a court has disqualified a public official for taking part in a rebellion.
The January 6th insurrection and the attempts to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power in the United States will be held accountable. Noah Bookbinder is the president of Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington. Any public official who took an oath to defend the US Constitution and then participated in the January 6th insurrection will be removed from government service.
The Justice Department was not able to prove that he was aware that the grounds around the Capitol were restricted. According to his lawyer, the ground was no longer restricted when he entered them because Vice President Mike Pence had left.
That argument led to a revelation. On the witness stand, a Secret Service inspector confirmed that Pence had never left the grounds but instead fled to an underground loading dock beneath the Capitol, where he stayed for several hours.
The "grave tension" between his conduct on January 6 and his oath as a county commissioner in New Mexico was remarked on by McFadden at his sentencing.
In the New Mexico court proceeding, he argued that Matthews should not be deposed and that the people of Otero County should decide.
Matthews was struck by the irony of the argument made by the man who was defending his participation in the election being made by a mob who wanted to set aside the results of a free, fair and lawful election.
He said that it had not escaped this court.
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