Cowboys for Trump founder Couy Griffin was found guilty of misdemeanor trespassing on restricted Capitol grounds Tuesday in the second trial of a defendant charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress. Griffin was acquitted of a second count of disorderly conduct.

An elected Republican county commissioner from Alamogordo, N.M., Griffin posted a video on Facebook of himself on the inauguration stage within the barricaded perimeter of the Capitol grounds during the Jan. 6 riot that forced the evacuation of lawmakers meeting to certify Joe Biden’s election victory. Griffin, 48, turned down an offer to plead to a lesser charge and probation, waived a trial by jury and bet his freedom on a bench trial that started Monday before U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden of Washington.

The conviction gave the Justice Department its second victory at trial in the Capitol riot probe, affirming its decision to level misdemeanor charges punishable by up to one year in jail against hundreds of defendants. A jury earlier this month found Guy Reffitt, a recruiter for a self-styled Texas militia movement, guilty of five felonies, including obstruction of an official proceeding, witness tampering and interfering with police in a riot.

Griffin was not accused of violence or entering the building — one of the few such defendants among more than 750 people federally charged in the Capitol siege investigation after President Donald Trump urged supporters to march to the Capitol. Rioters subsequently injured scores of police, ransacked Capitol offices and caused Congress to evacuate as it met to confirm the 2020 election results.

Defense attorneys David B. Smith and Nicholas D. Smith have said U.S. authorities targeted Griffin for prosecution based on his protected speech. McFadden rejected that contention, finding that Griffin’s alleged leadership role, more blatant conduct and position as an elected official might rationally merit different handling by prosecutors.

McFadden, a 2017 Trump appointee, said video showed Griffin climbing over a stone wall marking the Capitol’s security perimeter, walking over other plastic mesh fencing and metal bicycle rack barriers that had been pushed down, and spending more than an hour on the front railing of the inaugural stage with a bullhorn.

“It’s not clear to me Mr. Griffin knew he was entering a restricted area when [he] climbed over the Olmstead Wall, but by the time he climbed up to the inauguration stage, he certainly knew he shouldn’t be there, yet he remained,” McFadden said.

Although either Griffin or someone nearby went on to be recorded saying they should wait for a door to be broken open yielding access to the inauguration platform, and Griffin later used a bullhorn to lead a prayer that prompted some listeners in the crowd below to kneel or chant “Pray for Trump,” McFadden acquitted the defendant of disorderly conduct.

The law requires that offenders act knowingly to disrupt a government proceeding. Griffin was recorded saying that he thought Vice President Mike Pence had already acted and that the certification was over at the time, McFadden said. Prosecutors said that Congress was only in recess and still in session to certify the election, and their evidence showed that members of the crowd around Griffin were chanting “Decertify!” even as their presence delayed Congress’s return to vote until that evening. However, McFadden found that although Griffin “could have thought business was still taking place, … the burden was on the government” to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.

The judge set sentencing for June 17, after Griffin’s attorney, Nicholas Smith, declined an offer to immediately sentence Griffin on Tuesday.

Griffin, a former Disneyland Paris rodeo cowboy and self-styled preacher, is a stone mason who created a social medial following as a political provocateur. His racially charged mockery of Native American rites got him banned from Mescalero Apache Tribe lands, and he condemned people who view the Confederate flag as racist as “vile scum.” In July 2020, when the National Football League began playing “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” what is referred to the Black national anthem, before games, Griffin suggested that players “go back to Africa and form your little football teams over in Africa and you can play on a[n] old beat-out dirt lot and you can play your Black national anthem there.”

His in-your-face partisan style won him a spot on the ruling council in Otero County, with 65 percent of the vote in 2018, and a personal call from Trump, who later promoted Griffin on Twitter when the latter said on video: “The only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.” Griffin asserted he was speaking metaphorically. Twitter suspended both Trump’s and the Cowboys for Trump’s accounts in January 2021.

Griffin is well-known figure in the small, conservative county, where he has supported a $50,000 taxpayer-funded audit of the 2020 election results, even though Trump carried its 24,000 votes cast by 25 percentage points.

Griffin is one of at least 10 people charged in the riot who either held public office or ran for a government leadership post in the two and-a-half years before the attack, according to an Associated Press tally.

The Washington Post has reported that at least 163 Republicans who have embraced Trump’s false claims are running for statewide positions that would give them authority over the administration of elections. The list includes 69 candidates for governor in 30 states, as well as 55 candidates for the U.S. Senate, 13 candidates for state attorney general and 18 candidates for secretary of state in places where that person is the state’s top election official.