A jury found Guy Wesley Reffitt, the first Capitol riot participant to stand trial, guilty on all five counts after just a few hours of deliberation on Tuesday in a clean victory for prosecutors going after the rioters.
Reffitt had driven from Texas up to Washington, D.C., for then-President Donald Trump’s rally protesting the formal certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential election win. According to prosecutors, he acted as “the tip of the mob’s spear” for the first group to storm the building where the certification was taking place, leading others past police barricades set up outside but stopping short of going in himself.
Photos, videos and a recording of Reffitt bragging about his participation ― taken surreptitiously by his son ― backed up their arguments.
Reffitt was charged with five felonies for his part in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Capitol Hill, including arming himself with a gun in a restricted area, attempting to interfere with an official government proceeding and intimidating his teenage children to discourage them from cooperating with investigators.
His son, 19-year-old Jackson Reffitt, testified against his father last week during an emotional stretch of the trial.
The younger Reffitt had flagged his father to the FBI in late December 2020 after noticing a change in his father’s rhetoric after the election that he found alarming. Guy Reffitt boasted about being a part of the mob in the audio recording played in court, viewing the deadly attack as a historical achievement before seemingly realizing he could get in some deep legal trouble.
Prosecutors said Reffitt threatened to shoot his kids if they told anybody what he’d done.
“He said, ‘If you turn me in, you’re a traitor. And traitors get shot,’” Jackson Reffitt told the jury, outlets reported.
The teen also affirmed that his father was a member of the Texas Three Percenters, a far-right anti-government militia group, and held meetings in the family home.
Although federal authorities have arrested some 750 people in connection with the attack, many of them have avoided trial by accepting plea agreements. Guy Reffitt’s case is viewed as a test of the government’s charges, which have been challenged by defendants as unconstitutional but upheld by judges.
