Nearly 14 months after a mob stormed the Capitol and threatened the certification of Joe Biden’s win in the presidential race, the first trial is set to open Monday for one of the more than 750 people charged in connection with the attack.
Jury selection is scheduled to get underway in U.S. District Court in Washington for Guy Reffitt, 49, a Texas oil rig worker facing five felony counts, including civil disorder, seeking to obstruct the Electoral College count, carrying a firearm into a restricted area, and obstruction of justice.
In addition to being the first Jan. 6 defendant to go on trial, Reffitt holds another distinction: the only person known to have been turned in by one of his own children.
Before Reffitt even left his Texas home for the Jan. 6 event, his son Jackson had contacted the FBI to report the extremism exhibited by his father, who is alleged to be a member of a “Three Percenters” militia group. Prosecutors say they intend to play several audio recordings Jackson made on his cell phone of his father following the Jan. 6 attack.
The trial is the first test of the Justice Department’s effort to transform its massive Jan. 6 manhunt — one that officials say has been the most complex investigation in U.S. history — into arguments that will convince a D.C. jury to convict. Prosecutors have spent much of the last year collecting and synthesizing massive troves of evidence, much of it drawn from security camera footage, social media posts, text messages, and videos taken by thousands of rioters as they breached the building. Merely organizing that evidence has taken the government months and led to protracted delays.
In the meantime, more than 200 rioters have pleaded guilty, primarily to misdemeanor offenses, and received sentences ranging from probation to six months in jail. A handful of felony defendants who pleaded guilty to crimes like police assault and obstruction have received sentences ranging between eight months and about five years in prison.
Reffitt’s trial will stand out, even among the most extreme Jan. 6 cases because of the role of his children — and a militia member that DOJ says has been granted immunity to testify against Reffitt.
Prosecutors said Jackson and his younger sister Peyton are expected to testify at the trial that their father urged them not to cooperate with the FBI.
“If you turn me in, you’re a traitor, and you know what happens to traitors … Traitors get shot,” Guy Reffitt said, according to prosecutors. They also allege he said to his daughter that if he found out that he was being recorded or his comments were posted on social media, he would put a bullet through her phone.
Those remarks led to the obstruction of justice charge Reffitt faces along with the obstruction of an official proceeding charge. Each carries a potential 20-year jail sentence. Prosecutors also intend to call several Capitol Police officers, FBI agents, a former Senate aide who was present on Jan. 6, and a Secret Service agent familiar with the movements of then-Vice President Mike Pence.
Reffitt’s attorney, William Welch, has dismissed his client’s comments as “idle threats,” and he has gotten some support for that view from Reffitt’s daughter Peyton.
During a bail hearing last March, Peyton Reffitt confirmed that her father made a reference to shooting traitors, but she did not view it as a threat.
“He said words that crossed the line, but I knew that there were no — there was zero intention behind those words,” Peyton Reffitt said then. “I mean, he says things that cross the line all the time, but I didn’t feel threatened at all.”
Jackson didn’t testify at that hearing, but has done a series of interviews describing his outrage at his father’s actions and explaining his decision to turn his dad in. Jackson told ABC News that he did not think his father was actually going to shoot him, but he still felt intimidated.
“I think the way he’s been manipulated into thinking by these extremist groups and what’s been fed to him, it is worrying enough that I don’t know what he was going to do next.”
Video from the day of the riot shows a man prosecutors have said is Guy Reffitt wearing a blue jacket and a GoPro-type video camera clashing with police on the West Terrace of the Capitol. At one point, the man who appears to be Reffitt can be seen rinsing his eyes, apparently from the effects of tear gas deployed by rioters, police or both.
Although Reffitt is not accused of entering the Capitol, he was in the first wave of Jan. 6 defendants arrested by the FBI. Despite repeated unsuccessful bids for release, he has been in custody since Jan. 19, 2021. Reffitt’s spent almost all of that time at the D.C. Jail, where he’s emerged as a relatively prominent figure among the several dozen
Capitol riot defendants in pretrial detention there. Reffitt and some of his family members have publicly complained that he’s a victim of political persecution.
“The beginning of the 1/6 Political Prisoner trials,” Reffitt wrote last week in a letter posted on a Telegram group for supporters of the Jan. 6 defendants, according to WUSA-TV. “Orwellian thought crimes, Spies, and the Ministry of Truth.”
Another likely major point of contention at the trial: the gun charge Reffitt faces, which is extremely rare among Jan. 6 defendants. Reffitt allegedly admitted to the FBI that he brought his Smith & Wesson pistol to Washington, but claimed he disassembled it and did not bring it to the Capitol.
However, prosecutors say that Reffitt was wearing the pistol holster at the Capitol and that in at least one photo something can be seen glistening in the sun in that holster. Witnesses are also expected to testify that Reffitt spoke about bringing his gun with him that day.
Some Republican lawmakers have sought to minimize the Jan. 6 attack by claiming that none or almost none of the participants were armed. However, prosecutors say a few like Reffitt did have firearms and others organized their weapons into caches kept in Virginia that were allegedly ready to be dispatched to the capital on a moment’s notice.
The trial set to open Monday is also the first high-profile jury trial to take place in Washington since the coronavirus pandemic broke out two years ago, leading to major disruptions in courts around the country and to a suspension of jury trials in Washington’s federal court for more than a year.
Plans for Reffitt’s trial and covid mitigation measures the court has put in place have prompted concerns about public access in recent days.
Judge Dabney Friedrich, an appointee of President Donald Trump, has said she does not plan to allow the public to listen to audio of the trial on a phone line the court has made available for nearly all hearings over the past two years. She cited concerns that witnesses might listen to the trial and hear things that could color their testimony.
Friedrich has said she will allow members of the press and public to view the testimony on closed-circuit video and audio from nearby courtrooms or media rooms. However, a court spokesperson indicated no member of the press or public will be permitted in-person access to the courtroom as witnesses testify.
On Sunday, a coalition of media organizations — including POLITICO — filed an emergency motion asking Friedrich to allow at least one press pool representative to be in the courtroom throughout the trial.
“Even with the accommodations of media rooms, overflow courtrooms, and the facilitated release of exhibits, the First Amendment and clear Supreme Court precedent require public access to the trial courtroom itself,” attorneys Charles Tobin and Maxwell Mishkin wrote in the motion. “The public is entitled by law to read and hear first-hand accounts as jurors observe the questioning of witnesses, arguments of counsel, and the rulings of the Court during this historic trial.”
Because of the Constitution’s requirement for public trials, closure of a trial to the public can lead to serious consequences, sometimes requiring a retrial.
In 2019, a trial for former Obama White House Counsel Greg Craig on a foreign-lobbying-related false-statement charge was halted and restarted after a day due to the judge excluding the press and public from jury selection. Prosecutors said the closure could jeopardize any guilty verdict in the case, prompting jury selection to start over with members of the press able to observe and listen.
A jury ultimately acquitted Craig.
