Texas resident and Capitol rioter Guy Reffitt has been found guilty of five felony offenses — all of the criminal charges that he was facing — in the first trial for someone who participated in the Capitol attack. (Many rioters have opted to plead guilty instead of heading to trial.) As summarized by The Washington Post, the offenses that Reffitt has now been formally concluded to have committed include “obstruction of an official proceeding, interfering with police in a riot, transporting a firearm for that purpose, armed trespassing and witness tampering.” The witness tampering charge is tied to threats that Reffitt made against members of his family in the aftermath of the riot in an effort to keep them quiet. Both obstruction of an official proceeding and witness tampering come with up to 20 years behind bars apiece.
NEW: Guy Reffitt is guilty on all five counts. Clean sweep for DOJ.
— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) March 8, 2022
At the Capitol, Reffitt had a handgun, body armor, radio, and more — so clearly, he was prepared for violence. These incidents weren’t merely some kind of spontaneous demonstration of political grievances, as some might suggest — what happened was an attempt to violently derail the functioning of the U.S. government. As Assistant U.S. Attorney Risa Berkower explained it during closing arguments in Reffitt’s trial, the now convicted defendant “challenged the police at the head of a vigilante mob determined to break into the United States Capitol. He did this because he wanted to take out Congress, and an angry, energized crowd gave him his best shot.” Notably, Reffitt helped lead at least his portion of the riot crowd while at the Capitol early last year — he even had a megaphone with him, which he put to use. Berkower said that Reffitt’s “decision to step forward and take on police officers allowed the crowd behind not just to advance but to adapt.”
NOW: Guy Reffitt is guilty of all counts, more to come.
— Zoe Tillman (@ZoeTillman) March 8, 2022
Reffitt’s defense attorney, William L. Welch, cast doubt on the notion that Reffitt had a gun at the Capitol at all, although a conversation recorded by one of the defendant’s children features Reffitt saying that he “did bring a weapon on property we own, federal property or not… This gun right here was loaded.” Reffitt explicitly took credit for inspiring rioters to push forward; as he put it in another recorded conversation, “Nobody was moving forward until I climbed up that banister and got wrecked the hell out… I just kept going ‘Go forward, go forward!’ … ‘Take the House.'” Separately, Joshua James, a member of the violent, far-right group known as the Oath Keepers, recently acknowledged in a plea agreement including an admittance to a charge of seditious conspiracy that Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes “instructed [him] and others to be prepared and called upon to… use lethal force if necessary” in their efforts to support Trump staying in power. The idea among Oath Keepers was that Trump might have invoked a law called the Insurrection Act, which allows presidents to summon militias. They were prepared to be the militia.
The most serious charges that Reffitt was found guilty of, at least in terms of time behind bars, are the two obstruction counts (obstructing an official proceeding + obstructing justice by threatening his children), which each carry up to 20 years in prison
— Zoe Tillman (@ZoeTillman) March 8, 2022
Featured Image (edited): via Blink o’fanaye on Flickr and available under a Creative Commons License
