Guilty: Capitol rioter Guy Reffitt convicted at first January 6 trial

A jury found Guy Reffitt guilty after just less than four hours of deliberations, giving the Justice Department a win in the first January 6 trial.

• A jury found Guy Reffitt guilty after only a few hours of deliberations.
• Prosecutors painted Reffitt as an on-the-ground leader for the rioters who "lit the fire" of the Capitol attack.
• The conviction marked a significant victory for the Justice Department in the first January 6 trial.

A jury found Capitol rioter Guy Reffitt guilty Tuesday in the first trial stemming from the January 6, 2021 insurrection, capping a weeklong court proceeding in which prosecutors painted the Texas man as a significant on-the-ground leader for the pro-Trump mob.

The jury convicted Reffitt, 49, on each of the five counts he faced, including obstruction of an official proceeding and bringing a handgun to the Capitol grounds. Jurors also found Reffitt guilty of civil disorder and a charge that he threatened his children to keep them from reporting him to law enforcement. 

The guilty verdict came after less than 4 hours of deliberations and punctuated a trial that featured testimony from Reffitt's teenage son and current and former Capitol police officers who recounted their desperate attempts to stop the mob's advance on January 6.

Judge Dabney Friedrich set Reffitt's sentencing for 10 a.m. June 8, and in the meantime, Reffitt will remain jailed. Reffitt faces the potential of years in prison, but he will likely be credited for the year he's already served behind bars.

Prosecutors and Reffitt's defense lawyer have a May 25 deadline to file sentencing recommendations.

As the verdict was read, Reffitt showed little emotion and looked down. A woman who sat with Reffitt's wife through much of the trial pulled out a tissue to wipe her eyes. Reffitt's wife, Nicole Reffitt, held eye contact with her husband. The husband and wife then lowered their masks and put their hands over their hearts.

Outside the courthouse, Nicole Reffitt struck a defiant tone, characterizing the prosecution as an attack on her husband's First Amendment rights. She urged other January 6 defendants to not plead guilty.

"This fight has just begun," Nicole Reffitt told reporters.

"Do not take a plea, 1/6-ers," she added, referring to defendants charged in connection with the January 6 attack. "Do not. We got this."

Friedrich dismissed the jurors and — after instructing them not to speak about the case or follow news coverage — said they were now free to discuss it. Several of the jurors declined to speak with reporters as they departed the courthouse.

Through the weeklong trial, prosecutors described Reffitt as the "tip of his mob's spear," and showed video footage of him ascending stairs outside the Capitol wearing a tactical vest and a helmet mounted with a GoPro-style camera.

Reffitt's trial presented an opportunity for the Justice Department to secure a conviction that would send a message to other accused Capitol rioters planning to go before a jury rather than plead guilty.

For prosecutors, a loss in court could have sent the opposite message — and emboldened accused Capitol rioters. But federal prosecutors never seemed in doubt about the outcome.

At the trial's outset, prosecutor Jeffrey Nestler told jurors that Reffitt had made it "easy" to prove his intent to obstruct an official proceeding: Congress' certification of now-President Joe Biden's electoral victory. Reffitt "went to the Capitol and did exactly what he said he was going to do," Nestler said, previewing text messages and other evidence that detailed the Capitol rioter's planning ahead of the January 6 attack.

In dramatic testimony, Reffitt's 19-year-old son recounted reporting his father to police on Christmas Eve in 2020 after growing alarmed at his incendiary rhetoric and plans to do "something big." His son, Jackson Reffitt, also testified about how he secretly recorded his father after he returned to Texas and exuberantly recounted his climb up the steps outside the Capitol. 

"He was ecstatic about what he did, about what the mob did," prosecutor Risa Berkower said in her closing argument Monday.

At the sight of his son taking the stand, Guy Reffitt wept inside the courtroom. 

Jackson Reffitt also recalled how his father grew distressed as law enforcement tracked down and arrested suspected Capitol rioters in the weeks after the January 6 attack. He described a conversation in which Guy Reffitt told him and his younger sister that they would be traitors if they turned him into law enforcement — and that "traitors get shot."

"I was pretty grossed out hearing my father say that," Jackson Reffitt testified Thursday, on the fourth day of the trial.

Prosecutors had planned to also call Jackson Reffitt's sister, Peyton, as a witness, but they ultimately opted against doing so. After prosecutors rested their case, Reffitt's defense lawyer, William Welch, declined to call any witnesses.

Reffitt did not take the stand in his own defense. Welch, at one point in his closing argument, offered a Trump-focused defense of his client: 'People say outrageous things,' including the former president of the United States.

Welch declined to comment on the verdict Tuesday as he left the courthouse.

In her closing argument, Berkower said the Justice Department had presented a "mountain of evidence" showing that Reffitt had planned his involvement in the January 6 attack and carried a handgun on the Capitol grounds. Repeatedly, she said Reffitt "lit the fire" of January 6.

And while he did not enter the Capitol building, Reffitt paved the way for some of the first rioters who did, Berkower said.

"Those were the very first rioters who entered the US Capitol that day. This defendant lit the fire that got them there," she said.

Among the prosecution's witnesses was Rocky Hardie, who traveled with Reffitt from Texas to Washington, DC, for the events of January 6. Hardie, a onetime member of the far-right Three Percenters militia, told jurors about Reffitt's role in the group and recounted how they planned to bring firearms to the nation's capital despite knowing it would be illegal to carry them.

Hardie, who testified with an immunity deal, recalled how he and Reffitt determined the danger of not having a firearm outweighed the risk of prosecution.

"I think we used the phrase, 'It's better to be tried by a jury of 12 than carried by 6 [pallbearers],'" he said. 

In some of her final words to the jury, Berkower wielded the phrase against Reffitt.

"He was itching to be judged by you, the jury of 12, and now we're here," she said.