Guy Reffitt (U.S. Attorney’s Office).
The first rioter tried on Jan. 6 charges got his prison sentence reduced after a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling limiting the government’s use of a federal obstruction law.
Guy Reffitt, 52, of Texas, was resentenced on Friday to six years and eight months in prison, a reduction of seven months from his original sentence.
At the resentencing hearing, Reffitt ranted at U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich, a Donald Trump appointee, saying he was “in my feelings” and upset about the “lies and the craziness” he perceived, The Associated Press reported.
“I was not there to take over no government,” Reffitt said, the wire service reported. “I love this country.”
“No one has a problem with your feelings,” the judge said. “It’s the actions you took with your feelings.”
Reffitt, the first to stand trial among the hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants, was found guilty on March 8, 2022, of charges including civil disorder, obstruction, trespassing with a firearm, and obstruction of justice.
Prosecutors used his own words in calling him an instigator in the Capitol breach.
“In the defendant’s own words, he lit the match that started the fire,” a prosecutor told jurors, Dallas CBS affiliate KTVT reported in March 2022.
Reffitt was a member of the Three Percenters militia group, which draws its name from the false idea that only three percent of American colonists fought against the British in the Revolutionary War.
In messages recruiting others, he wrote, “We will strike the match in D.C. on the 6th.” He and another militia member drove 1,000 miles from Texas on Jan. 4 to Washington for the riots — with handguns and AR-style rifles in tow.
Armed with a handgun and wearing full tactical gear, Reffitt led the attack on the West Front of the Capitol that precipitated the breach of the building, prosecutors wrote in their memo in support of resentencing seeking the same 87 months he was initially sentenced to by Friedrich, a Donald Trump appointee.
“In Reffitt’s own words, he went the Capitol with the intention of ‘taking the Capitol with everybody f—ing else,’ and ‘drag[ging] them motherf—ers out kicking and screaming.’”
Armed with a .40-caliber handgun, flexicuffs and fortified with body armor and a helmet, Reffitt confronted three officers on the West Stairs of the Capitol building.
Reffitt led rioters up those stairs, explicitly encouraging, with his words, hand gestures, and actions, the crowd below him to surge forward toward the officers. Those rioters soon succeeded in overwhelming the officers at the top of those steps and taking over the Capitol building.
In the days following Jan. 6, Reffitt’s growing concerns about the potential legal implications of the riots prompted him to take measures to conceal his actions.
On Jan. 10, after learning that Texas law enforcement agents had questioned the Texas Three Percenters’ leader, Reffitt sent messages to several other group members informing them about the leader’s questioning, telling them to “[b]e prepared, the S— is now hitting the fan,” and “Startpurge of all previous conversations. NOW.”
Reffitt deleted his own Telegram message thread from his iPhone. The following day, he threatened the lives of his children, telling his teen son and daughter that if they turned him in, they would be traitors, and “traitors get shot,” authorities said.
Reffitt was arrested on Jan. 16, 2021.
Since his trial, Reffitt supported his wife Nicole Reffitt’s efforts as one of the organizers of the “January 6 vigil,” a group that seeks the release of Jan. 6 defendants they call “hostages” or “political prisoners.”
Reffitt has called into the “vigil” several times since his initial sentencing.
Reffitt’s text messages and calls from jail also indicate that he remains defiant, and that he views his imprisonment as an injustice. Reffitt told an acquaintance in a text message, “I’m a very strong Patriot, with fabulous support from Patriot Warriors, as we navigate troubled waters.”
On Oct. 10, 2024, after a visit with that same acquaintance, he texted: “I do love the J6 family dynamics. We really are a ‘Yuge’ family now. We all of a common goal. Save America and the people.”
Reffitt also continues to express contempt about the justice system, prosecutors said.
“For instance, on Oct. 7, 2024, Reffitt texted: ‘My resentencing date is set for December 2, 2024, and 2pm … hope Trump wins so the court will get off dez nutz,’” prosecutors said.
In his sentencing memo seeking not more than 58 months imprisonment, Reffitt’s attorney, F. Clinton Broden, wrote that while his client brought a gun to the Capitol building, the gun remained holstered. He also compared his actions to those of other more violent rioters.
“Mr. Reffitt’s original sentence may have seemed appropriate when there were less comparisons to be made,” Broden wrote. “Now, however, no such explanation case can support such a disparate sentence. At this juncture, it is simply impossible to justify a sentence for Mr. Reffitt that is greater than, or even equal to, the sentences for those that used weapons on January 6 or to the sentences for those that engaged in serious assaults on the officers defending the Capitol.”
The obstruction charge at issue has been a thorn in the side of Justice Department prosecutors since the start of the government’s wide-ranging investigation into the insurrection. Defendants have argued the statute is confined to actions such as destroying potentially incriminating documents, as consulting firm Arthur Anderson was found to have done on behalf of Enron as the then-crumbling energy company was starting to crumble, leading to what was then the largest corporate bankruptcy in the world.
Early efforts to have the charge dismissed had largely failed — 18 federal district judges in Washington have upheld the obstruction charge in Jan. 6 cases, following in the footsteps of Friedrich, who was the first to issue a written ruling on the matter. Only one judge at the trial level found the statute does not apply: U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols. The Justice Department appealed that ruling and the matter ultimately ended up before the Supreme Court, which ultimately found that the statute did not apply to most of the Jan. 6 cases.
