Hundreds of people have been charged for their role in the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. So far, Guy Reffitt, a 49-year-old from Wylie, Texas, is the only defendant to actually take his case to trial.
It didn’t go so well. The trial began last week and a jury returned a verdict on Tuesday morning, finding Reffitt guilty on all five charges stemming from his role in the insurrection.
The verdict was not surprising. The prosecution was sitting on a mound of evidence against Reffitt, who attempted to break into the Capitol with a gun and zip ties but never actually made it into the building.
Reffitt recorded videos before the riot in which he lays out his plans. “I’m taking the Capitol with everyone else,” he says in one of them. “I think we have the numbers to make it happen.”
Reffitt also bragged to a group of Three Percenters, a far-right militia to which he belongs, in a post-riot Zoom call that he fired up the crowd as it stormed the Capitol. Additional video shows Reffitt using a megaphone to rally other rioters up the steps of the Capitol.
I don’t know how often it happens. Probably not often enough. But, Reffitt’s politics moved so dramatically to the Fascist-side of Right, that even his son who considers himself a traditional American conservative…testified against him.