WASHINGTON. When an oilman named Guy Wesley Refitt returned to Texas after last year’s attack on the Capitol, his welcome home was not entirely warm.
According to federal prosecutors, he bragged to his family that he had run into police outside the building and promised that the violence there was just “the beginning.” His 18-year-old son fought back, accusing him of breaking the law.
A few days later, Mr. Refitt realized that his son might be right and that the FBI might actually be following him. In a fit of rage, he threatened his son and daughter, telling them that they would face his wrath if they sold him to the authorities.
On Thursday, the son, Jackson Refitt, appeared before his father on the witness stand in Federal District Court in Washington, testifying against him in a remarkable picture that captures the painful rupture in one family – and, in a sense, in the country – caused by the events. January 6, 2021
“He said, ‘If you turn me in, you’re a traitor,'” Jackson Refitt told jurors as his father watched him intently from across the courtroom and then lowered his eyes. “And traitors are shot.”
The elderly Mr. Reffit, 41, is the first defendant of more than 700 to stand trial in connection with the Capitol attack, and over the past two days, the prosecution has documented driving to Washington with another member of the Texas militia and armed with a gun, led a crowd of Trump supporters who stepped on the police outside the building.
But with the appearance of his son as a witness, the trial took an unusually personal and emotional turn.
Testifying for more than three hours, Jackson Refitt, now 19, told jurors how his father became more distant and strict in his beliefs in 2016, the same year that Donald Trump was elected president. Father and son, he said, do not agree on politics.
“I was moderately left and my father was moderately right,” the younger Mr. Reffit said, adding that in the election year, “we both went further in our own direction.”
Jackson Refitt also said that his father was a member of the Texas Three Percents, a state militia group closely associated with the gun rights movement. Guy Reffit flew a flag in front of the family’s home in Wylie, Texas, emblazoned with the Three Percenters logo. His son told jurors that he often went about his business with a .40 caliber pistol at his hip.
According to Jackson Refitt, father-son relations escalated in December 2020 as Trump embarked on multiple overlapping schemes to reverse his election defeat. Much of the conflict played out in a family group chat, several of which were shown to the jury on Thursday.
“Congress has made fatal mistakes this time,” Guy Reffit wrote on December 21 of that year. “It’s not about Trump, it’s much more than that. It’s about OUR country.”
Guy Reffit during the 6 January attack. Credit … through the Department of Justice.
The son replied, “I don’t think Congress will get all 80,000,000 votes for Biden, but okk.”
The father then replied: “It’s not about Trump. Or Biden. Then there is the issue of tyranny. Hold my beer and I’ll show you.
Reading these and similar messages – some about his father going to Washington on January 6 – was “scary and surreal,” Jackson Refitt said.
He told jurors that he was worried about what his father might do. So, one day in the same month, he Googled the words “FBI” and “advice” and followed a link to an online bureau line with information about what happened between him and his father.
He testified that he was ashamed of contacting the FBI. “I just felt disgusting,” he explained.
But the FBI did not respond for several weeks, and on January 6, 2021, Jackson woke up at his girlfriend’s house to find text in a family group chat indicating that his father was in Washington. He told jurors that he hurried home and found his mother and sisters watching on television as the chaos unfolded in the Capitol.
Capitol Riot Aftermath: Key Events
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Possible case against Trump. In a court document, the House committee investigating the January 6 attack said there was enough evidence to conclude that former President Donald Trump and some of his allies may have been involved in a criminal conspiracy as he fought to stay on his post.
“I just stood there in awe and disappointment, saddened and scared,” he said.
Two days later, as Guy Refitt was returning from Washington, he sent his family a message that seemed to praise the violence he took part in.
“Shooted several times with clay balls and heavily sprayed with pepper spray,” he wrote. “We took the capital of the United States. We are the People’s Republic.”
“Yes,” his son replied, “you know they’re hunting down everyone who was there, right?”
“Don’t care,” said the father. “I didn’t break any laws.”
Father and son had a similar conversation when Guy Refit finally returned to the family home in Wylie. A few days later, his father threatened “traitors,” Jackson Refitt said. That day, Jackson met with the FBI. His father was arrested within a week.
Witness testimony at the trial earlier in the day was not as dramatic and mostly revolved around evidence that investigators extracted from Mr. Reffitt’s electronic devices, including a 30-minute video he filmed of the crowd outside the Capitol with a camera installed. on his helmet.
In the video, a foul-mouthed Mr. Reffit is heard repeatedly urging people from the crowd to break into the building and drag lawmakers, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, by the hair or by the ankles.
“I didn’t come here to play – I’m taking the Capitol,” he said at one point. “I just want to see Pelosi hit his head on every step on the way to the exit.”
Prosecutors also showed the jury a recording of a Zoom call Mr. Reffit took part in with other members of the Texas 3% after he returned from Washington. The call contained an echo of testimony given Wednesday by former Capitol police officer Shauni Kerckhoff. Ms Kerckhoff told jurors she began to panic after shooting Mr Refitt with dozens of pepper balls, none of which could stop his progress up the stairs in the building.
During a Zoom call, Mr. Reffit recounted the same events, telling his fellow militiamen that he had been hit by Ms. Kerckhoff’s projectiles at least 20 times, but his body armor had absorbed most of the impact.
“I said, ‘Baby, you’ll need a bigger gun,'” he said over the phone, adding, “They’re lucky we didn’t shoot them.”