A federal judge sentenced the first U.S. Capitol rioter convicted at trial to seven years and three months in prison, the longest incarceration in the Justice Department‘s criminal investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on Congress.
Guy Wesley Reffitt, 49, of Wylie, Texas, was convicted in March of five felony counts, including transport of a firearm in support of civil disorder and obstruction of an official proceeding. However, he never made it inside the Capitol building on the fateful January 2021 day because he was incapacitated after charging toward a police line.
Reffitt, whose son tipped off the FBI just weeks before the Capitol riot but only received a response from the federal agency after the attack, expressed deep remorse in court testimony on Monday.
PROSECUTORS SEEK LONGEST PUNISHMENT SO FAR FOR JAN. 6 RIOTER
“I clearly f***ed up,” Reffitt said, calling himself a f***ing idiot” who was “not thinking clearly.”
“I did want to definitely make an apology, multiple apologies really, and accept my responsibility because I do hate what I did,” he added.
Federal prosecutors with the DOJ had initially sought the defendant to be sentenced to 15 years in prison. Additionally, it marked the first time the agency asked a federal district court judge to apply a terrorism enhancement for a Capitol riot defendant. Doing so would have defined the rioter’s actions during the Capitol surge as domestic terrorism.
“We do believe that what he was doing that day was domestic terrorism, and we do believe that he’s a domestic terrorist,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Nestler said Monday.
Judge Dabney Friedrich, a Trump appointee and a former member of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, ruled that a domestic terrorism enhancement would only form disparities with other Jan. 6 defendant cases.
Without the sentencing enhancements, Reffitt’s sentence guidelines were given a window of 87 to 108 months in federal prison.
“There are a lot of cases where defendants committed very violent assaults and even possessed weapons … that did not receive this departure,” Freidrich said.
However, prosecutors pushed back on the judge’s point because they said Reffitt was “planning to overtake our government.”
“I’m taking the Capitol with everybody fucking else,” Guy Reffitt said, as “Tiny Dancer” played at Trump’s Jan. 6 rally. “We’re all going to drag them motherfuckers out kicking and screaming, I don’t give a shit. I just want to see Pelosi’s head hit every fucking stair…” pic.twitter.com/j6OGsrzNlC
— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) August 1, 2022
Reffitt captured video footage from the day of the riot featuring his own words, stating: “I’m taking the Capitol with everybody f***ing else.”
“We’re all going to drag them motherf***ers out kicking and screaming, I don’t give a s***. I just want to see Pelosi’s head hit every f***ing stair,” Reffitt said to a crowd of bystanders during the riot.
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Additionally, the defendant had spoken about his actions that day during a subsequent Zoom meeting on his personal computer.
At least 884 people have been arrested in connection to the attack on Jan. 6, and 260 have been charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement, according to the Justice Department.
