WASHINGTON — When an oil-field employee named Man Wesley Reffitt returned to Texas after participating within the assault on the Capitol final yr, his welcome house was not fully heat.
He bragged to his household about confronting the police exterior the constructing and promised that the violence there was solely “the start,” in accordance with federal prosecutors. His 18-year-old son pushed again, accusing him of getting damaged the regulation.
Just a few days later, Mr. Reffitt realized his son may be proper and that the F.B.I. may in actual fact be on to him. In a burst of anger, he threatened his son and daughter, telling them that they’d face his wrath in the event that they offered him out to the authorities.
On Thursday, the son, Jackson Reffitt, confronted his father from the witness stand in Federal District Court docket in Washington, testifying towards him in a exceptional tableau that captured the painful rupture in a single household — and in some methods the nation — attributable to the occasions of Jan. 6, 2021.
“He mentioned, ‘For those who flip me in, you’re a traitor,’” Jackson Reffitt informed the jury as his father watched him intently from throughout the courtroom after which appeared down. “‘And traitors get shot.’”
The older Mr. Reffitt, 41, is the primary defendant out of greater than 700 to go on trial in reference to the Capitol assault, and prior to now two days the prosecution has documented how he drove to Washington with a fellow member of a Texas militia and, armed with a pistol, led a pro-Trump mob in an advance on the police exterior the constructing.
However with the looks of his son on the witness stand, the trial took an unusually private — and emotional — flip.
Testifying for greater than three hours, Jackson Reffitt, now 19, informed the jury how his father had turn out to be extra distant and extreme in his beliefs in 2016, the identical yr Donald J. Trump was elected president. Father and son, he mentioned, didn’t see eye-to-eye on politics.
“I used to be reasonably left and my father was reasonably proper,” the youthful Mr. Reffitt mentioned, including that in that election yr, “we each went additional in our personal course.”
Jackson Reffitt additionally mentioned his father was a member of the Texas Three Percenters, a state militia group carefully linked to the gun rights motion. Man Reffitt flew a flag exterior the household’s house in Wylie, Texas, emblazoned with a Three Percenters’ emblem. His son informed the jury that he usually went about his enterprise with a .40-caliber pistol on his hip.
Issues grew to become extra tense between the daddy and son in December 2020, Jackson Reffitt mentioned, as Mr. Trump was endeavor a number of, overlapping schemes to reverse his election defeat. A lot of the battle performed out on a household group chat, a number of messages of which had been proven to the jury Thursday.
“Congress has made deadly errors this time,” Man Reffitt wrote on Dec. 21 that yr. “This isn’t about Trump, it’s a lot a lot greater. It’s about OUR nation.”
The son wrote again: “I don’t suppose Congress makes up all 80,000,000 votes for biden however okkk.”
The daddy then responded: “It’s not about Trump. Or Biden. What comes subsequent is about tyranny. Maintain my beer and I’ll present you.”
Studying these and comparable messages — some about his father touring to Washington for Jan. 6 — was “scary and surreal,” Jackson Reffitt mentioned.
He informed the jury that he was nervous about what his father may do. So in the future that month, he Googled “F.B.I.” and “tip” and adopted the hyperlink to a web-based bureau tip line, describing what had handed between him and his father.
He testified that he was ashamed for having reached out to the F.B.I. “I simply felt gross,” he defined.
However the F.B.I. didn’t reply for weeks, and on Jan. 6, 2021, Jackson awakened at his girlfriend’s home to discover a textual content on the household group chat, indicating that his father was in Washington. He informed the jury that he hurried house and located his mom and sisters watching the chaos on the Capitol unfolding on TV.
Capitol Riot’s Aftermath: Key Developments
The potential case towards Trump. In a courtroom submitting, the Home committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault mentioned there was sufficient proof to conclude that former President Donald J. Trump and a few of his allies could have engaged in a legal conspiracy as he fought to stay in workplace.
“I type of simply stood there in awe and disappointment, saddened and scared,” he mentioned.
Two days later, as Man Reffitt headed again from Washington, he despatched his household a textual content that appeared to rejoice the violence he took half in.
“Shot a number of occasions with clay balls and Pepper Sprayed closely,” he wrote. “We took the USA Capital. We’re the Republic of the Individuals.”
“Yeah,” his son responded, “you already know they’re monitoring down everybody who was there proper?”
“Yep, don’t care,” his father answered. “I broke no legal guidelines.”
The daddy and son had an identical dialog when Man Reffitt lastly obtained again to the household’s house in Wylie. Just a few days later, his father made the risk about “traitors,” Jackson Reffitt mentioned. Jackson met with the F.B.I. that day. His father was arrested inside every week.
Testimony on the trial earlier within the day was not fairly as dramatic and was largely given over to the proof that investigators had extracted from Mr. Reffitt’s electronics units, together with a 30-minute video he fabricated from himself within the crowd exterior the Capitol with a digital camera mounted on his helmet.
Within the video, a foul-mouthed Mr. Reffitt will be heard repeatedly urging folks within the mob to storm into the constructing and drag the lawmakers, together with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, out by their hair or ankles.
“I didn’t come right here to play — I’m taking the Capitol,” he mentioned at one level. “I simply wish to see Pelosi’s head hitting each stair on the way in which out.”
Prosecutors additionally confirmed the jury a recording of a Zoom name that Mr. Reffitt took half in with different members of the Texas Three Percenters after he returned from Washington. The decision contained an echo of the testimony given Wednesday by a former Capitol Police officer, Shauni Kerkhoff. Ms. Kerkhoff informed the jury that she had began to panic after firing dozens of pepper balls at Mr. Reffitt, none of which managed to cease his advance up a staircase on the constructing.
On the Zoom name, Mr. Reffitt recounted the identical occasions, telling his fellow militiamen that he had been hit at the very least 20 occasions by Ms. Kerkhoff’s projectiles, however that his physique armor had absorbed many of the blows.
“I mentioned, ‘Child, you’re going to wish an even bigger gun than that,’” he mentioned on the decision, including, “They’re fortunate we didn’t shoot them.”