Ex-militia member recounts road trip to Capitol

WASHINGTON — In early January 2021, Rocky Hardie and Guy Reffitt drove the roughly 20 hours from North Texas to Washington, D.C., in a minivan loaded with assault-style rifles, ammunition and handguns, talking about family and politics and ragging on the leader of their far-right extremist group along the way.

“We were kind of complaining about our leader, because he’s back there like, ‘I’ll sort the sock drawer,’ while he tells everybody to go to D.C.,” Hardie said of Russ Teer, the head of the Texas Three Percenters group to which he and Reffitt belonged. “He sits back home with his family where it’s nice and comfortable, and we made a commitment to stand and be counted.”

On the long drive to former President Donald Trump’s Stop the Steal rally, Hardie said the two joked about dragging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi out of the Capitol “by her feet or her ankles,” envisioning her head hitting every step on the way out.

“We talked about, ‘We gotta get the bastards out of there,’ ” Hardie said.

But Hardie said he never took any of it seriously until Jan. 6, when Reffitt attempted to storm the Capitol in a charge that Reffitt has since bragged “lit the fire” of the riot.

“I didn’t think he or anybody was going to get close to the Capitol. I thought that was impossible,” Hardie said. “I was pretty impressed that he did what he did. He had more courage than I did. I wasn’t going to go up there.”

Hardie detailed the multiday, cross-country road trip in testimony on Friday against his former Three Percenter companion, the first defendant to stand trial before

a jury for his participation in the riot. Reffitt, 49, of Wylie, faces five felony charges, including transporting firearms for unlawful use in a riot and breaching Capitol grounds while armed with the holstered handgun.

Hardie, who said he quit the Three Percenters after the FBI started asking questions about the trip, testified under an immunity deal with the government. Wearing darkframed glasses and a black suit and tie, Hardie testified carefully, frequently asking for questions to be repeated or clarified, sometimes stopping to think through his answers, saying he was trying to form a picture in his mind.

Reffitt watched calmly, taking notes on a yellow legal pad, wearing a black suit and no tie, his hair pulled back in a ponytail.

Hardie said he had met Reffitt a few times before the trip, including at meetings of the Three Percenters at Reffitt’s house in Wylie and at Hardie’s warehouse near Austin. The two mostly got to know each other over the phone and through Telegram, a messaging app.

Hardie said they agreed on a lot. They felt like Pelosi was “evil incarnate” and they liked Trump and “what he stood for.” They both believed the 2020 election was stolen and had talked about “how far do you let things go before you have to take action to protect your country.”

He said he respected Reffitt because he seemed like someone who was more than just all talk.

“In life, most people talk, but they don’t do,” Hardie said. “He kind of seems to be a person who actually does things.”

So when he read a message from Reffitt about Jan. 6 calling for “true blooded warriors” to travel to D.C. to “stand and be counted,” Hardie was all in.

Hardie made the 223mile drive from Austin to Wylie, where he and Reffitt disassembled their ARs — Hardie recalled being embarrassed as he asked for help with his, saying he had forgotten how — loaded up the minivan with ammunition and other gear and headed out.

Hardie said the two took the weapons, even though they knew they weren’t allowed in D.C. and that neither was permitted to carry handguns in the district. But they had decided it was worth the risk for self-defense in case things got heated. Hardie said he had joined the Three Percenters after seeing videos of Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 and feared antifa might be at the rallies in D.C.

“I think we used an expression: It’s better to be tried by a jury of 12 than carried by six,” Hardie testified.

“If you violate a handgun law, you’ll probably go to jail and at some point you’ll get out. But if you die, you’re not coming back.”

Hardie said they left the weapons in the van when they got to their four-star hotel in Georgetown, an upscale Washington neighborhood. The jury was shown a selfie Hardie said he took of the two smiling in their hotel room, Hardie wearing his empty gun holster.

The next morning as they were getting ready to head out, Hardie testified Reffitt gave him zip ties, “real big heavy ones you use as handcuffs.”

“I said, ‘What are these for?’” Hardie recalled. “He said, ‘Well, in case we need to detain anybody,’ or something to that effect.”

They went to the car and reassembled the ARs, in case “something bad happened and we needed them quickly.” They left them in the car but loaded up their handguns, Hardie carrying his in his shoulder holster with two additional magazines and Reffitt stowing his on his hip.

Hardie said Reffitt donned a helmet and an armored vest. He gave Hardie two American flags and carried a megaphone. The two carried radios to communicate throughout the day, giving each other call names. Hardie was Oscar, Reffitt was Tango.

They attended Trump’s rally, then marched to the Capitol, where Hardie recalled seeing people climbing scaffolding like “spiders crawling up walls.”

“I said, ‘Wow these people are really doing it,’ ” he said.

The two were eventually separated and Hardie was not with Reffitt when he attempted to storm the Capitol, though he said Reffitt at one point told him over the radio that he was going to try to get inside. Hardie said he got close enough to touch the Capitol, but never went in.

It wasn’t until the two regrouped in their hotel room that he learned about Reffitt’s failed charge — how he was shot multiple times with clay bullets but was undeterred until a big blast of bear spray stopped him in his tracks.

Hardie said Reffitt was “red all over his body” from the spray. He took a picture of Reffitt’s legs, shown to the jury, where multiple circular welts showed where he’d been hit with the clay bullets.

“We were kind of bragging a little bit,” Hardie recalled of the conversation in the hotel room.

“I was kind of excited and a little fascinated,” he said. “I had this experience that was like a oncein-a-lifetime experience, and I felt like it was kind of historically significant — I actually showed up.”