Stiffest sentence yet for Jan. 6 riot: Seven years

WASHINGTON — The first U.S. Capitol riot defendant convicted at trial was sentenced to more than seven years in prison Monday, the longest punishment handed down to date over the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on Congress.

Guy Reffitt, a recruiter for the right-wing Texas Three Percenters movement, was convicted March 8 of five felony offenses, including obstruction of Congress as it met to certify the 2020 election result, interfering with police and carrying a firearm to a riot, and threatening his teenage son, who turned him in to the FBI. Prosecutors said Reffitt led a mob while armed at the Capitol and asked a judge to sentence him to 15 years after applying a terrorism sentencing penalty.

U.S. District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich condemned Reffitt’s conduct in handing down an 87-month sentence, saying in a nearly six-hour-long hearing that his views espousing political violence were “absurd,” “delusional” and “way outside of the mainstream.”

What Reffitt and others did at the Capitol “is the antithesis of patriotism,” Friedrich said, adding: “Not only are they not patriots, they are a direct threat to our democracy, and will be punished as such.”

Reffitt, who has proclaimed himself a “martyr” from prison, sought to legitimize efforts by himself and others to foment a rebellion against so-called government tyranny, “believing he was going to forcibly remove [state and federal] legislatures and install a new government that will be approved by judges and the Constitution,” the judge said. “Nothing could be further from the truth. Nothing. And to this day, he has not disavowed these comments,” Friedrich said.

Reffitt had every right to his political views, to peacefully protest, and to support, vote for and associate with whomever he chose, Friedrich said, “but what Mr. Reffitt and hundreds of other Capitol riot[ers] did not have the right to do is to storm the Capitol, carrying firearms, trespass, refuse law enforcement commands or to resort to violence.”

Before Monday, the longest sentence handed down in the Jan. 6 cases was just over five years, for two men who assaulted police. The federal advisory sentencing range for Reffitt’s case was 87 months to nine years. The defense for Reffitt, a 49-year-old former oil industry rig manager, asked for a below-guidelines sentence of two years in prison. Attorney F. Clinton Broden said his client committed no violence and has no criminal history, yet prosecutors sought far more time for him than for defendants who have pleaded guilty to assaulting police, accusing the government of retaliating against Reffitt for going to trial.

“It makes a mockery of the criminal justice system, the Sixth Amendment right to trial and the victims assaulted by [others] to argue that Mr. Reffitt should be given a sentence greater than” the others, Broden told the court. “I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to figure out why they are seeking an enhancement in this case.”

But Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jeffrey Nestler and Risa Berkower said Reffitt’s conduct was exceptional and put him “in a class all by himself” among defendants sentenced to date.

“We do believe what he was doing that day was terrorism.”