March 08, 2022 12:22 PM UTC

Quick Conviction in First Jury Trial from Insurrection

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• by: Colorado Pols

Republicans may want to classify the events of Jan. 6, 2021 as “legitimate political discourse,” but the first jury trial of a suspect who took part in the insurrection doesn’t bode well for that silly GOP narrative.

As POLITICO reports:

Guy Reffitt, a Texas militia member who was at the head of an early wave of rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was found guilty of all five felony charges he faced related to the assault, including obstruction of an official proceeding, carrying a firearm during the attack and threatening witnesses.

The verdict is an important milestone for the Justice Department in the first jury trial since the attack that threatened the presidential transfer of power more than 14 months ago. Reffitt faces a maximum of 20 years in prison from the obstruction counts alone.

The unanimous verdict returned Tuesday after only about three hours of deliberations capped a week-long trial that featured graphic video and testimony of the pro-Trump mob that Reffitt joined, confronting police officers at the Capitol’s west front. There, prosecutors say, his prolonged standoff with several officers wielding non-lethal weapons helped divert focus while the larger mob tore through scaffolding assembled for the inauguration of Joe Biden.

The jury returned a unanimous verdict after just three hours of deliberation.

Reffitt’s attorneys tried all sorts of ridiculous tactics in an effort to save their client from a guilty verdict, including making claims that much of the presented evidence was somehow faked. This was also a point that Reffitt attempted himself, as CBS News reported last month:

Reffitt has written a letter to the judge presiding over his trial, Dabney Friedrich, declaring that the idea that there were crimes committed at the Capitol on January 6 is a lie.

“When all the lies and hyperbole have been peeled away, the world will know the truth. There was no insurrection, no conspiracy, no sinister plan and no reason to think otherwise,” Reffitt wrote. [Pols emphasis]

About 750 individuals have been charged with crimes related to the Jan. 6 insurrection; roughly 240 have entered guilty pleas, meaning there are hundreds of others whose cases still need to be resolved. Reffitt’s quick conviction is a bad sign for those folks who were hoping their role in the insurrection could be legally swept under the rug in the same manner that the Republican National Committee is trying to tidy up its narrative. As The Washington Post explained last week before the trial began:

For the first time, a defendant will be able to confront in open court a portion of the mountain of video evidence, online communications data and police testimony the government has amassed against roughly 750 federally charged individuals. A judge and a jury in D.C. also will weigh prosecutors’ novel application of rarely used criminal statutes to prosecute the first violent incursion of the Capitol by U.S. citizens.

A swift guilty verdict and stiff sentence could motivate many of the approximately 375 remaining Jan. 6 defendants who face felony charges and have pleaded not guilty to accept plea deals, legal analysts said. [Pols emphasis]

It looks like Republicans had better start coming up with a new excuse for the insurrection. Sadly for them, it appears that the truth still matters.