On Christmas Eve 2020, Jackson Reffitt was struggling to connect with his father. So he tried a new tactic: emphasizing their shared disdain for then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
“I still hate mitch,” the now-19-year-old texted his father in the Texas family’s group chat. “I think every living soul does.”
But instead of placating Guy Reffitt, a pandemic-idled oil rig manager who had grown “most distant” since 2016 before ultimately joining a far-right militia group, the gripe prompted a warning, Jackson Reffitt testified in federal court on Thursday.
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“He’s another politician. Why I’m going to DC. They all must go,” Guy Reffitt responded, according to federal prosecutors. “What’s about to happen will shock the world.”
Less than two weeks later, the elder Reffitt was among hundreds of MAGA mobsters who stormed the U.S. Capitol grounds to stop the electoral certification of President Joe Biden, prosecutors say. During his trial, the first of an accused rioter to go before a jury, the feds have argued Reffitt was aiming for two targets during the Jan. 6 siege: Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and McConnell.
“A mob needs leaders, and this man, Guy Wesley Reffitt of Wylie, Texas, drove all the way from home in Texas to D.C. to step up and fulfill that role,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey S. Nestler said during opening statements on Wednesday. “He planned to light the match that would start the fire. He wanted to stop Congress from doing its job.”
Reffitt has pleaded not guilty to the charges, including bringing a gun to the Capitol grounds, and his defense lawyers insist their client did nothing wrong and merely “uses a lot of hyperbole.”
But his defense is running up against his own offspring, who famously turned his father into the feds.
Testifying for the prosecution, Reffitt’s son said his father took a years-long plunge into the far-right, describing how they grew politically apart after the family moved back to the United States from Malaysia in 2016.
Eventually, Jackson Reffitt testified, his father joined the Texas Three Percenters militia, attending the group’s meetings once a month and growing radicalized against the government. By December 2020, the teenager said, his father started sharing his plan to go to Washington, D.C, sending messages to the family text chain about rising up “the way the Constitution was written.”
After receiving several concerning messages, including the dig at McConnell, the younger Reffitt made the decision to inform the FBI of his father’s plans, telling jurors it felt “gross” to look up how to submit a tip on his phone.
“Receiving these messages and reading them, my paranoia pretty much blew over, so, I decided to alleviate some anxieties off my shoulders and to Google FBI,” the teenager told jurors on Thursday, just feet away from his father, who was sitting at the defense table. "Googling that, to report my father... saying that all out loud is pretty weird.”
But Jackson Reffitt said he ultimately did not receive a response from the FBI until the day of the siege that he watched unfold on TV with his mother.
“I pretty much stood there in awe and disappointment, saddened and scared,” the teenager said. “I was terrified. I believe we all were, for the people there, what’s going to happen—as well as at a loss of words.”
The teenager said that when Reffitt returned home from Washington, the patriarch threatened his two children to keep quiet about his involvement in the Capitol riots. Prosecutors allege that Reffitt threatened to shoot his son and daughter if they became “traitors” and turned him in. Reffitt also allegedly told his daughter he would put a bullet through her cell phone if she posted about him online.
“Traitors get shot,” Reffitt allegedly added, without realizing that his son had contacted federal authorities weeks prior.
