Defendant in first Jan. 6 Capitol attack trial ‘lit the match’ of breach, Justice Dept. says

WASHINGTON - The first defendant to stand trial in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol in his own words “lit the match” that led members of a pro-Trump mob to push past police and drive lawmakers from the chambers where they were set to certify President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory, prosecutors said Wednesday.

"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 told a panel of jurors in a federal courthouse during opening statements in the case.

Reffitt, 49, a pandemic-idled oil rig manager and alleged member of the right-wing anti-government movement Three Percenters, was "the tip of this mob's spear," in the worst assault on the Capitol since the War of 1812, prosecutors said.

In surveillance video shown publicly for the first time, prosecutors showed a crowd advancing toward a critical police line of defense above the Capitol's West Terrace that afternoon, ignoring warnings and escalating use of force from a handful of officers guarding the head of its north staircase.

Reffitt stood at the front of the crowd with a megaphone, former U.S. Capitol Police Officer Shauni Kerkhoff testified. She recalled hitting him with nonlethal pepper balls and other officers deploying bear spray and other chemical irritants. But he continued to advance, the crowd filling behind him each step, until she and other officers triggered a force-wide call for backup.

Wednesday's testimony filled key gaps in public understanding of how the battle unfolded between police and a growing crowd outside the Capitol between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. that day. Prosecutors have called the West Terrace "ground zero" for violence, and the defense of its north staircase a key breach point.

Police witnesses said Reffitt led one charge at 1:47 p.m., forcing three officers to call for help. Individuals behind him broke through sheeting covering inauguration stage scaffolding, clambering up and joining others flanking officers on the level above. Minutes later, police dispatch reported their lines were breached, and Senate wing doors and windows nearby were thrown open at 2:13 p.m.

"That is the breach of the Capitol," Inspector Monique Moore testified, when a minute-by-minute security video montage of breach points around the building culminated in an interior shot showing figures hammering outside the doors. They used fists, helmets, wooden poles and a stolen riot shield before the doors cracked, splintered and shattered.

Reffitt is not accused of entering the Capitol building, assaulting police officers or damaging property, his defense attorney William C. Welch III emphasized in his own blunt, three-minute long opening statement.

"Guy does brag. He exaggerates and he rants. He uses a lot of hyperbole, and that upsets people," Welch told jurors as Reffitt, his wife and family members sat in a socially distanced courtroom. "This trial will be based on fact versus hype, and it will be based on truth versus fiction."

Welch said Reffitt was "unarmed"; the defendant has said he carried a disassembled pistol to D.C.

Nestler said Reffitt's words were not mere bragging but a guide to his intentions and actions. Along with video from the Capitol, he told jurors they would hear comments made by Reffitt before and after the riot making clear that he aimed to violently keep Biden out of office.

"He planned to light the match that would start the fire. He wanted to stop Congress from doing its job," Nestler said. "On Jan. 6, with his bulletproof vest, helmet, megaphone, flex cuffs and holstered gun, the defendant went to the Capitol and did exactly what he said he was going to do."

At a pro-Trump rally before the riot, Reffitt told others at the Ellipse that he would not be done until lawmakers inside were "dragged out screaming and kicking. . . . I don't care if Pelosi's head is hitting every step, we'll grab them out by their ankles," Nestler said.

Immediately after the riot, the prosecutor said, Reffitt bragged on Telegram in all capital letters, "WE TOOK THE CAPITOL."

Reffitt has pleaded not guilty to five felony counts, including transporting an AR-15 and pistol for unlawful use in a riot and breaching Capitol grounds while armed with the holstered handgun. He is also accused of impeding police and obstructing an official proceeding of Congress before threatening to kill family members if they turned him in to law enforcement. The charges are punishable by up to five to 20 years each.

In her testimony, Kerkhoff narrated video showing Reffitt advancing slowly up a two-foot-wide stone banister of the staircase outside the Capitol. Speaking in matter-of-fact, bullet-point style, she described confronting a "sea of people . . . angry and violent," with Reffitt at their head.

"They were calling us traitors. Saying we were in their way, to get out of their way, that they supported us and now we were betraying them," Kerkhoff said, wearing a windowpane blazer over a white shirt and blue sweater. "It made me feel angry, because it's my job to stand in their way. . . . My concern was that they would get to members of Congress."

After what she admitted was her "panicked" calls for backup, a dispatcher called for officers with riot shields to respond to the West Upper Terrace immediately.

It was too late. Seconds later, at 1:51 p.m., another officer said, "They've breached the Upper West Terrace."

Kerkhoff said it would have been impossible to use lethal force safely in a large crowd that likely included many people with guns. If she had fired, she said, "it was going to be a shootout" with "several lives lost."

She said she also could not arrest him or anyone else: "There were far too few of us."

After being hit in the face with pepper spray, Reffitt retreated to wash out his eyes, Kerkhoff testified. Nestler told the jury that even if Reffitt didn't make it into the building, his bravado cleared a path for those behind him: "His work was done."

At the same time, police witnesses described events from their vantage, but shed no more light on why an estimated 118 officers, many without helmets, shields or gas masks, were left to face a crowd nearly 30 times as large on the northern half of the West Terrace.

Kerkhoff said for example that she was wearing a Capitol Police baseball cap because her 10-member grenadier unit - trained to deploy less-than-lethal force - had no time to grab equipment.

Moore, who gave the Capitol police's emergency call for help to D.C. police, the U.S. Secret Service and FBI, said she and the force's chief at the time were responding to scenes unfolding on 50 monitor screens at a command center in a state of "disbelief."

Moore, a 24-year force veteran, described the crowd as "individuals coming to the Capitol with total disregard of police, the law and democracy."

She said it was her job to get officers assistance, but "it was overwhelming." She narrated through a video montage that zoomed on each stage of the building's perimeter being overrun, from surrounding streets, plazas and walkways; through barricades; police lines; and finally its doors, windows and internal security gates. "It was hard to hear officers screaming for help," Moore said through tears in emotional testimony.

The jury is composed of nine men and seven women, and there appears to be a similar racial breakdown that includes White and Black jurors, and one Asian American. They include a nuclear scientist; a retired nuclear industry consultant; and a NASA employee. Also represented are a CVS cashier, a D.C. school maintenance supervisor, a Pentagon analyst, the mother of a Homeland Security employee, a lobbyist and an IT contractor.

The trial marks the first test of the U.S. government's evidence amassed in an investigation that has produced charges against 750 people, about half of whom are accused of felonies.

Reffitt is among an estimated 2,000 people who authorities say laid siege to the Capitol after then-President Donald Trump urged his supporters to help overturn what he falsely called a stolen election.

More than 210 people have pleaded guilty so far, the vast majority to misdemeanor crimes of illegal demonstrating inside the Capitol. A handful of members of the right-wing Proud Boys and Oath Keepers groups have admitted they prepared and planned for violence in advance and agreed to cooperate with the government.

Reffitt is not accused of involvement in such a conspiracy, but he is alleged to have been a recruiter for the Texas Three Percenters. Prosecutors told jurors that after the riot, he told fellow members to "purge" their communications.

"They were lucky we didn't shoot them. They really need to be grateful," Nestler quoted Reffitt telling other Three Percenters, adding that Reffitt's son claimed his father slept with a loaded pistol in his nightstand and wore it on his hip every day.

Leading up to Reffitt's trial, prosecutors acknowledged the challenges posed by the political circumstances surrounding the violence of that day.

The riot had "a collective impact, but individuals within the collective have engaged in very different conduct," U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves of D.C. said in an interview last week about the investigation his office is leading.

Two of Reffitt's three children are also set to testify. When he returned home from Washington, prosecutors say, Reffitt warned them against turning him in to authorities.

"Traitors get shot," Reffitt is accused of telling his 18-year-old son and his 16-year-old daughter and her boyfriend.

Following his arrest 13 days after the riot, a U.S. magistrate judge jailed Reffitt until trial, citing his apparent planning for armed political violence before and after Jan. 6, 2021.

Reffitt has characterized himself as a “political prisoner” ready to “receive the bullet of freedom” in a reported letter from jail, denying there was any insurrection or conspiracy by Trump supporters.