Guy Reffitt was among the first to try to force the police lines on January 6, 2021 before the Congress. According to the accusation, it was equipped with a handgun, a bulletproof vest, a helmet and plastic handcuffs.
Le Monde with AFP
An far -right activist was sentenced on Monday 1 on August in Washington, more than seven years in prison for participating in the assault against the Capitol on January 6, 2021. This is the heaviest sentence to date against one of the authors of the attack on the American Congress.
Guy Reffitt, 49, a member of the group “Three Percentters”, had been found guilty in March, in particular a hindrance to the work of the Congress and the Police, after the first trial devoted to events. At the head of the first group who started to attack the headquarters of the Congress, he had helped force the police lines, equipped according to the prosecutors with a handgun, a bulletproof vest, a helmet and Plastic handcuffs.
After receiving irritating gas, he had retired, while hundreds of supporters of Donald Trump sowed violence and chaos inside the Capitol, delaying the certification of Joe Biden’s victory at the Presidential election.
“Antithesis of democracy”, according to the judge
“I did not enter, but I helped to light the fire”, then boasted in a video this employee of the petroleum industry, originally from Texas. On his return to Wylie, near Dallas, he had threatened his two children to prevent them from denouncing him to the police. “The traitors, we kill them,” he said according to a registered conversation and transmitted to the FBI by his 19-year-old son, Jackson.
During the trial, the accusation relied on many videos showing him, in the front row, harangating the crowd, to call him “leader”. Judging that his acts fall under federal laws on “terrorism”, the prosecutors had then claimed a severe sentence of fifteen years of imprisonment. His lawyers argued for two years in prison, stressing that he had not entered the Capitol and had not committed violence.
Judge Dabney Friedrich retained an intermediate sentence of seven years and three months in prison. She described her actions “as antithesis of democracy” but refused to deviate too much from the sentences pronounced so far, the heaviest being of five years and three months in prison.
Since the assault, more than 850 people have been arrested, 330 have pleaded guilty and only ten of them were tried during trials. For the moment, a hundred prison terms have been pronounced. In parallel with this judicial component, a parliamentary commission of inquiry seeks to shed light on the role of former president Donald Trump in the attack. His report is expected in the fall.