The First Jan. 6 Trial Starts Tomorrow. Here's What You Need To Know.
Buzzfeed News
Zoe Tillman
WASHINGTON — Jury selection is set to begin Monday in the case of a Texas man charged with bringing a handgun to the US Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. It’s the first trial since the attack, a major milestone in the sprawling prosecution effort and a critical test of how the Justice Department’s strategy in these cases will play to a jury.
Guy Reffitt, 49, is accused of traveling to Washington with a rifle and a handgun and bringing the latter with him to the Capitol. He’s not accused of going inside the building, though; US Capitol Police officers are prepared to tell the jury that Reffitt attempted to make his way up a set of exterior steps as the riot unfolded and that it took a barrage of chemical spray, pepper balls, and other projectiles to turn him back. Once he returned home to Wylie, a suburb of Dallas, prosecutors allege, he warned his teenage children not to tell anyone about his trip to DC; his son reported him to the FBI.
Reffitt’s trial — how it unfolds and how it ends — will have ripple effects across hundreds of pending cases. Reffitt faces some of the same charges as many of the 750-plus defendants charged with storming the Capitol, including some who may be weighing plea deals or preparing for their own trials. The overarching context of the events of Jan. 6 that the jurors are likely to hear about — the events leading up to the attack, the extent of the violence, and the mob’s success in temporarily stopping Congress from certifying the results of the presidential election — is a shared feature. Other defendants, their lawyers, and federal prosecutors handling the rest of these cases will be closely watching to see how the jury responds.
But in other ways, Reffitt is an outlier. He’s one of only a handful of Jan. 6 defendants charged with having a firearm on the grounds, a key part of his case that could affect how the jury understands the stakes of his presence at the Capitol, versus others who are charged with joining the attack unarmed or wielding less obviously lethal weapons. The allegation that he threatened his family to obstruct the investigation is also unusual. The government is expected to bring up Reffitt’s connection to a local militia associated with the anti-government Three Percenters movement, another element that’s less common, although not unheard of, in these cases.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetillman/reffitt-first-j6-trial-capitol-insurrection?ref=bfnsplash
= new reply since forum marked as read
