Capitol rioter Guy Reffitt 'lit the fire' of January 6, prosecutors allege in closing trial arguments

• Jury deliberations begin Tuesday in the first trial linked to the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
• A prosecutor said Guy Reffitt "lit the fire" and paved the way for others to enter the Capitol.

In his hand, he held a microphone. In a holster on his right hip, he had a handgun, prosecutors said. In his head, he was a leader.

Federal prosecutors on Monday painted Guy Reffitt as a significant on-the-ground figure for the pro-Trump mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. They repeatedly said Reffitt "lit the fire" for the violence that unfolded at the seat of American democracy.

"Every mob needs leaders, and this defendant was a leader that day," federal prosecutor Risa Berkower said in her final words to the jury at the first trial stemming from the January 6 insurrection.

"The defendant was the tip of the mob's spear," she added.

The closing argument punctuated the Justice Department's case against Reffitt, who authorities arrested at his home outside Dallas, Texas, in January 2021 on charges related to the January 6 attack.

Reffitt stands accused of obstructing an official proceeding, bringing a firearm onto restricted Capitol grounds, and threatening his own children to keep them from reporting him to law enforcement.

Berkower's argument followed several days of testimony in which Capitol police officers recounted their standoff with Reffitt, who was captured on video in a tactical vest and black helmet mounted with a GoPro-style camera.

Reffitt's teenage son, Jackson Reffitt, also took the stand to testify that his father told him and his sister that they would be traitors if they reported him to law enforcement — and that "traitors get shot." Jackson Reffitt secretly recorded his father gloating about his involvement in the January 6 attack. At trial, prosecutors played that recording and also a Zoom call in which Reffitt recounted his activities on January 6 to fellow members of the far-right Three Percenters militia.

"He was ecstatic about what he did, about what the mob did," Berkower said Monday.

"You could hear the pride in his voice as he gave the details to his family," she added.

Berkower said that, while Reffitt did not enter the Capitol, he paved the way for the first rioters who breached the building. On January 6, she said, Reffitt was at a "crucial chokepoint to access the building."

On January 6, Berkower said, he "stepped to the front of a violent, angry mob" and faced off with police as they fired pepper balls to repel him. With each step up the stairs, she said, the mob followed him behind and learned from his example, using plywood and a tarp from the inaugural scaffolding as a shield.

Reffitt also created a "distraction," she said, that allowed other rioters to cut through the tarp on the inaugural scaffolding and open a "new avenue upward" to the Capitol. A blast of pepper spray to the face kept Reffitt from entering the Capitol, she said, but the rioters behind them were amongst the first to breach the building.

"Those were the very first rioters who entered the US Capitol that day. This defendant lit the fire that got them there," she said.

At home in Texas, she said, Reffitt initially thought he'd gotten away with his actions on January 6. But he grew distressed as law enforcement "regrouped," she said, and began tracking down and arresting suspected rioters.

"So he took his next stand," she said, and told his children they were either "with him or against him."

"He had squared off with the Capitol Police, and now he squared off with his own children," she said, of the threats to Jackson Reffitt and his sister.