Convicted US Capitol rioter’s son says he ‘absolutely’ agrees with father’s sentence

By Veronica Stracqualursi, CNN

The son of Guy Reffitt, the first US Capitol riot defendant to go to trial rather than take a plea agreement, said his father “absolutely” deserves the 87-month prison sentence that was handed down Monday.

“I mean, I’m not happy at all. I haven’t been happy to this whole situation. No one in my family has either, but to say I’m surprised would be a lie,” Jackson Reffitt told CNN’s Brianna Keilar on “New Day” Tuesday in reaction to his father’s sentence. “I mean, everything my dad did, he’s his own person. And his action has consequences. But I’m not happy at all.”

Guy Reffitt, a recruiter for a right-wing militia known as the Three Percenters, was sentenced to serve more than seven years in prison, the longest insurrection-related sentence to date.

He had been convicted by a DC jury in March of five felonies — wanting to obstruct the congressional certification of the 2020 presidential election, transporting guns into DC, carrying a handgun onto Capitol grounds, interfering with Capitol Police protecting the Upper West Terrace and obstructing justice by threatening his daughter and son, who had turned him into the FBI.

“I mean, realistically, this doesn’t have a matter of political opinion. What my father did is far from politics. This is completely off the rails violence. Whether it had a political motive at this point doesn’t matter. It’s more about what he does and who he did it for,” Jackson Reffitt told Keilar.

His father, Reffitt argued, was “used as a puppet” for Donald Trump, adding of the then-President: “It is disgusting to see that someone with … money and social power can just get away with manipulating thousands of people just for whatever reason, and have no outcome.”

During the trial, Capitol Police officers testified about battling Guy Reffitt outside the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and prosecutors called him a leader of the crowd. He also recorded a video on January 6 in which he made threatening comments about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.

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CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz contributed to this report.