The harsh sentence handed down on Monday to the first Jan. 6 protestor to be convicted to date proves the two-tier system of justice is alive and well.
U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich sentenced Guy Reffitt, an oil-field worker from Wylie, Texas, to seven years and three months in prison for his role in the Capitol incursion which, according to Yahoo News, is the longest sentence to be imposed on a Jan. 6 defendant to date.
Media reports of Reffitt’s sentencing all mention that he was a member of a “far-right” group called the Three Percenters militia. The Anti-Defamation League defines the organization’s mission as “a small number of dedicated ‘patriots’ protecting Americans from government tyranny, just as the patriots of the American Revolution protected early Americans from British tyranny.”
Reffitt was convicted in March on five felony charges including “obstructing Congress’s certification of the 2020 presidential election, carrying a .40-caliber pistol during the riot and two counts of civil disorder,” The New York Times reported.
Although federal guidelines called for a sentence of nine to eleven years, prosecutors requested a “terrorism enhancement,” which the Times explained is sometimes applied in domestic terrorism cases. They recommended that Reffitt, who did not enter the Capitol building that day, serve 15 years.
During the trial, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Jeffrey Nestler and Risa Berkower tried to paint Reffitt as a “key instigator in the attack.” Yahoo reported he’d been “armed with a handgun, body armor and zip ties,” and leading the mob, he’d “cleared the way for others to breach the building.”
In their sentencing memo, the prosecutors wrote, “Reffitt sought not just to stop Congress, but also to physically attack, remove, and replace the legislators who were serving in Congress.” His behavior, they claimed, was “a quintessential example of an intent to both influence and retaliate against government conduct through intimidation or coercion.”
Judge Friedrich denied the terrorism enhancement which she said would result in an “unwarranted sentencing disparity” with other Jan. 6 cases.
Before handing down her sentence, she said, “There are a lot of cases where defendants possessed weapons or committed very violent assaults. … The government is asking for a sentence that is three times as long as any other defendant, and the defendant did not assault an officer.”
According to Yahoo, Reffitt told the court, “I did want to definitely make an apology, multiple apologies really, and accept my responsibility because I do hate what I did.”
The judge asked him if he agreed he’d engaged in unlawful activity. Reffitt replied, “I clearly f***ed up.”
And Judge Friedrich responded, “I can’t help but wonder, whether like many other Jan. 6 defendants, I’m hearing what I’d like to hear from you as opposed to what you really believe.”
Reffitt was held in federal custody since his Jan. 2021 arrest. He did not testify during his trial.
Although Judge Friedrich decided on a sentence that fell below the federal guidelines, Reffitt’s sentence was still more than three times longer than the average sentence handed down to defendants in the George Floyd riots that took place in the summer of 2020.
According to an August 2021 report in The Associated Press, over 120 defendants had either pleaded guilty or had been convicted for “federal crimes including rioting, arson and conspiracy.” The average sentence for the approximately 70 defendants who’d been sentenced at that time was 27 months. The report also claimed that “at least 10 received prison terms of five years or more.”
Considering the George Floyd riots caused roughly $2 billion of damage, destroyed countless business and buildings, and resulted in deaths and injuries to police officers, Reffitt’s sentence of 87 months seems excessive.
The article quotes Boston College Law School professor Kent Greenfield, who quickly dismissed the comparison. “The property damage or accusations of arson and looting from last year, those were serious and they were dealt with seriously, but they weren’t an attack on the very core constitutional processes that we rely on in a democracy, nor were they an attack on the United States Congress.”
Yeah … No.
Greenfield’s remark could almost convince me to join the Three Percenters.
A previous version of this article was published on The Western Journal.
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Following the Civil War, Robert E Lee was indicted, but never brought to trial and never convicted of anything. Jefferson Davis was apprehended, and a sadistic Union commander kept him captive, in leg irons for part of the time, at Fort Monroe, in Hampton, Virginia, for two years, before he was granted bail. He, too, was never tried for anything.
President Andrew Johnson issued a blanket pardon for all the Confederates, on Christmas Day of 1868, which was 3½ years after the surrender at Appomattox.
The Administration is treating the Capitol kerfufflers worse than we treated people in actual rebellion against the United States. The next Republican President should, on January 20, 2025, immediately pardon everyone associated with what was essentially a college keg party gotten out of control.
And appoint a Special Counsel who will bring a Deprivation of Rights under Color of Law action against the Garland DOJ and the J6 Star Chamber, preferably using Federal grand juries in the vics’ hometowns rather than the Damn Cesspool.
Of course, the death of George Floyd, the patron saint of fentanyl addicts, was worthy of riots, violence and extreme civil disobedience… What’s two billion or so in physical property damage when you are talking about the death of the latest black social icon of arrest resistance and felonious behavior….? The dude (Reffitt) arrested outside the capital building was obviously much more a threat to society, as evidenced by his stated desire to protect Americans from government tyranny… can’t have that kind of thinking going on in the general population… I mean, what if it spreads and millions of Americans decide that they want to return their country to one where the rule of law is applied equally to all? Why, the elite military-industrial-political-government machine might have to actually find something to do for a living and begin to live like the rest of us deplorables and become accountable for their actions.
If the 2024 election is not rigged like 2020 and Trump wins (as he did in 2020), then he will pardon every last person caught up in the JAN6 witch-hunt.
Well, we’re already seeing rigging in 2022…
I find it more than a little ironic that Justice is NOWHERE TO BE FOUND in the very SEAT of Justice in this country, Washington, D.C. That this defendant was carrying a firearm should not have any bearing in the case whatsoever. There is ZERO evidence that he used the weapon or even brandished it during the course of his non-crime.
In other cases, judges make references to “people that died in the course of the riot” or words to that effect. The fact of the matter is that the ONLY death that was the direct result of the incursion into the capitol building is the MURDER of Ashli Babbit by CHP Lt. Michael Leroy Byrd. Yet, that meme has taken hold and those who have been charged for what is nothing more than an act of civil disobedience. In fact, had the situation been reversed; had Trump won and Democrats had invaded the Capitol in the identical fashion as these individuals had, there would be ZERO trials and they would all be hailed as Heroes of The Revolution.
I’m convinced that unless Donald J. Trump is allowed to COMPLETE his second term in office that justice will NEVER be served, that these brave men and women will have sacrificed everything for nought and that the four-and-one-half year rolling Coup d’etat perpetrated by the Obama/Biden administration and the national media will have been a complete success and the GOP will have, for once and for all time, been totally neutered; that we will return to pretty much the status quo ante Newt Gingrich.