WASHINGTON — The first Capitol rioter to go on trial harbored a deep hatred of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and believed the U.S. was “pretty much going down the tubes,” a friend who once belonged to the same right-wing militia group testified.
Guy Reffitt believed then-President Donald Trump was trying to save the country from “evil incarnate” Pelosi and repeatedly talked about his wish to forcibly remove lawmakers from office, Rocky Hardie told the jury Friday in Reffitt’s trial in Washington.
Hardie, an Austin-area manufacturer of earphones, traveled with Reffitt from Texas to attend Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally as members of the Three Percenters. Testifying under a deal with prosecutors, Hardie said that he has since left the group.
Reffitt, who was turned in to the Federal Bureau of Investigation by his teenage son, is accused of leading the first group of rioters up the Capitol terrace steps, encouraging them to confront police and breach of the building. The charges include obstruction of Congress and threatening his son and daughter to keep quiet. The trial is a bellwether for others set to take place later this year.
Hardie recalled conversations he had with Reffitt leading up to the riot. “We talked about President Trump and we talked about what he stood for in the country” and that he was “trying to make things right,” said Hardie. “We talked about how far do you let things go before you have to take action to protect your country.”
Reffitt talked about attacking lawmakers, but Hardie said he dismissed this as hyperbole.
“I didn’t think he or anybody was going to get close to the Capitol,” Hardie said on the stand. “I thought that was impossible. I just never took it seriously.”
Both men brought guns, including AR-15 semiautomatic rifles, with them to Washington. The jury was shown a selfie the men took in their hotel room before the riot, with Hardie wearing a shoulder holster for a pistol. Hardie said the weapons were for “self-defense” against possible antifa rioters.
Hardie described joining the mob at the Capitol and eventually getting separated from Reffitt as the crowd surged forward “like a herd of cattle.” They met back at their hotel later, where Hardie said Reffitt bore signs of being hit by pepper spray.
“He was red all over his body,” Hardie testified, adding that he was impressed by how far Reffitt went that day. “I felt like it was kind of historically significant.”
The jury on Friday also heard from one of the Secret Service agents who evacuated then-Vice President Mike Pence and his family from the Capitol during the insurrection, as well as a former Senate employee who described the security situation deteriorating that day.
“From the moment I was told that protesters had breached the Capitol I was in a state of alarm,” Dan Schwager, former general counsel to the secretary of the U.S. Senate, told the jury. “We were in a grave situation at that point.”
