Judging Freedom - TX Man - Guilty in First Jury Trial over Capitol Riot (128 kbps)

Episode Date: March 9, 2022

Texas man Guy Reffitt was found guilty on five felony charges including obstructing an official proceeding and bringing a gun onto the grounds of the US Capitol. #Jan6 #capitolSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. With courses available online 24-7 and monthly start dates, WGU offers maximum flexibility so you can focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. Hello there, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, March 9, 2022. It's about 11 o'clock in the morning on a snowy east coast of the United States, at least here in northwest New Jersey, it's snowing like mad.

Yesterday, the Department of Justice achieved its sole jury verdict conviction in the case of one of the people involved in the January 6th insurrection, demonstration, whatever you want to call it, at the Capitol building. Guy Refett, who pleaded not guilty to a variety of charges, was convicted of all of them. The most dangerous being attempting to enter the Capitol building wearing body armor and a handgun, and having boasted before doing so that he was there with his friends, quote, to take the Capitol. He even said things like, this is not a game. This is serious. We're here to take the Capitol. Now I'm going to use a phrase which is disgusting, but this is what the government demonstrated to the jury. He said, I won't be happy until I see Nancy Pelosi's head rolling down a staircase. So as is typical in cases like this, where this man didn't actually cause any harm,

but apparently threatened to do so, the government threw the kitchen sink at him and charged them with everything they could, and then offered him a deal and basically said, if you're convicted of everything that we've charged you with, you're exposed to 60 years in jail. But if you plead guilty to what we want you to plead guilty to, you'll be out in a year and a half. He told the government to take a hike. There was a jury trial. His lawyers wanted to call FBI agents that were undercover agents. But since they weren't involved, apparently, who knows, because we don't know who they are or what they did. In his case, the court wouldn't let them call the FBI agents.

So it was just a straightforward FBI agents testifying about what they saw he did. They either saw it in real time, which wasn't testified to, or they saw it on tapes since there were so many videotapes. Interestingly, Mr. Refat's children, particularly his oldest child who was 19 at the time and now is 20, testified against their father, who basically said to them in the days and weeks following January 6th, according to the testimony they give, if you testify against me, you will be a traitor. The young man, now 20, said, I testified against them, but this is not the same man that raised me. I don't even know him anymore. He was convicted of everything and now faces 60 years in jail. I couldn't imagine a judge giving him that time in

jail. That's less time the murderers and rapists serve. And as I said, Mr. Refett never made his way into the Capitol, never used the gun, never harmed anybody, only apparently planned to do so. It's up to the court now to do the right thing. But this sends an unhappy message to those who are pleading not guilty. The government is going to try cases that it knows it's going to win. The government is always going to overcharge so as to scare defendants into pleading guilty or to give juries a menu from which to choose when determining guilt. In this case, the menu went entirely against the defendant. Judge Napolitano, judging freedom.