Two days after the Capitol riot on January 6, Jackson Reffitt’s father, Guy W. Reffitt, returned to the family’s home in Texas. He told his son that he had stormed the Capitol, according to an FBI affidavit.

Then his father levelled a threat: If Jackson, 18, reported him to the police, he would have no choice but to do his “duty” for his country and “do what he had to do”.

In interviews with investigators, Jackson Reffitt said his father told him: “If you turn me in, you’re a traitor. And you know what happens to traitors. Traitors get shot.”

But he had already reported his father to the FBI weeks before the riot.

“He would always tell me that he’s going to do something big,” the younger Reffitt said in a phone interview on Saturday. “I assumed he was going to do something big, and I didn’t know what.”

Guy Reffitt’s wife told investigators after the riot that he was a member of the Three Percenters, a far-Right militia group, according to the affidavit. FBI agents found an AR-15 rifle and a pistol at his home. The elder Reffitt told investigators that he had brought the pistol with him to Washington.

Jackson Reffitt said he learned that his father was headed to Washington the day before the riot but that he did not know what he would be doing there. He discovered what was happening when he saw images of rioters storming the Capitol on the news.

It was not clear what, if anything, the Federal Bureau of Investigation did after Reffitt first contacted the FBI about his father. Federal investigators contacted him during the riots to follow up on his tip from weeks earlier, at which point, he said, he helped “prove what they were trying to investigate.”

Reffitt said he had “just wanted someone to know” about his father’s threats of “doing something big”.
“I didn’t know what he was going to do, so I just did anything possible just to be on the safe side,” he added.

The elder Reffitt, who was arrested on January 16, faces charges of obstruction of justice and of knowingly entering a restricted building or grounds without lawful authority. He could not be reached on Sunday, and it was not immediately clear whether he had a lawyer. The FBI was not immediately available for comment on Sunday.

Reffitt said he was unsure if his father knew yet that he had reported him to the federal authorities.

“I am afraid for him to know,” he said. “Not for my life or anything, but for what he might think.” But he said he was hopeful that his relationship with his father could be repaired.

“We’ll get better over time,” he said. “I know we will.”

New York Times News Service