A January 6 attacker goes on trial for the first time this week

• Jury selection begins Monday for the first trial stemming from the January 6 attack.
• Prosecutors plan to call Capitol police officers and the children of the accused Capitol rioter.
• Until now, convicted rioters have all pleaded guilty without trials.

On the steps of the Capitol building, Guy Reffitt stood out on January 6, 2021.

He wore a tactical vest and a black helmet with a GoPro-style camera, but his face was uncovered as he used a water bottle to flush pepper spray out of his eyes. 

By January 16, the FBI matched Reffitt's driver's license photograph with the image of him captured in news footage. The FBI arrested him that day at his home in Texas. 

After more than a year behind bars, Reffitt again stands out — as the first member of the pro-Trump mob to go to trial on charges stemming from the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Jury selection begins on Monday in Washington, DC, and the proceeding marks a key milestone amid more than 770 prosecutions, as well as the nation's broader reckoning with the January 6 insurrection.

With many more trials expected in the coming months, this week's proceeding presents a preview the prosecution's strategy for winning convictions against January 6 defendants who elect to go before a jury of their peers rather than plead guilty. 

The upcoming trial is expected to feature testimony from Capitol police officers, FBI, and Secret Service agents, a former Senate lawyer, and even Reffitt's children.

For the Justice Department, the trial also provides a stage for a forceful presentation on the seriousness of the January 6 insurrection, even as former President Donald Trump and other top Republicans downplay the Capitol attack and assert it was merely a political protest protected by the First Amendment. 

Trump said last month that, if elected president again, he would consider pardoning those prosecuted for storming the Capitol to prevent Congress from certifying the election of now-President Joe Biden.

"In a situation like this, the first trial is always important because it sets the precedent, and other defendants will be watching to see what happens and may plan their own strategies accordingly," said Randall Eliason, a professor at the George Washington University Law School and former public corruption prosecutor.

"The benefit of a good, strong result for the government here is it persuades others to possibly cooperate — not just to plead guilty but to flip," Eliason said. "If they see a solid conviction in this first case, that increases people's incentive to cut a deal in their own case, and that helps further the investigation."

A pistol and flexi-cuffs

Reffitt's charges include two counts of civil disorder, one count of obstruction of an official proceeding, one count of remaining on restricted ground with a deadly weapon, and one count of obstruction of justice. 

Legal experts told Insider that, with Reffitt, the Justice Department has a compelling story to tell at the first January 6 trial.

In court papers, prosecutors alleged that Reffitt carried a pistol and flexi-cuffs as he joined the first group of rioters that charged at a police line attempting to secure the Capitol building. 

Reffitt was "at the front of the pack," prosecutors said. He only retreated after police pepper-sprayed him in the face, they allege. Prosecutors say that while Reffitt unlawfully entered US Capitol grounds with a deadly weapon, he did not enter the Capitol complex itself.

But Reffitt's criminal conduct did not end at the Capitol, prosecutors said. Upon returning home to Texas, his involvement in the Capitol breach emboldened him. Prosecutors say he told his children that they would be traitors if they turned him in to law enforcement — and that "traitors get shot."

Prosecutors plan to call Reffitt's son, who in December 2020 told the FBI that his father was "going to do some serious damage" to lawmakers in Washington, DC. After January 6, Reffitt's son secretly recorded his father saying that he was "willing to die" at the Capitol and that the riot was just the beginning. Reffitt's daughter is also expected to take the stand.

In addition to his children, prosecutors plan to call a fellow member of the Texas Three Percenters militia group who traveled with Reffitt to Washington — and received immunity in exchange for his testimony. 

Other testimony is expected to come from Capitol police officers who engaged with Reffitt, along with FBI agents. Prosecutors also plan to call a Secret Service agent who will address the "emergency actions" to relocate then-Vice President Mike Pence and his family from the US Capitol.

'It's like on Broadway'

A guilty verdict would give the Justice Department momentum and likely spur more January 6 defendants to cooperate with the ongoing investigation, legal experts told Insider.

Some of the testimony — namely from his children — will be specific to Reffitt, legal experts said the trial could offer insights to other January 6 defendants weighing whether to plead guilty or go to trial.

"It will be like a road map for all the other trials," said a lawyer for a January 6 defendant, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the accused rioter's case remains pending. "We can look at that and say, 'This is how they did it at the first trial. How can we poke holes in this?'"

In Reffitt's case and others, defense lawyers have argued that accused participants in the January 6 attack cannot receive a fair trial in Washington, DC. Monday's proceeding will foreshadow how prosecutors and defense lawyers will scrutinize potential jurors and suss out any undue bias against the alleged participants in an attack that rocked the nation's capital and disrupted the city for weeks after.

The case is also expected to renew a challenge to the "obstruction of an official proceeding" charge. Reffitt and more than 250 other January 6 defendants are facing that felony charge, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. 

Defense lawyers have argued in Reffitt's case and others that Congress' certification of the nation's Electoral College vote was not the kind of "official proceeding" envisioned by the law. 

Judge Dabney Friedrich, a Trump appointee presiding over Reffitt's prosecution, declined to dismiss the charge in December. But said she would consider it again once the facts of the case were established at trial. 

To help prove the obstruction of an official proceeding charge, prosecutors plan to call a former US Senate lawyer, Daniel Schwager, who served as counsel to the secretary of the Senate on January 6 and was on the Senate floor that day.

As the Justice Department continues to take January 6 prosecutions to trial, it will need to stay disciplined and keep itself from "allowing any of these cases to become too routine for the prosecutors," said Barb McQuade, a University of Michigan Law School professor who served as the US attorney in Detroit during the Obama administration.

"Jurors will be selected who say either they don't know anything about what happened or haven't seen so much they can't set aside any predisposition they have about the case. The Justice Department is going to have to think about telling that whole story, as repetitive as it might become," McQuade told Insider.

"It's like on Broadway: You have to give it your all every time."