Two days after the January 6 riot on the Capitol, Jackson Reffitt’s father, Guy W. Reffitt, returns to the family home in Texas. According to an FBI statement, he told his son he had stormed the Capitol.
Then his father made a threat: If Jackson (18) had reported him to the police, he would have had 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 hand me over, 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 will always tell me that he is going to do something great,” said the younger Mr. Reffitt said in a telephone interview Saturday. “I assumed he was going to do something big, and I did not know what.”
Guy Reffitt’s wife told investigators after the riot that he was a member of the Three Percenters, a far-right military group, according to the affidavit.
FBI agents found an AR-15 rifle and a handgun at his home. The elder, Mr. Reffitt, told investigators he brought the gun to Washington.
Jackson Reffitt said he heard his father went to Washington the day before the riot, but did not know what to do there. He discovers what happens when he sees images on the news of rioters storming the Capitol.
It was not clear what the Federal Bureau of Investigation was doing, after Mr. Reffitt first contacted the FBI about his father. Federal investigators contacted him during the riots to follow up on his tip weeks earlier. At that point, he said, he was helping to “prove what they were trying to investigate.”
Mr. Reffitt said he “just wants someone to know” about his father’s threats to ‘do something big’.
“I did not know what he was going to do, so I did everything possible just to be on the safe side,” he added.
The elder, Mr. Reffitt, who was arrested on Jan. 16, is facing charges of obstruction of justice and that he knowingly entered a restricted building or site without legal authority. He could not be reached Sunday, and it was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer. The FBI was not immediately available for comment Sunday.
Mr. Reffitt said he was unsure if his father still knew he had reported to the federal government.
“I’m afraid he will know,” he said. “Not for my life or anything, but for what he thinks.” But he said he was hopeful his relationship with his father could be restored.
“We will get better over time,” he said. “I know we will do it.”
He said his mother and two sisters “had no idea what I was doing” until they saw a CNN interview with Chris Cuomo.
After the interview gained a foothold online, Mr. Reffitt said on Twitter, “Yes, I’m the kid on cnn.”
The tweet received thousands of likes and retweets, and he said he was inundated with messages asking him to set up a GoFundMe, and he did.
“Every cent is another course at university, or I’m saving it for the coming year,” he wrote on the crowdfunding platform. “I might be kicked out of my house because of my involvement with my father, so that every penny can help me survive.”
Mr. Reffitt did not stay with his family, and he did not want to say where he was, for fear of his safety. He used his girlfriend’s phone because his family disconnected his, he said.
He said he posted the GoFundMe page shortly before he went to bed on Friday, expecting a few thousand dollars to be raised. When he woke up on Saturday, the page raised more than $ 20,000.
As of Sunday afternoon, more than 1,800 donations had been promised, amounting to more than $ 58,000.
Mr. In his first semester, Reffitt studied political science at Collin College, a community college near his family’s home in Wylie, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. When asked if the money would cover the rest of his undergraduate education, he said, ‘Oh man, you have no idea. I’m going to university now. ”
What others dispute about whether they want to come forward about someone who they say could be involved in something dangerous, ‘not only protects yourself, but also protects you’, he said.
“I left my emotions behind to do what I thought was right,” he said. Reffitt said about his father. And although he does not regret his decision, he said: “He is still family, and it is still strange.”