In the sentencing request for Guy Wesley Reffitt, the first of the January 6 protestors to stand trial in Washington, DC (following his year-long pretrial detention), the Department of Justice claimed that Reffitt, who never entered the Capitol Building, should have a 15-year prison sentence for engaging in “terrorism.”
According to the DoJ, Reffitt’s actions to “obstruct an official proceeding” were “calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct.” A defendent’s sentence should be “enhanced” as terrorism, writes the Department, whenever the conduct had “the object of influencing government conduct or retaliating against a government.”
