Son Tipped Off FBI About His Father, Who Is Charged in Capitol Riot

Two days after the Capitol riot on Jan. 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 leveled 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,” Jackson Reffitt said in a phone interview 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. Guy 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 FBI did after Jackson Reffitt first contacted them 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.”

Jackson 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.

https://news.yahoo.com/son-tipped-off-fbi-father-130645821.html

California prosecutors revolt against Los Angeles DA’s social justice changes

OAKLAND, Calif. — Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón ran on a vow to shake up America’s largest law enforcement jurisdiction. Sweeping progressive changes followed — and so has the California backlash.

Within weeks of taking office, Gascón instructed prosecutors to stop seeking the death penalty and trying juveniles as adults. He ordered a halt to most cash bail requests and banned prosecutors from appearing at parole hearings. Most controversially, he barred prosecutors from seeking various sentencing enhancements.

Even if expected, Gascón’s moves have set off a political confrontation of unprecedented magnitude. Rank-and-file Los Angeles prosecutors have revolted and sought to block their new boss in court. District attorneys elsewhere in California have said they will not share cases with Gascón.

“You can’t just use the law to implement your personal worldview of what society should look like,” Association of Deputy District Attorneys Vice President Eric Siddall said. “The idea of one man coming in and saying, ‘You all are wrong, and this is what the law should be,’ is kind of counter to what our entire American system of justice is all about. It’s the antithesis of the rule of law.”

If Gascón’s win signaled the growing political viability of reform-minded prosecutors, the ensuing turbulence has illustrated the difficulty of transforming campaign pledges into action. His controversial decisions have divided California’s prosecutors: detractors see dangerous and potentially illegal overreach, while his supporters see a leader who is following through.

The widening battle offers a high-profile microcosm for larger tensions roiling law enforcement in California and around the country. The outcome will substantially impact Los Angeles and send a message to prosecutors everywhere. Once a pioneer in stringent penalties that drove an incarceration boom, Los Angeles is now the hub of a struggle over the course of criminal justice.

“He’s doing exactly what he said he was going to do during the campaign,” transition spokesperson Max Szabo said. “There’s certainly backlash, but we can’t as a system of justice change course based on that backlash and ignore what the broader public has asked for.”

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https://www.yahoo.com/news/antithesis-rule-law-prosecutors-revolt-093053789.html