Former Texas member of Three Percenter militia group recounts the road trip to the Jan. 6 riot

In early January 2021, Rocky Hardie and Guy Reffitt drove the roughly 20 hours from North Texas to Washington, D.C., in a minivan loaded with assault-style rifles, ammunition and handguns, talking about family and politics and ragging on the leader of their far-right extremist group along the way. “We were kind of complaining about our leader, because he’s back there like, ‘I’ll sort the sock drawer,’ while he tells everybody to go to D.C.,” Hardie said of Russ Teer, the head of the Texas Three Percenters group to which he and Reffitt belonged. “He sits back home with his family where it’s nice and comfortable, and we made a commitment to stand and be counted.” On the long drive to former President Donald Trump’s Stop the Steal rally, Hardie said the two joked about dragging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi out of the Capitol “by her feet or her ankles,” envisioning her head hitting every step on the way out.

“We talked about, ‘We gotta get the bastards out of there,’” Hardie said. But Hardie said he never took any of it seriously until Jan. 6, when Reffitt attempted to storm the Capitol in a charge that Reffitt has since bragged “lit the fire” of the riot. “I didn’t think he or anybody was going to get close to the Capitol. I thought that was impossible,” said Hardie. “I was pretty impressed that he did what he did. He had more courage than I did. I wasn’t going to go up there.” Hardie detailed the multiday, cross-country road trip in testimony on Friday against his former Three Percenter companion, the first defendant to stand trial before a jury for his participation in the riot. Reffitt, 49, of Wylie, faces five felony charges, including transporting firearms for unlawful use in a riot and breaching Capitol grounds while armed with the holstered handgun.