"A mob needs leaders and this man, Guy Wesley Reffitt of Wylie, Texas, drove all the way from home in Texas to D.C. to step up and fulfill that role," Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey S. Nestler told a panel of jurors in a federal courthouse during opening statements in the case.

Reffitt, 49, a pandemic-idled oil rig manager and alleged member of the right-wing anti-government movement Three Percenters, was "the tip of this mob's spear," in the worst assault on the Capitol since the War of 1812, prosecutors said.

In surveillance video shown publicly for the first time, prosecutors showed a crowd advancing toward a critical police line of defense above the Capitol's West Terrace that afternoon, ignoring warnings and escalating use of force from a handful of officers guarding the head of its north staircase.