Infowars host Owen Shroyer gets 2 months behind bars in Capitol riot case
WASHINGTON — Infowars host Owen Shroyer was sentenced on Tuesday to two months behind bars for joining the mob at the U.S. Capitol, a riot that prosecutors said he “helped create” by spewing violent rhetoric and spreading baseless claims of election fraud to hundreds of thousands of viewers.
Shroyer hosts a daily show, “The War Room With Owen Shroyer,” for the website operated by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Prosecutors said Shroyer used his online platform — and later a megaphone outside the Capitol — to amplify the lie that Democrats had stolen the 2020 presidential election from Donald Trump, the Republican incumbent.
Shroyer didn’t enter the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, but he led a march to the building and led rioters in chants near the top of its steps. He’s among only a few people charged in the attack who were not accused of entering the building or engaging in violence or destruction.
He had pleaded guilty in June to illegally entering a restricted area — a misdemeanor punishable by a maximum sentence of one year behind bars.
Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has been ordered by a Connecticut jury to pay $965 million to people who suffered from his false claim that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax.
Shroyer didn’t need to set foot inside the Capitol because many of his followers did, prosecutors argued. They said Shroyer spread election disinformation and “thinly veiled calls to violence” on Jan. 6 to Infowars viewers in the weeks leading up to the attack.
“Shroyer helped create January 6,” the prosecution wrote in a court filing.
Prosecutors had sought four months behind bars for Shroyer, 34, of Austin, Texas.
Shroyer told U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly that he wasn’t part of any plan for violence or other illegal activity on Jan. 6. He also said he wasn’t trying to stir up the crowd with his chants.
“It was to get the attention and draw the crowds away,” he said.
Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his company have been ordered to pay an extra $473 million to families and an FBI agent for calling the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting a hoax
Kelly told the Infowars host that there was nothing patriotic about joining a mob that interfered with the peaceful transfer of presidential power from Trump to Democratic victor Joe Biden. Kelly said Shroyer had “amped up” the mob on the Capitol steps with his amplified words.
“Context is everything,” the judge said. “I do not believe that you were trying to distract the crowd or turn the crowd away from the Capitol.”
A date for Shroyer to report to prison wasn’t immediately set. His lawyer Norm Pattis said Shroyer planned to appeal the sentence.
In December 2019, Shroyer was arrested in Washington after he disrupted a House Judiciary Committee hearing for then-President Trump’s impeachment proceedings. He later agreed to stay away from Capitol grounds as a condition of a deal resolving that case.
In the weeks before the attack on the Capitol, Shroyer “stoked the flames of a potential disruption of the [Jan. 6] certification vote by streaming disinformation about alleged voter fraud and a stolen election” on his show, prosecutors wrote. In November 2020, he warned that “it’s not going to be a million peaceful marchers in D.C.” if Biden becomes president.
An Infowars video promoting “the big D.C. marches on the 5th and 6th of January” ended with a graphic of Shroyer and others in front of the Capitol. A day before the attack, Shroyer called in to a live Infowars broadcast and internet program and said, “Everybody knows this election was stolen.”
Infowars files for Chapter 11 as the website’s founder faces defamation lawsuits over his comments that the Sandy Hook mass shooting was a hoax.
Shroyer, who has worked at Infowars since 2016, said in an affidavit that he accompanied Jones and his security detail to the Capitol grounds that Jan. 6.
“I walked with Mr. Jones up several steps and stood near him as he addressed the crowd from a bullhorn urging them to leave the area and behave peacefully,” Shroyer said.
Jones has not been charged with any Jan. 6-related crimes.
Outside the Capitol that day, Shroyer stood in front of a crowd with a megaphone and yelled, “The Democrats are posing as communists, but we know what they really are: They’re just tyrants — they’re tyrants. And so today, on January 6, we declare death to tyranny! Death to tyrants!” Shroyer also led hundreds of rioters in chants of “U.S.A.!” and “1776!”
After Jan. 6, Shroyer used his show to promote conspiracy theories about the attack, trying to shift the blame to left-wing anti-fascist activists known as antifa, and even to the FBI, prosecutors said. After his arrest, Shroyer raised nearly $250,000 through an online campaign for his defense fund.
Pattis, his lawyer, has said Shroyer was at Trump’s Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally as a journalist who intended to cover the event for his Infowars show. Pattis has accused prosecutors of trampling on Shroyer’s right to freedom of speech.
Infowars host Alex Jones has offered to pay $120,000 per plaintiff to resolve a lawsuit.
“Mr. Shroyer, and every person capable of speaking in the United States, has a right to utter the speech Mr. Shroyer used. That the Government would suggest otherwise is a frightening commentary on our times,” Pattis wrote in a court filing on Sunday.
Prosecutors said the 1st Amendment doesn’t protect the actions for which Shroyer was charged, and that he and others had “stoked the fires of discontent,” driving a mob of individuals to descend on Washington on Jan. 6.
“Shroyer cannot light a fire near a can of gasoline, and then express concern or disbelief when it explodes,” they wrote.
Shroyer is one of two Infowars employees arrested on Jan. 6 charges. Samuel Montoya, who was a video editor for Jones’ website, was sentenced in April to four months of home detention.
Montoya entered the Capitol and recorded video of a police officer fatally shooting a rioter, Ashli Babbitt.
More than 1,100 people have been charged with federal crimes in connection with the attack on the Capitol. More than 650 of them have pleaded guilty, and more than 600 have been sentenced, with over half receiving prison terms ranging from three days to 22 years.
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