OAN’s Elizabeth Volberding
2:36 PM – Tuesday, September 12, 2023
Owen Shroyer, host of InfoWars, was sentenced to 60 days in prison after joining the demonstration at the United States Capitol on January 6th, 2021, although he did not step foot inside the Capitol.
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On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly sentenced Shroyer to two months behind bars, claiming that Shroyer “helped create” the demonstration by shouting violent words and false allegations of election fraud to hundreds of thousands of viewers.
He reportedly claimed on his online platform that left-wingers stole the 2020 presidential election from former President Donald Trump.
Allegedly, he encouraged protestors to march to the building and led them in chants near the building’s entrance.
This comes after Shroyer was charged by prosecutors because he had consented to a deferred prosecution agreement due to his interference with a congressional hearing in 2019. He had agreed as part of that case not to speak “loud, threatening, or abusive language, or to engage in any disorderly or disruptive conduct, at any place upon the U.S. Capitol Grounds.”
He is one of the few individuals charged in the incident who didn’t enter the building. Shroyer is also one of the few people involved in the demonstration not facing charges of using violence or causing destruction.
Nearly 1,100 defendants have been charged in connection with the January 6th Capitol demonstration, and more than 600 have been sentenced, including more than 370 to periods of incarceration.
“The Democrats are posing as communists, but we know what they really are: They’re just tyrants, they’re tyrants,” Shroyer said into a megaphone before leading protestors to march to the Capitol, according to the government’s sentencing memo. “And so today, on January 6th, we declare death to tyranny! Death to tyrants!”
The government initially asked for Shroyer to spend 120 days behind bars and they justified their request by claiming that Shroyer “spread election disinformation paired with violent rhetoric to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of viewers,” through his online streaming show, “The War Room,” hosted on the InfoWars platform.
In June, he pleaded guilty to one count of unlawfully entering a prohibited area.
During Tuesday’s sentencing hearing, Shroyer told U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly that he was not a part of any larger plan for violence or other unlawful activity that day. He also mentioned that he was not trying to encourage the crowd with his chants.
“It was to get the attention and draw the crowds away,” he said.
Kelly explained that he believed Shroyer was trying to “amp up” the mob on the Capitol steps with his amplified rhetoric.
“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.”
Shroyer’s defense team announced that the case had been “characterized by a cooperative spirit between the defense and the Government” and requested that he be spared prison time. When he was at the Capitol on January 6th, Shroyer “wore two hats: one was that of an outraged citizen who believed that an election had been rigged, the other as full-time journalist and commentator who sought a front-row seat at an historic event,” his defense team wrote.
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