Infowars host Owen Shroyer was sentenced to 60 days in prison for what was described as a violation of a previous agreement when he was near the Capitol building on January 6, 2021, but did not enter.
Shroyer, host of “The War Room,” was handed the sentence for allegedly violating a deferred prosecution agreement stemming from his protest of a Donald Trump impeachment hearing in 2019.
According to NBC News, Shroyer signed the agreement that stated he could not use any “loud, threatening, or abusive language” or “engage in any disorderly or disruptive conduct, at any place upon the United States Capitol Grounds.”
According to court documents, Shroyer was accused of spreading “election disinformation paired with violent rhetoric to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of viewers.”
“Shroyer took to a megaphone before leading a crowd to the Capitol: ‘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!'” the document read.
“He continued marching around to the top of the east steps chanting ‘1776!’,” it added.
In a press conference, Shroyer responded to the government’s claims and said that he was defending a legal process that day:
“Is this the United States anymore? Is this the country we want to live in when a prosecution, multiple U.S. attorneys, and a judge quote me saying ‘1776’ and ‘U.S.A.’ in a criminal offense?”
“The Democratic Party has challenged every presidential election they have lost in the 21st century. Gore, Kerry, Clinton; they challenged every single loss,” Shroyer continued. “This legal process that we have in the country somehow gets ignored throughout this litigation, and that was indeed the process we were trying to support. If anything, we were supporting the law that day.”
In an official written statement, Shroyer’s defense wrote that the decision “represents a low-water mark in the Government’s prosecution of January 6 cases, taking direct aim at freedom of speech. It seeks to penalize Mr. Shroyer for his viewpoints.”
Shroyer was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, the same judge who sentenced former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio to 22 years in prison.
The government had originally sought a 120-day sentence for Shroyer, claiming that while he didn’t go into the Capitol, “many of those who listened to him” did.
The defense team had stated that Shroyer “wore two hats” on January 6th, an “outraged citizen who believed that an election had been rigged” and a “full-time journalist and commentator who sought a front-row seat at an historic event.”
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