Infowars host pleads guilty to joining riot

Shroyer, who led chants on steps of Capitol, faces sentencing for misdemeanor

WASHINGTON — Infowars host Owen Shroyer, who promoted claims of 2020 election fraud on the far-right internet platform, pleaded guilty Friday to joining the mob of Donald Trump supporters who rioted at the U.S. Capitol.

Shroyer, who didn’t enter the Capitol but led rioters in chants near the top of the building’s steps, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of illegally entering a restricted area. The charge carries a maximum sentence of one year behind bars.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly scheduled a Sept. 12 sentencing hearing for the 33-year-old Shroyer, who has hosted a daily show called “The War Room With Owen Shroyer” for the website operated by fellow host Alex Jones.

Outside the Capitol Jan. 6, 2021, Shroyer stood in front of a crowd with a megaphone and yelled that Democrats are “tyrants.”

“And so today, on January 6, we declare death to tyranny! Death to tyrants!” he shouted.

Near the top of steps on the Capitol’s east side, Shroyer, who’s from Austin, Texas, led hundreds of rioters in chants of “USA!” and “1776!” He later said in an affidavit he stood with Jones as Jones tried to deescalate the situation.

But, prosecutors wrote in a court filing, “Harkening to the last time Americans overthrew their government in a revolution while standing on the Capitol steps where elected representatives are certifying a Presidential Election you disagree with does not qualify as deescalation.”

Shroyer, who was charged in August 2021 with four misdemeanor counts, is among a few defendants who neither went inside the Capitol on Jan. 6 nor engaging in the violence.

Defense attorney Norm Pattis said Shroyer attended Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally as a journalist who intended to cover the event for his Infowars show. Prosecutors said the First Amendment doesn’t protect the conduct for which Shroyer was charged.

Shroyer, who has worked at Infowars since 2016, said he went to Washington, D.C., with Jones and others who worked for the website. Jones hasn’t been charged with any Jan. 6-related crimes.

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 Capitol attack, Shroyer called in to a live Infowars broadcast and internet program and said, “Everybody knows this election was stolen.”

Shroyer said in an affidavit he accompanied Jones and his security detail to Capitol grounds on 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.

Also Friday, a Colorado man who marched to the Capitol with members of the Proud Boys and was one of the first rioters to enter the building was sentenced to four years in prison for attacking police officers with a chemical spray as they tried to hold off the mob of Trump supporters.

Robert Gieswein, of Woodland Park, Colo., was wearing a helmet, a flak jacket and goggles and was carrying a baseball bat when he stormed the Capitol. Gieswein, then 24, marched to the building from the Washington Monument with the Proud Boys but wasn’t a member of the group.

Gieswein repeatedly sprayed an “aerosol irritant” at police officers and pushed against a line of police, according to a court filing accompanying his guilty plea to assault charges.

“You were a foot soldier in one of the most disturbing riots our nation has seen in years,” U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden told Gieswein, who gets credit for the more than two years that he already has served in custody.

Federal authorities have said Gieswein appeared to be an adherent of the Three Percenters militia movement and ran a private paramilitary training group called the Woodland Wild Dogs.