A host for Alex Jones’s Infowars.com pleaded guilty Friday to trespassing in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, and, in a separate case, a Colorado man who marched with the Proud Boys in paramilitary gear that day was sentenced to four years in prison for attacking police.
Separately, Robert Gieswein, 26, had pleaded guilty to firing pepper spray into the eyes of officers, carrying a baseball bat and joining the initial pursuit of Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman, before telling an interviewer that the mob needed to “execute these fascists.”
Shroyer previously denied any wrongdoing, saying in a video posted on the Infowars website after his August 2021 arrest, “I am an innocent man.”
He reversed course Friday, admitting that he entered and remained on restricted Capitol grounds knowing it was unlawful to do so.
“Are you telling the truth today?” attorney Norm Pattis asked. “Yes,” Shroyer repeated. He explained to reporters afterward, “There’s a legal system we have, innocent until proven guilty.”
During the talk show Shroyer hosts on Infowars, he and Jones have been frequent purveyors of conspiracy theories. Both falsely accused a pizza restaurant in Northwest Washington of harboring national Democratic Party pedophiles, and they spread and retracted claims that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a hoax.
According to the House Jan. 6 committee, Shroyer was in frequent text communication between Jan. 4 and Jan. 6 with three Proud Boys leaders convicted last month of seditious conspiracy: Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, Ethan Nordean and Joe Biggs, a former Infowars employee.
In a plea agreement, Shroyer acknowledged that he faces up to six months in prison under advisory federal guidelines, but that a final decision was up to U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly of Washington at sentencing Sept. 12.
Prosecutors agreed to drop a 2020 misdemeanor case pending against Shroyer in D.C. Superior Court. Shroyer admitted his conduct on Jan. 6 violated an agreement he had made in that case.
Shroyer acknowledged that on Jan. 6 he was still under court supervision for the earlier misdemeanor case, which resulted from his disruption of a December 2019 House impeachment hearing by broadcasting a live video on Twitter of himself heckling Democratic lawmakers, accusing them of “treason.”
Shroyer signed a deferred prosecution agreement in which the Superior Court case would be dropped if he performed 32 hours of community service and adhered to certain conditions — including agreeing to not engage in disorderly conduct on restricted Capitol grounds and agreeing to not disrupt congressional proceedings — that were still pending in January 2021.
In Gieswein’s case, prosecutors said he arrived at the Capitol wearing a combat helmet and camouflage uniform and a camera pouch on his chest with the words “My Mom Thinks I’m Special.” Gieswein was invited to join the Proud Boys march but apparently by a federal informant, so he was not considered a “tool” of the group’s leaders in their recent trial. He was photographed inside the Capitol next to Dominic Pezzola, a Proud Boys member who broke the first window on the West Terrace and was acquitted of seditious conspiracy but convicted of obstructing an official proceeding and assaulting police.
Gieswein, who previously worked as a nursing assistant and led a private paramilitary training group called the Woodland Wild Dogs, has been jailed since surrendering to police Jan. 18, 2021, and asked for a sentence of time served. Prosecutors asked for five years.
“I made mistakes and cannot explain why. I can say I am sorry and I have been paying for it,” Gieswein, of Woodland Park, Colo., wrote in a letter to the court. “I was just in a crazy situation, with a lot going on, and I didn’t act rationally.”
U.S. District Judge Trevor N. McFadden has gone below the sentencing guidelines in the 16 previous felony cases he has handled related to the Jan. 6. attack. He did not do so for Gieswein, saying that he took assaults on police seriously.
Unlike most defendants, Gieswein did not attend Trump’s rally at the Ellipse beforehand, the judge said.
“Among the many rioters on January 6, I think your conduct is at the more violent, extreme and egregious end of the spectrum,” McFadden said. “I’ve sentenced many defendants now on January 6 cases, most of them were at the rally and say they got whipped up there. For you to not attend the rally and go straight to the Capitol with members of an extremist organization is hard to understand.”