Owen Shroyer has asked the judge overseeing his sentencing to go against the recommendation submitted by the Department of Justice.
Shroyer is known for his work on the InfoWars show “The War Room.” He pleaded guilty to unlawfully entering and remaining on restricted grounds during the riot in June in connection to his presence at the Capitol in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021.
The Department of Justice asked that Shroyer be given 120 days in prison. In its sentencing memorandum, the DOJ argued Shroyer “spread election disinformation paired with violent rhetoric to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of viewers” in the months after the 2020 election.
While in D.C., Shroyer told a crowd of people over a bullhorn, “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!”
Even though he never entered the Capitol, the government wrote that “Shroyer helped create January 6.”
The DOJ asked the court to “consider that Shroyer’s conduct on January 6, like the conduct of hundreds of other rioters, took place in the context of a large and violent riot that relied on numbers to overwhelm police officers who were trying to prevent a breach of the Capitol Building.” Prosecutors also noted that he had “had an active order to stay away from the U.S. Capitol and its grounds on January 6, 2021 due to a pending case for disorderly conduct on those grounds.”
Shroyer was arrested on Dec. 9, 2020, in D.C. after he disrupted a Judiciary Committee meeting. He was charged with disorderly conduct and impeding passage and signed a plea deal on Feb. 25, 2020, agreeing not to engage in “loud or disorderly conduct at any area of the Capitol grounds and agreed not to demonstrate or picket within any Capitol buildings for four months,” per USA Today.
Though the required time had passed by Jan.6, 2021, Shroyer had reportedly only completed 30 of the 32 hours of community service also required of him as part of the plea deal.
In their response to the government’s proposed sentence, Shroyer’s attorneys argued the prosecution is “taking direct aim at freedom of speech.”
“It seeks to penalize Mr. Shroyer for his viewpoints, claiming, apparently, that his views are relevant offense conduct that must be considered in crafting a sentence sufficient, but not greater than necessary, to punish the crime to which Mr. Shroyer pleaded guilty – a single misdemeanor count of Entering and Remaining in a Restricted Building or Grounds, in violation of 18 U.S.C. Section 1752(a)(1),” says the responding statement from Shroyer’s team.
Shroyer is seeking a sentence without jail time and has argued that the two years he has spent on pre-trial supervised release was sufficient.
“Given the Government’s shocking attempt to use protected speech in this case as a sentencing factor, special leniency is required to deter the Government from overreaching in similar cases,” said Shroyer's statement.
The statement continued:None of the utterances recited by the Government and attributed to Mr. Shroyer are prohibited speech. And the Government has made no serious effort to prove that Mr. Shroyer’s utterances packed the inculpatory punch of prohibited speech, whether that be incitement, a true threat, or conspiracy to commit another crime. Unlike other defendants appearing before this Court in the context of the January 6 riot, Mr. Shroyer has not been charged with conspiracy to engage in seditious conspiracy. His words cannot be twisted into circumstantial evidence of an intent to oppose the authority of the Government by force.
Shroyer is being represented by Norman Pattis, a lawyer from New Haven, Connecticut who also represented Proud Boys Zachary Rehl and Joe Biggs during their recent sentencing.
Sentencing is scheduled to take place on Sept. 12.
