InfoWars host Owen Shroyer was sentence to 60 days in federal prison on Tuesday over the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, despite not stepping foot inside the Capitol building itself.
“I was not a part of any larger plan for illegal activity or violence that day,” Shroyer said at his sentencing hearing Tuesday morning. Still, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly sentenced Shroyer to 60 days in prison.
Kelly recently sentenced former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio to a record-high 22 years in prison over the Capitol riot.
**FILE PHOTO** Henry ‘Enrique’ Tarrio Arrested For BLM Flag-Burning at Historic Black Church last month ahead of planned rally by Trump supporters. WASHINGTON D.C., NOVEMBER 14- Enrique Tarrio and the Proud Boys demonstrate near Freedom Plaza during the Million Maga March protest regarding election results on November 14, 2020 in Washington D.C. Photo: Chris Tuite/imageSPACE/MediaPunch /IPX
Kelly sentenced Shroyer to 60 days prison over federal prosecutors’ request for 120 days.
“Shroyer helped create January 6,” federal prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memorandum. “The government respectfully requests that this Court sentence him to 120 days of incarceration, 12 months of supervised release, 60 hours of community service, and $500 in restitution.”
“In the months prior to January 6, Shroyer spread election disinformation paired with violent rhetoric to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of viewers,” the government added.
In response to the government’s sentencing memorandum, Shroyer’s attorneys argued the government was infringing on Shroyer’s First Amendment right to free speech.
“Mr. Shroyer, and every person capable of speaking in the United States, has a right to utter the speech Mr. Shroyer used,” Shroyer’s attorneys argued. “That the Government would suggest otherwise is a frightening commentary on our times.”
“The Government’s sentencing memorandum is a shocking effort to criminalize dissent and warrants a stiff rebuke from this Court. Mr. Shroyer has every right to believe, and to assert to this very day, that the 2020 election was stolen,” they added.
Shroyer’s prosecution over the events of January 6, 2021, stems from a previous plea agreement Shroyer reached with federal prosecutors in 2019.
As NBC News detailed:
Owen Shroyer is one of only a handful of Jan. 6 participants charged with a crime despite neither entering the Capitol building nor being accused of committing violence or destruction on Capitol grounds. Prosecutors charged Shroyer because he had previously signed a deferred prosecution agreement after interrupting a congressional hearing in 2019 and had agreed as part of that case not to utter “loud, threatening, or abusive language, or to engage in any disorderly or disruptive conduct, at any place upon the United States Capitol Grounds.”
Roughly 1,100 defendants have been charged in connection with January 6, 2021. More than 600 have been sentenced, and of those, more than 370 have been sent to prison.
Jordan Dixon-Hamilton is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jdixonhamilton@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter.