At least eight defendants charged in cases stemming from the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot are saying they were journalists documenting the scene as part of their defense, according to court records.
The defendants who claimed they were at the Capitol as journalists did not work for major outlets and lacked proper credentials journalists are required to have, according to court records of nearly 400 federal cases obtained by the Associated Press.
Defendants said they worked for various fringe outlets called Insurgence USA, Thunderdome TV, Murder the Media News, and Infowars, an outlet founded by noted conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. One defendant charged with joining the demonstration at the Capitol told authorities his work surrounded livestreaming protests.
BLACK LIVES MATTER ACTIVIST CHARGED FOR PARTICIPATION IN STORMING OF CAPITOL
Another defendant, Tim “Baked Alaska” Gionet, who previously worked at BuzzFeed News, is accused of entering the Capitol and encouraging protesters during the riot, but Gionet’s lawyer argued he was only in Washington as a journalist.
“That is what he does. January 6th was no different,” defense attorney Zachary Thornley wrote in a court filing.
Former media law attorney Lucy Dalglish said any defendant shown on film partaking in the riot cannot credibly claim to be a journalist.
“You are, at that point, an activist with a cellphone, and there were a lot of activists with copyrighted videos who sold them to news organizations,” Dalglish, who is also the dean of the University of Maryland’s Philip Merrill College of Journalism, said. “That doesn’t make them journalists.”
One prominent defendant is Insurgence USA founder John Sullivan, a self-styled leftist activist and agent provocateur from Utah who faces federal charges of “knowingly entering” the restricted Capitol building during the riot and is accused of telling members of the crowd to advance the doors of the building.
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Hundreds of federal cases have been filed against people who stormed the Capitol, saying they were there to defend former President Donald Trump’s claims of voter fraud during the 2020 election. The riot led to five deaths and Trump being impeached in the House on a charge of inciting an insurrection. He was acquitted in the Senate.
Trump was previously impeached on two Ukraine-related charges in 2019 before he was acquitted in the GOP-led Senate.
