Anthime Gionet, known by his pseudonym “Baked Alaska” and a prominent member of a loose collection of so-called “alt-right” figures, was arrested by federal authorities for his alleged role in the storming of the Capitol, where he had livestreamed himself urging the crowd on.
The Justice Department announced that Gionet had been charged with “knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority” and with “violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds” and that he had been arrested on Friday in Houston. Gionet had livestreamed himself through the halls of the Capitol and from inside the office of Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon.
A lengthy statement of facts written by FBI special agent Nicole Miller said she had studied evidence, including Gionet’s own 27-minute livestream video on the DLive platform in which he claimed to be “documenting” the storming of the Capitol — noting that he had illegally entered the Capitol between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m.
The FBI said that Gionet and others with him in the Capitol could be heard chanting, “Patriots are in control. … Whose house? Our house. … Traitors, traitors, traitors.”
Gionet can be heard proclaiming, “1776 baby!,” and “I won’t leave, guys. Don’t worry.” When offered a hand to leave the Capitol, Gionet said, “I’m staying.” According to video footage, he also proclaimed, “We are in the Capitol Building. 1776 will commence again. … Unleash the Kraken, let’s go!”
The bureau said Gionet repeatedly urged the mob not to leave the Capitol.
Inside a congressional office, Gionet interviews others in the crowd and also picked up a phone and seemingly acted out a call with Senate personnel, later shouting, “America First is inevitable. F— globalists, let’s go! … Occupy the Capitol, let’s go! We ain’t leaving this bitch!” He can be seen sitting on a couch and putting his feet up in another Senate office too. When law enforcement officers asked Gionet to move out of the Capitol, he claimed to be part of the media.
The FBI noted that “the defendant audibly accuses law enforcement of shoving him,” but “no shoving can be seen on the video.” Gionet then told a police officer that “you’re a f—— oathbreaker, you piece of shit” and told him “f— you” four times before claiming that “you broke your oath to the Constitution.”
Soon after, he left the Capitol.
Capitol Hill Police Officer Brian Sicknick died Jan. 7 “due to injuries sustained while on-duty” after he was “injured while physically engaging with protesters,” according to U.S. Capitol Police. A federal homicide investigation has been opened into his death.
A woman killed by law enforcement, 35-year-old Ashli Babbitt from California, was an Air Force veteran and Trump supporter who was shot while trying to climb through a barricade as a crowd tried to break down a door in the Capitol. Police said three others had various medical emergencies and died during the chaos at the Capitol building and that dozens of officers were injured amid the unrest.
Gionet was hired by BuzzFeed in 2015, where he worked as both a social media strategist and a commentator for the website, and then-editor-in-chief and current New York Times media columnist Ben Smith recently described how Gionet ran the BuzzFeed Vine account and then its Twitter account, saying that Gionet had a photo of Sen. Bernie Sanders on his desk in the lead-up to the 2016 election before he began wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat around the office. Gionet then left BuzzFeed and became the tour manager for far-right personality Milo Yiannopoulos’s “Dangerous F——” tour.
“Baked Alaska” tweeted in December 2016 that the media was “run in majority by Jewish people” and later said that “I don’t hate Jews, but there are some things that I like to talk about. I’m alt-right. I’ve always been alt-right. I’ve never said I’m not alt-right.”
He participated in an alt-right rally outside the Lincoln Memorial in June 2017 with white supremacist Richard Spencer, and he and Spencer were considered leaders of the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017 that saw anti-Semitic chants and where Heather Heyer was murdered when James Fields plowed his car into a crowded street.
Twitter banned Gionet in November 2017.
He had tweeted the so-called 14 Words, a popular slogan among white supremacists, and said that “I have no problem with white nationalists.”
In March 2019, Gionet claimed that he was no longer alt-right and said he was now a fan of then-Democratic presidential primary candidate Andrew Yang and posted a since-deleted YouTube video about he had “left the alt-right” in July 2019, giving an interview in which he said that “I was brainwashed. I felt like I was part of a cult.”
But by November 2019, he had become a part of the far-right so-called “Groyper” movement that, among many things, attempted to interrupt Turning Point USA events.
Gionet was hit with misdemeanor assault, disorderly conduct, and criminal trespassing charges in Scottsdale, Arizona, after law enforcement said he wouldn’t leave a bar and that he had pepper-sprayed a bouncer. The terms of his release, while the charges were pending, included that he couldn’t leave the state without permission from the court.
Gionet said he had tested positive for the coronavirus in early January before attending the Capitol protest.
