Infowars host Owen Shroyer was sentenced Tuesday to two months behind bars for joining the mob riot at the U.S. Capitol, which prosecutors said was instigated in part by spreading violent rhetoric and baseless claims of election fraud among hundreds of thousands of viewers.

Shroyer hosts a daily show called The War Room With Owen Shroyer for conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ website. Prosecutors said Shroyer used his online platform and later a bullhorn outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to amplify lies that Democrats had stolen the 2020 presidential election from Donald Trump, the Republican incumbent.

Shroyer did not enter the Capitol, but led a march to the building and led rioters in chants at the top of the building’s steps. He is one of a handful of people charged in the riot who did not enter the building or have been charged with involvement in violence or destruction.

He pleaded guilty in June to illegally entering a restricted area, a crime that carries a maximum penalty of one year behind bars.

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Shroyer didn’t have to set foot in the Capitol because many of his followers did, prosecutors argued. They said Shroyer spread election disinformation and thinly veiled calls for violence to Infowars viewers on Jan. 6 in the weeks leading up to the attack.

Shroyer helped create Jan. 6, prosecutors wrote in a lawsuit.

Prosecutors had sought four months behind bars for Shroyer, 34, of Austin, Texas.

Shroyer told U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly on Jan. 6 that he was not part of any plan for violence or other illegal activity. He also said he was not trying to incite the crowd with his chants.

It was to attract attention and draw the crowd away, he said.

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Kelly told the Infowars host that there was nothing patriotic about joining a gang that disrupted the peaceful transfer of presidential power from Trump to Joe Biden. Kelly said Shroyer incited the crowd on the Capitol steps with his amplified words.

Context is everything, the judge said. I don’t believe you were trying to distract the crowd or divert the crowd from the Capitol.

A date for Shroyer to report to jail was not immediately set. His attorney, Norm Pattis, said he planned to appeal the sentence.

In December 2019, Shroyer was arrested in Washington after disrupting a House Judiciary Committee hearing on then-President Trump’s impeachment. He later agreed to stay away from the Capitol grounds, a condition of a deal to resolve that case.

In the weeks before the riot at the Capitol, Shroyer fanned the flames of potential disruption in politics [Jan. 6] certification vote by streaming disinformation about alleged voter fraud and stolen elections on his show, prosecutors wrote. In November 2020, he warned that there will not be a million peaceful protesters in DC if Biden, a Democrat, becomes president.

An Infowars video promoting the major DC marches on January 5 and 6 ended with an image of Shroyer and others in front of the Capitol. A day before the riot at the Capitol, Shroyer called into a live Infowars broadcast and internet program and said: Everyone knows this election was stolen.

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Shroyer, who has been with Infowars since 2016, said in an affidavit that he accompanied Jones and his security officers to the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6.

I walked up some steps with Mr. Jones and stood next to him as he addressed the crowd from a megaphone, urging them to leave the area and behave peacefully, Shroyer said.

Jones has not been charged with any crimes related to Jan. 6.

Outside the Capitol, Shroyer stood before a crowd with a megaphone and shouted, “The Democrats pretend to be communists, but we know what they really are: They’re just tyrants, they’re tyrants.” And so today, on January 6, we declare death tyranny! Death to tyrants! Shroyer also led hundreds of rioters in American chants! and 1776!

After Jan. 6, Shroyer used his show to promote conspiracy theories about the riot, trying to shift blame to left-wing antifa activists and even the FBI, prosecutors said. After his arrest, Shroyer raised nearly $250,000 through an online campaign described as his defense fund.

Pattis, the defense attorney, has said Shroyer attended Trump’s Stop the Steal rally as a journalist planning to cover the event for his Infowars show. Pattis has repeatedly accused prosecutors of trampling on Shroyer’s free speech rights

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Mr. Shroyer, and any person who can speak in the United States, has the right to say the speech that Mr. Shroyer used. That the government would suggest otherwise is a frightening commentary on our times, Pattis wrote in a report on Sunday.

Prosecutors said the First Amendment does not protect the conduct for which Shroyer was charged. Shroyer and others fanned the flames of discontent over driving a band of individuals to descend on Washington

,DC,

on January 6.

Shroyer cannot light a fire near a can of gasoline and then express concern or disbelief when it explodes, they wrote.

Shroyer is one of two Infowars employees arrested on Capitol riot charges. Samuel Montoya, who worked as a video editor for the website Jones, was sentenced to four months of house arrest in April. Montoya entered the Capitol and recorded footage of a police officer fatally shooting a rioter, Ashli ​​Babbitt.

More than 1,100 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the Capitol riot. More than 650 of them have pleaded guilty. More than 600 people have been convicted, more than half of whom receive prison sentences ranging from three days to 22 years.