Blaze Media journalist Steve Baker was arrested by the FBI and brought to a Texas federal courtroom in handcuffs, a belly chain and foot shackles to face four nonviolent misdemeanor charges for being at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Accompanied by defense attorneys James Lee Bright and Edward Tarpley Jr., Mr. Baker surrendered at the FBI field office in Dallas at 7 a.m. on March 1.
After being walked out of the FBI building in handcuffs, Mr. Baker was taken to the The Earle Cabell Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse to appear before U.S. Magistrate Judge Clinton Averitte. He was turned over to U.S. Marshals.
Mr. Baker was charged in a criminal complaint in Washington D.C. with knowingly entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds without authority, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly conduct in a Capitol building, and parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building.
“I had to march in, in front of everybody with leg chains on,” Mr. Baker told The Epoch Times after his release. “That was not my favorite moment in life. Just a deliberate humiliation. It was something they didn’t have to do.”
When he appeared in court in belly and leg chains, Mr. Baker said there was a non-Jan. 6 felony defendant in the courtroom also scheduled to appear before Judge Averitte. She had no handcuffs or leg restraints.
“We considered defying that demand and have him simply appear at the courthouse and go to the U.S. Marshal’s Office for processing,” Mr. Shipley said.
After the court hearing, Mr. Baker was released on standard conditions, with no restrictions on his travel or communications, except he is not allowed to text his FBI case agent, Craig Noyes, according to defense attorney Brad Geyer.
Agents quoted from a YouTube video he posted the night of Jan. 6 in which Mr. Baker told a friend that his reaction to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office being ransacked, “It couldn’t happen to a more deserving [expletive].”
“There’s nothing in there about my behavior,” Mr. Baker told The Epoch Times. “It’s all about my words. Everything. It’s all about stuff I said before, stuff I said after, and that’s it. No more complicated than that.”
Mr. Geyer said his client’s arrest shows an “unprecedented shift in Department of Justice policy [after it] had spent decades adhering to special protections for journalists.”
Mr. Baker previously told The Epoch Times that when the FBI first contacted him in July 2021, agents had to reschedule the voluntary session because they needed permission from the attorney general to interview a journalist.
“Without Steve Baker’s early reporting, crucial aspects of events, such as unlawful force, the Capitol breach, and the role of suspicious actors in influencing events of the day might have gone unnoticed,” Mr. Geyer told The Epoch Times.
‘Free Press is Dead’
“Free Press is dead in America when the government jails journalists who refuse to report the regime’s political agenda and lies,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) stated on X.Owen Shroyer of InfoWars, who served a 60-day jail term for his Jan. 6 conviction, blamed the Biden administration.
“I knew Democrats would arrest more journalists after my sentencing & incarceration,” Mr. Shroyer wrote on X. “I did spend some time in jail & cuffs when I turned myself in but was let out later that day. I hope the same for [Steve Baker], but this doesn’t look good. Will Republicans in Congress stay silent again & let this continue?”
Radio and television personality Glenn Beck, the founder of Blaze Media, called the arrest and perp walk of Mr. Baker “unbelievable.”
“I’m experiencing a day I never thought I would experience in America. A company I founded is under attack by the government,” Mr. Beck said on his March 1 Mercury Radio Arts broadcast.
He decried the charges because Mr. Baker was working as a journalist on the ground that day.
“There’s no parading,” Mr. Beck said. “There’s nothing but journalism, taking photographs, taking video, and reporting.”
Mr. Baker, 63, of Raleigh, N.C., previously said he believes the charges—especially the timing—show the prosecution is politically motivated due to his reporting and pointed commentary on Jan. 6 issues.
Mr. Baker shot hours of dramatic video on Jan. 6 on the west front and inside the Capitol building. His work was featured on HBO and the BBC, and in The New York Times and The Epoch Times.
Retired Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz sounded the alarm over what Mr. Baker’s arrest could portend.
“When the government can pick and choose which journalists to go after and which protesters to go after, we’re in Russia, Iran, Cuba territory, not Thomas Jefferson territory, where as soon as he became president he rescinded the alien and sedition laws that had blemished our statute books after enactment of the First Amendment,” Mr. Dershowitz said on “The Glenn Beck Program.” “So we have to stand up and protect our journalists.”
No members of the corporate media have been charged with crimes for covering the Jan. 6 violence at the Capitol. At least a half-dozen right-leaning independent journalists have been arrested and prosecuted on similar charges as Mr. Baker.
Stephen Horn, a North Carolina journalist who was threatened with 10 months’ jail for similar Jan. 6 charges, said Mr. Baker’s crime was “reporting on J6 without corporate backing.” Mr. Horn was sentenced to a year of probation in his case.
“With his extensive history of publishing journalism, both as independently and with the Blaze, Steve Baker has a stronger case than any media member charged in relation to January 6th so far (myself included),” Mr. Horn told The Epoch Times in a statement. “Despite this, he will certainly be fighting an uphill battle as he faces the Department of Justice on its home turf, the D.C. District Court.”
