Misunderstanding Led to Judge’s Order Against Jan. 6 Journalist, Attorney Says

Journalist Steve Baker at the Blaze Media headquarters in Irving, Texas, on March 5, 2024. Baker was recently arrested by the FBI for misdemeanors related to Jan. 6, 2021. (Bobby Sanchez for The Epoch Times)

A pretrial services report that prompted a judge to issue a warning to journalist Steve Baker was due to a simple misunderstanding, his attorney said on March 25.

United States District Judge Christopher Cooper in Washington D.C. issued an order on March 25 telling Mr. Baker to comply with the pretrial conditions set during a March 14 hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya.

Mr. Baker has been charged with four misdemeanors related to his time shooting video at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. His prosecution has sparked a debate about whether the U.S. Department of Justice is targeting independent journalists while ignoring the presence of reporters from corporate media at the U.S. Capitol.

Mr. Baker, 63, of Raleigh, North Carolina, was working as an independent journalist on Jan. 6. He now works as a columnist for Blaze Media. His recent articles have exposed possible perjury by two U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) officers, provided details on the Jan. 6 pipe bomb investigation, and exposed longstanding cases of alleged corruption at USCP.

Mr. Baker was the subject of a profile in The Epoch Times on March 23.

Defense attorney William Shipley said the report from U.S. Probation and Pretrial Services that prompted the judge’s warning did not reflect the discussions he was having with the case prosecutor to modify the language in some of Mr. Baker’s conditions of release.

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“The ‘violation’ filed Friday [March 22] came from a probation officer who was not aware of the ongoing discussions to modify the language of the two conditions,” Mr. Shipley told The Epoch Times in an email.

Mr. Baker said one of the conditions involved whether he will be able to keep his handgun for personal protection.

The pretrial report alleged Mr. Baker has not removed all weapons from his North Carolina home or surrendered his expired passport. Mr. Baker said that is because he has not been back to North Carolina since his arrest in Dallas on March 1. He was in Tennessee on March 25 for a series of media appearances.

Mr. Baker said he had two phone conversations with his North Carolina probation agent during the week of March 18 and they set up an April 1 meeting to go over the release conditions. He said he will surrender his expired passport at that meeting.

“My understanding is that my conversations with my North Carolina P.O. [probation officer] Monday and Tuesday of last week took care of all this,” Mr. Baker told The Epoch Times in an interview.

Another issue under discussion is whether Mr. Baker has to report all contacts he has with law enforcement officials, considering many of his confidential story sources work in law enforcement.

Steve Baker of Blaze Media is led out of the FBI Dallas field office and taken to the federal courthouse in Dallas to face Jan. 6 charges on March 1, 2024. (Blaze Media/Graphic by The Epoch Times)

Mr. Shipley attributed the probation report to a simple misunderstanding.

“Mr. Baker was aware of the ongoing discussions. He communicated with his probation officer in North Carolina that he thought the two conditions in question were being adjusted,” Mr. Shipley said. “When this message was passed along to the probation officer in D.C., it was mistakenly characterized as a failure/refusal by Mr. Baker to comply. That was simply not true.

“All Mr. Baker had done was raise the issue—as he understood it—that the language of the conditions was being modified,” Mr. Shipley said. “He in no way stated that he was refusing to comply with the conditions as they are currently written until they are modified. He has always understood that he must comply with the conditions—that was never an issue.”

Mr. Baker is next due in court on April 3 for his arraignment.