WASHINGTON — Anthime Joseph Gionet, better known as the far-right internet troll “Baked Alaska,” was sentenced Tuesday to 60 days in prison with two years’ probation for his participation in the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Gionet, who will also be required to pay a $2,000 fine, pleaded guilty last summer to one misdemeanor count of knowingly entering restricted grounds, which carries a punishment of up to six months behind bars.
Gionet declined to say anything for himself prior to sentencing, and was silent as he was ushered out of the courtroom.
On Jan. 6, 2021, Gionet was part of the crowd that rammed through police barricades and through Capitol doors and windows after then-President Donald Trump gave a speech based on falsehoods about the 2020 election.
“We are the kraken! Unleash the kraken! Trust the fucking plan, let’s go!” Gionet chanted on a livestream inside the Capitol, according to court documents.
Gionet then made his way up to the office of an unidentified senator, where he made a pretend phone call to the “U.S. Senate,” urging them to “get our boy, Donald J. Trump, into office.”
“Occupy the Capitol, let’s go!” he said. “We ain’t leaving this bitch!”
Minutes later, when law enforcement shooed him out of the building, Gionet yelled at an officer, “You’re a fucking oathbreaker,” among a string of other insults.
Gionet used the service DLive to post his 27-minute livestream, as several mainstream social media platforms had booted him from their services by the time of the Capitol attack.
A onetime BuzzFeed staffer who identified as a Libertarian, Gionet attracted controversy during the 2016 presidential election as his politics veered into extremist territory. (BuzzFeed is now the parent company of HuffPost.) He went on to shout antisemitic phrases during the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where one counterprotester was killed.
Gionet’s defense attorney, Zachary Thornley, tried to cast him as a member of the media rather than a rioter on Jan. 6, noting his livestreaming and previous employment with BuzzFeed.
He acted as “sort of a journalist or something,” Thornley said in court.
Prosecutor Anthony Franks showed clips from Gionet’s livestream in which he called on other “patriots” to join him in the Capitol, and screamed at law enforcement: “Fuck you, you piece of shit!”
In the end, the judge disagreed with Gionet’s defense.
“You participated in a shameful event... a national embarrassment that made us all feel less safe,” Judge Trevor McFadden said before issuing the sentence.
He said Gionet was clearly not a “passive photojournalist” that day, and that he maintains a “troubling vocation” that consists of livestreaming “criminality to earn money online.”
The judge continued: “You were participating fully... celebrating a national tragedy.”
Gionet was banned from Twitter in 2017, amid criticism of how the platform handled far-right extremists. Late last year, however, he was permitted to return under CEO Elon Musk’s ownership.