Joe.My.God. LGBT News
Buzzfeed News reports:
Anthime “Tim” Gionet, a far-right internet troll known as “Baked Alaska” who livestreamed inside the US Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection, torched his own plea hearing almost immediately after it began, proclaiming his innocence and prompting the judge to set a trial date instead.
Gionet had been set to plead guilty to one of the lowest-level charges brought in connection with Jan. 6 — parading, demonstrating, or picketing in the Capitol, a misdemeanor with a maximum sentence of six months in prison.
NBC News reports:
“I wanted to go to trial, but the prosecutors if I [went] to trial, they would put a felony on me, so I think this is probably the better route,” Gionet said. “I believe I’m innocent … but they’re saying if I go to trial they’re going to hit me with a felony.”
So Sullivan said he’d set a trial date for March 2023. “If Mr. Gionet wants to go to trial, he’ll get a fair trial, like anyone and everyone else who has appeared before me, regardless of the charges,” Sullivan said. “I’m not trying to trick you. Don’t plead guilty to please me.”
Slate reports:
After some back-and-forth, Sullivan gave Gionet 60 days to decide whether to accept the plea deal or go to trial next March. Thus will he remain, as he put it in a Monday comment, “balls deep in legal shit.”
Gionet was convicted in October 2021 of “assault, trespass, and disorderly conduct” for spraying a bouncer in Scottsdale, Arizona, with “pepper gel” during another livestream.
He has also been charged for allegedly tearing down part of a Hanukkah display outside Arizona’s Capitol in Phoenix in December of the same year. He attended the infamous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Gionet appeared on JMG last June when he live-streamed himself ridiculing victims at Orlando’s Pulse memorial. He also appeared here last March when he petitioned federal prosecutors to remove his ankle monitor because “I’m a Christian.”
As I’ve previously reported, Gionet is among the most notorious of the accused rioters. He first gained social media fame for a widely-copied stunt in which he “forced” Starbucks employees to call out Trump’s name.
Gionet makes his living by live-streaming himself harassing and pepper-spraying passersby, during which his audience eggs him on and tips him in the live-stream’s chat function.
A far-right internet troll known as “Baked Alaska” who livestreamed during the Jan. 6 insurrection torched his own plea hearing almost immediately after it began, proclaiming his innocence and prompting the judge to set a trial date instead.https://t.co/9v2FDbIMQi
— BuzzFeed News (@BuzzFeedNews) May 11, 2022