Infowars correspondent Owen Shroyer livestreamed himself interrupting, then being removed from, a House Judiciary Committee hearing in impeachment inquiry into President Trump on Monday.
In a video posted to his Twitter, Shroyer is shown being handcuffed as he tells the camera, “I’m being arrested right now for disrupting the Congress. I’m a criminal for my First Amendment rights.”
According to Infowars, Shroyer “won’t be released until end of day at earliest.”
Shroyer addressed Committee Chair Rep. Jerry Nadler directly in the livestream by yelling: “Jerry Nadler and the Democrat party are committing treason against this country and you can kick me out, but he’s the one committing crimes. You are, Jerry Nadler! You’re the one committing treason! America is done with this! America is sick of the treason committed by the Democrat party.”
He continued, “We voted for Donald Trump,” accusing Democrats of attempting to impeach the president because they don’t “like” him, before declaring, “Trump is innocent.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Thursday that the House is drafting articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump after hearing days’ worth of testimony in the impeachment inquiry. Pelosi announced the impeachment inquiry in September. The decision came in light of a whistleblower complaint that the president sought to use foreign power from Ukraine during a phone call for his own political gain.
Notably, Shroyer’s videos on Twitter did not link back to Infowars itself. In 2018, Twitter, joining a list of Silicon Valley stalwarts, permanently suspended digital conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his Infowars website for violating its policies against “abusive behavior.”
In a recap posted to the Infowars site, Kit Daniels wrote, “The arrest highlights a double standard in Washington, D.C., in which establishment-approved activists are allowed to confront congressmen in their faces, but a reporter like Shroyer is arrested for protesting a House representative from a distance.”
A representative for Nadler did not immediately respond to a request for comment.