Anthime Joseph Gionet — the far-right internet troll who goes by “Baked Alaska” and who livestreamed his break-in at the Capitol on Jan. 6 — claimed on Wednesday that he blew up his plea deal earlier that day because he was actually following God’s light and not accidentally tying himself to a lit rocket like Wile E. Coyote.
During his livestream on Wednesday, Gionet explained the holiness of him claiming innocence while simultaneously pleading guilty at his hearing — the very move that led the judge to put the brakes on the Gionet’s plea deal and set a trial instead.
“I sat in the hearing, and God just put it on my heart to just speak the truth, to just speak from the heart,” Gionet told his viewers, per a clip of the stream posted by Right Wing Watch. “And that’s what I did.”
In fact, Gionet was “almost in tears” afterward because “God filled me with the Holy Spirit.”
“I was just speaking exactly what God wanted me to say,” Gionet said.
The far-right commentator’s biblical explanation came after the hearing, where he was supposed to plead guilty to one misdemeanor charge of parading, demonstrating and picketing inside the Capitol.
But Gionet flushed the arrangement down the toilet almost immediately when Judge Emmet Sullivan asked him why he was pleading guilty, to which the vlogger claimed that he wasn’t actually guilty.
Gionet said he had wanted to go to trial, but the prosecutors told him they would charge him with a felony if he did.
“So I think this is probably the better route,” the vlogger told Sullivan. “I believe I’m innocent … but they’re saying if I go to trial they’re going to hit me with a felony.”
Sullivan subsequently set a trial instead of accepting a guilty plea from a guy who claimed not to be guilty as he was pleading guilty.
“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,” the judge said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Elizabeth Ann Aloi disputed Gionet’s claim that the government had threatened to slap him with a felony, per Buzzfeed News. The prosecutor also said the plea deal will remain open for 60 days.
The trial for the man who named himself after a dessert is now scheduled for March next year.
