Blaze Media reporter taken into FBI custody, facing charges of disorderly conduct during J6 riot

A journalist now working as a correspondent for Blaze Media was taken into FBI custody on Friday for entering the Capitol on Jan. 6 and reporting on the riot in 2021.

The journalist, Steven Baker, who was an independent journalist at the time of the riot, acknowledged in a joint Statement of Offense with the Justice Department in 2022 that he entered the capitol to report on the incident, which included live-streaming.

You can read the statement here: 

Baker has said on social media earlier this week that he had been cooperating with the FBI and that he would turn surrender to authorities. 

"I must turn myself in to the @FBI at 7 am, and then the FBI (or US Marshalls?) will transport me to the Dallas courthouse, where I can meet my attorney at 9:30 am," Baker wrote on the social media platform, X. "I’m then scheduled for a 10 am hearing before the magistrate."

Baker is facing charges of entering restricted grounds, disorderly conduct and parading and picketing in the Capitol, according to Blaze colleague Sara Gonzales.

Critics of how law enforcement agencies have handle arrests related to the riot have argued they have been overzealous in efforts to find and charge those who participated and that those in custody have had to wait far too long for trial. 

In a recent interview with conservative commentator Glenn Beck, Baker said there "is ever more evidence of the insane corruption at the top of the Capitol Police. ... they are more powerful than Congress itself.”