Anthony Alexander Antonio, the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol rioter whose attorney claimed he’d been infected with “Foxmania” or “Foxitus” after watching Fox News nonstop for six months, pleaded guilty Thursday to felony charges that included obstruction of an official proceeding.
Antonio, a 29-year-old from Delaware, is now staring down a prison sentence between 33 and 51 months. He’ll be sentenced next year.
Prosecutors said security footage and police body-worn cameras captured Antonio charging into the U.S. Capitol with a riot shield he stole from an officer near the lower west tunnel of the Capitol, where some of the worst violence of Jan. 6 took place. Prosecutors added that Antonio did nothing to help an officer as he was dragged down a set of stairs in front of him.
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Prior to the violence, an officer’s body-worn camera captured Antonio yelling at them, “You want war? We got war. 1776 all over again.”
Though his exact outfit is unclear in the clip, an arrest affidavit said Antonio was wearing a bulletproof vest adorned with a far-right “Three Percenter” patch and a camouflage shirt.
At an earlier hearing in his case, Antonio’s attorney, Joseph Hurley, told a judge that Fox News “played constantly” in Hurley’s home throughout the 2020 election cycle. He insinuated that Antonio was encouraged to carry out the attack because he’d become obsessed with the network’s news coverage, which included its parroting of conspiracies about Dominion Voting Systems—lies that cost Fox News $800 million in a settlement this spring.
An arrest affidavit said Antonio climbed the scaffolding outside the Capitol and entered the building through a broken window. Once inside, prosecutors said Antonio stole the riot shield and squirted water out of a bottle onto an officer.
A statement of facts revealed that prosecutors had captured Antonio on camera at the Capitol in more than a dozen videos and images—at one point holding a microphone as he rallied rioters.
Anthony Alexander Antonio was captured screaming at police officers in footage recorded by body-worn cameras.
Department of JusticeProsecutors said Antonio gave an interview to the far-right news website VDARE at the Capitol, where he accused police of being aggressors. He said he came to Washington to confront lawmakers over what he viewed as a stolen election, referencing disproven conspiracies about voter fraud in Georgia, specifically.
“We lost lives in there,” Antonio said in the interview, referencing clashes with police during the insurrection. “Two confirmed lives have been lost. Patriots, we took the Capitol and we’re not stopping. I will be back tonight. I couldn’t see, I couldn’t breathe, but we’re not backing down.”
Ashli Babbitt was the only Capitol rioter to be killed in the chaos—a shooting the Department of Justice and an internal U.S. Capitol Police probe determined was justified.
Hurley said in 2021 that Antonio believed he was following Donald Trump’s orders when he stormed the Capitol in what he thought was a patriotic movement to save the U.S.
“He became hooked with what I call ‘Foxitus’ or ‘Foxmania’ and became interested in the political aspect and started believing what was being fed to him,” Hurley said.
