A judge on Thursday found conspiracy theorist, COVID denier, and Jan. 6 defendant Alan Hostetter guilty of conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, rejecting the police-chief-turned-yogi’s wild claims that the Capitol riot was actually an entrapment operation launched by the federal government in a plot to oppress Trump supporters.
Hostetter, who at one time headed up the La Habra Police Department in California before retiring to become a yoga instructor, showed up to the pro-Trump insurrection with a hatchet in his backpack and a bullhorn, through which he “cheered on rioters,” Judge Royce Lamberth said in handing down his verdict.
Hostetter represented himself in court and waived his right to a jury trial, opting instead for a bench trial, where a judge decides a defendant’s fate. He floated one absurd premise after another, trying in vain to convince Lamberth that the sacking of the Capitol had in fact been carried out by “crisis actors wearing costumes,” not a violent mob of MAGA fans trying to overturn the 2020 election. Joe Biden stole Donald Trump’s rightful victory, Hostetter—wrongly—insisted in court. However, he also insisted he and the others in the crowd had no intention of disrupting the vote certification going on inside the halls of Congress.
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The Jan. 6 riot was not actually a riot, but little more than a “three-hour hissy fit,” he said during his closing arguments on Thursday.
In response, Lamberth told Hostetter that he had “acted corruptly with consciousness of wrongdoing,” and that even if he truly believed the 2020 presidential election was fixed (it wasn’t), he should have known, as a former law enforcement official, that what he was doing was illegal.
“Belief that your actions are for a greater good does not negate consciousness of wrongdoing,” said Lamberth.
Hostetter—a self-described member of the radical right-wing militia group the Three Percenters—was “not being prosecuted for engaging in protected First Amendment activity,” Lamberth emphasized, adding that the First Amendment “does not give anyone a right to obstruct or impede Congress by making it impossible for them to do their jobs safely,” or to “enter a restricted area while carrying a dangerous weapon.”
The trial began earlier this month, following a guilty plea in April by one of Hostetter’s five co-defendants, Russell Taylor, who later testified against Hostetter. The other four are set to go to trial in October. On YouTube, law professor and Los Angeles Times legal affairs correspondent Harry Litman, himself a former federal prosecutor, referred to the proceedings as the “CRAZIEST January 6th Trial Yet.”
At the outset, which began more than two years ago, Lamberth “strongly urge[d]” Hostetter “not to try to represent yourself.”
But Hostetter ignored the recommendation, casting aside the slim historical odds facing pro se defendants, and forged ahead. In May, he filed a rambling motion in court, complaining that the government was “gaslighting” him, going on to float pages of disjointed claims about, variously, Hunter Biden, Twitter “censorship,” and the so-called “QAnon Shaman.” His most recent filing laid out the lone exhibit he planned to present in his defense; the prosecution’s list took up a full 38 pages.
The Capitol riot was a “federal scheme,” Hostetter argued in the May 30 filing, previewing a surreal “entrapment defense” he said he planned to employ in court. He then laid out a deranged set of what he called the “three fundamental pillars to the Triune Entrapment Defense,” arguing, among other things, that Biden is an “imposter president” and that Jan. 6 was a “false flag.”
In a filing submitted to the court 12 days earlier, Hostetter had provided more than 40 pages of bullet-pointed questions such as, “Do we now know our own government assassinated JFK? Are the files still hidden 60 years later? Why? What are some of the reasons Tucker Carlson was canceled?” He spoke of being followed by strangers in an “organized community stalking campaign,” and a “profound experience with Christ” in August 2021 that he is not yet ready to discuss publicly.
He said he planned to call 29 witnesses “to combat this Gaslighting and this corrupt indictment,” including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, CNN reporter Donie O’Sullivan, and imprisoned Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio.
Earlier filings by Hostetter had put forth equally unmoored allegations. In one, dated Dec. 6, 2021, Hostetter moved for dismissal on grounds of what he believed was “outrageous government conduct.” He claimed the FBI was after him because of his anti-lockdown protests in the early days of the COVID pandemic, and that the government had targeted him using “third party intermediaries [that] might include such organizations and ‘secret societies’ such as Yale University’s ‘Skull and Bones,’ Freemasonry, and specific religious denominations known for secrecy such as Scientology and Mormonism, which will be expanded upon further into this motion.”
Karren Kenney, a “stand-by” lawyer the court provided to assist Hostetter, did not immediately respond to The Daily Beast’s query as to whether or not he asked for, or took, any of her advice.
