Free Steve Baker!

Steve Baker has been living under a cloud for two years. For two years, Baker, an investigative reporter and contributor to Blaze Media, has had to live and work not knowing whether he would wake up one morning to the sound of a heavily armed FBI SWAT team banging on his front door.

For two years, Baker has had to wonder whether the U.S. Justice Department would try to do to him what it has done to hundreds of other people who were in Washington, D.C., on the afternoon of January 6, 2021.

On Thursday, Baker heard from his attorney with the news he’d been expecting but hoping would never come. The Justice Department intends to press charges. He will be allowed to turn himself in to authorities in his home state of North Carolina on Tuesday morning — no SWAT required.

Baker doesn’t know what exactly he’s being charged with. The FBI agent who gave Baker’s attorney the terrible news pleaded ignorance and said he wouldn’t know for sure until a judge signed the official warrant for Baker’s arrest. It’s a perfect administrative state mystery. Franz Kafka couldn’t have written it any better. But it happens all the time.

Steve has detailed his legal saga so far. We published it in October here at Blaze Media. Read part one and part two for a full picture of just how absurd — but how gravely serious — this prosecution will be.

What we see with the government’s decision to prosecute Baker is an escalation in its weaponization of the law against its perceived political enemies.

I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that Baker learned of his coming indictment the very same day he met with a pair of Capitol Police whistleblowers. Nor do I believe it’s a coincidence that the Justice Department decided to press ahead as Baker has spent more than a week viewing hundreds of hours of Capitol closed-circuit TV video and unearthing previously undisclosed details about the events of January 6.

This has gone on long enough. Too long, in fact. Merrick Garland’s Justice Department is not doing justice. Christopher Wray’s FBI is not pursuing justice. They are dealing in political retribution. With the indictment of Steve Baker, it’s a fact too obvious to ignore.

Whereas in the past, political protesters have received the equivalent of a slap on the wrist or at most a small fine for momentarily disrupting a congressional proceeding, the government has gone to extraordinary and arguably unconstitutional lengths in punishing Americans who wished to do nothing more than air their grievances about a suspect process. That a few did so loudly and violently does not change the fact that the vast majority of participants were guilty of little more than trespassing.

In Baker’s case, he is guilty of nothing but committing journalism. The First Amendment has something to say about that.

Enough of this. Congress can no longer allow the attorney general and the director of the FBI to get away with evasions and dissembling about January 6. The federal officials who abused their power and the American people’s trust must be held to account.

Members of Congress — and all Americans who claim to support the Constitution and the First Amendment — must speak out and speak loudly about Steve Baker.

Support Steve Baker by supporting Blaze Media. He will not be silenced, and with your help, neither will we.