Jon Schaffer, the heavy metal guitarist and founding “lifetime member” of the Oath Keepers who was among the first to breach the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, has been sentenced to three years of probation and 120 hours of community service. He will also have to pay $1,000 in restitution and a $200 financial assessment.
The sentence for Schaffer, who accepted a plea deal in April 2021, is similar to what the government recommended earlier this month (The Department of Justice had asked him to pay $2,000 in restitution.)
In early October, federal prosecutors praised Schaffer’s “substantial” cooperation in the Jan. 6 investigation and recommended that he serve no time in prison. The Republic reports that they instead asked for Schaffer to receive three years of probation, including six months of house arrest, along with the previously stated restitution, fine, and community service. He provided information for other cases to the U.S. government and testified before a grand jury. The recommendation also follows a June Supreme Court ruling that limited prosecutors’ ability to charge Jan. 6 insurrectionists with obstruction and several delays to Schaffer’s sentencing date.
Attorneys for Schaffer did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone’s request for comment. The Department of Justice has not yet commented on the sentence.
The sentence has been a long time coming for Schaffer, who became one of the most talked-about people to enter the Capitol due to his high profile. Over the years, Schaffer, who founded the successful metal group Iced Earth, has made statements to the press supporting conservative government leaders and offering conspiracy theories about liberals. According to court documents, Schaffer had no criminal record prior to Jan. 6, but before his arrest, the FBI included him on its “Most Wanted” list in the days following the insurrection.
In a statement of facts for the government, an FBI agent included photos of Schaffer and claimed he had sprayed Capitol Police officers with “bear spray,” a form of pepper spray. When he entered the Capitol, he was wearing a baseball cap bearing the legend “Oath Keepers Lifetime Member,” affiliating him with the ad-hoc militia group that claims to uphold the Constitution but whose founder, Stewart Rhodes, was found guilty in 2022 of seditious conspiracy regarding Jan. 6 and was sentenced to 18 years in prison in May.
On Nov. 14, 2020, a week after President Biden had won the election, Schaffer had attended the “Million MAGA March” with other Oath Keepers and had given an interview that day to a journalist, promising “a lot of bloodshed” if the country were “to merge into some globalist, communist system.”
On Jan. 16, 2021, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia filed a criminal complaint on behalf of the country containing six charges. It claimed Schaffer knowingly entered a restricted building, disrupted the orderly conduct of government business, knowingly engaged in physical violence in a restricted building, entered the Capitol violently with “disorderly conduct,” engaged in physical violence in the Capitol, and participated in a demonstration in the government building. The court issued an arrest warrant the same day. Schaffer, who lives in Fort Wayne, Indiana, turned himself in to authorities the next day in Noblesville, Indiana.
Three months later, the Department of Justice offered Schaffer a plea deal, reducing his charges to “Obstruction of an Official Proceeding” and “Entering and Remaining in a Restricted Building or Grounds with a Deadly or Dangerous Weapon.” The former charge carried a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, a fine of $250,000, and three years of supervised release. The latter charge carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, another $250,000 fine, and another period of supervised release up to three years. In its paperwork, the DOJ said it would recommend between 41 and 51 months in prison and a fine between $15,000 and $250,000. For his cooperation, the government also offered to place him in witness protection. Schaffer signed the doc the next day and was released on personal recognizance as he awaited sentencing.
In a March 2021 detention hearing, Schaffer’s lawyer described Schaffer as “a man of peace” and claimed he knew “absolutely none of these people” at the Million MAGA March and that his statements about bloodshed were “anti-war.” “He’s anti-global government,” Victor said. “OK. I don’t know exactly what that means, but I know there are lots of reasonable people who agree with Mr. Schaffer on that point.” Victor also denied that Schaffer was an Oath Keeper, though text messages from a day after the insurrection showed one member writing on a group thread, “He’s one of us, right?”
Schaffer placed blame for his actions, Victor said, on former President Trump. “He bought into a narrative,” the attorney said. “What you heard from Mr. Schaffer is what Mr. Schaffer heard from the president of the United States: that the election was stolen, that it was rigged, that there was fraud. He believed the president of the United States, and maybe that’s his mistake here. I don’t know.”
Growing up, Schaffer’s dad seeded him with political beliefs. “My father was a John Birch guy,” Schaffer told radio host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, referring to the ultraconservative, anticommunist John Birch Society, in 2011. “When I was a young child, I remember things that he and his friends would talk about, concerning the U.N. and stuff.”
He formed Iced Earth around 1989 and was the only musician to remain in the band’s lineup since the beginning. (The group has released more than a dozen albums.) Nearly all of Iced Earth’s members over the years declined to speak with Rolling Stone about Schaffer, but those who did described him as driven, possibly to the point of alienating his collaborators.
Schaffer started addressing his political beliefs after 9/11 both in song (the band’s 2004 album, The Glorious Burden, took inspiration from the Civil War) and in interviews. “I don’t want a Big Brother dictating my life,” he said in 2004 when asked if a “leftist government” could be positive for the U.S. “I don’t feel like I should be taxed to death to pay for all these government programs that the leftists want. I’m an independent person; the smaller the government the better. Government should not be ruling people’s lives. It’s bullshit and that’s not what we’re about.” In the same issue, he asked, “Where have the Democrats gotten the Blacks?” and described CNN as “the Communist News Network.”
By the end of the decade, Schaffer’s public interest in politics intensified as he launched a new side project, Sons of Liberty. Songs on the band’s 2010 album, Brush-Fires of the Mind, include “Our Dying Republic,” “We the People (We Surround Them),” and “Jekyll Island.” The last song references conspiracy theorist G. Edward Griffin’s 1994 book, The Creature From Jekyll Island, which contends that the Federal Reserve bank “become an accomplice in the support of totalitarian regimes throughout the world.” Schaffer listed Jekyll Island first on his list of favorite books on his band’s profile page. (His “favorite saying,” according to that profile, is “Stand for something … or die for nothing.”)
Around this time, Schaffer started opening up more about his politics in interviews. “I have voted Republican and independent in the past because I’ve always been a constitutional conservative,” he told Sleaze Roxx in 2010. “However, I don’t trust the rhetoric from any politician anymore. I am watching these people like a hawk, and that’s what we all need to be doing.” He also made an appearance on conspiracy theorist Judge Andrew Napolitano’s Fox Business show that year and said he was a fan of Napolitano’s writings. (Napolitano later claimed that the British surveilled Donald Trump in 2016 at Obama’s request.)
He also defended Alex Jones in 2013, when the Infowars host was suggesting that the Boston Marathon bombings were orchestrated by the U.S. government. “People can call him [Alex Jones], me, or anybody that knows history and has studied the facts a conspiracy theorist all they want, I don’t really give a shit,” Schaffer said. “We’re not talking about conspiracy theories; we’re talking about conspiracy facts.”
A few years later, he seeded further conspiracy theories claiming that Hillary Clinton did not win the popular vote in the 2016 election. “At least five states were stolen,” he told TV War (via Blabbermouth). “They had three million illegal immigrants vote. So the popular vote, I don’t believe that Hillary won that, even though they say she did. I think there’s so much lies and so much deception coming out of the mainstream media and the government itself that I don’t trust any of it.”
Within a couple of years, he was using conservative rhetoric, claiming, “We’ve turned into a society of snowflakes,” and declaring himself an anarchist. “I’m not a fan of government,” he said in 2019. “I’m not a fan of the left — they’re just as ridiculous as the extreme right. You follow the circle, and you end up meeting. Both ends of the spectrum will end up at the same point at some point, when you go extreme either way.”
In November 2020, while walking in the Million MAGA March to protest the alleged voter fraud that allowed Joe Biden to win the presidency over Donald Trump, Schaffer spoke with the German news outlet Welt.
“My name is Jon Schaffer; I’m from Indiana,” he said in video from the interview that later surfaced online. “A group of thugs and criminals hijacked this country a long time ago. Now they’re making their big move, and it’s not going to happen. And that’s what it is. These are globalists. These are the scum of the Earth.… People need to wake up and snap out of the matrix, because they’re going down. They’ve made the move; they’re messing with the wrong people here, trust me on that.”
Fifty-two days later, Schaffer was one of the first insurrectionists to breach the Capitol.
