The man who fired an assault rifle inside a Washington, D.C. pizzeria in December was sentenced to four years in prison on Thursday after pleading guilty to assault with a dangerous weapon and transporting a firearm over state lines.
At the time of the incident, the North Carolina resident, Edgar Maddison Welch, said he was “self-investigating” a claim that Hillary Clinton and her then-campaign chief, John Podesta, were running a pedophilia ring out of the restaurant’s back rooms. The conspiracy theory was likely generated by a white supremacy Twitter account before gaining traction across various online message boards and fake news sites leading up to the 2016 presidential election.
In what he believed was an attempt to rescue child sex slaves, Welch entered the restaurant, Comet Ping Pong, before 3:00 p.m. on December 4, 2016 and fired multiple shots. Court documents later revealed that Welch was intent on “[sacrificing] the lives of a few for the lives of many.” Upon finding no evidence to support his theory, Welch ultimately surrendered to police without causing any injuries. The story, which earned the nickname “Pizzagate,” was later cited as a cautionary tale of the gravity of fake news.
“What happened today demonstrates that promoting false and reckless conspiracy theories comes with consequences,” the restaurant’s owner, James Alefantis, said following the incident. “I hope that those involved in fanning these flames will take a moment to contemplate what happened here today, and stop promoting these falsehoods right away.”
But, in the hours after the shooting, Michael Flynn Jr., the son of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, continued to tweet about it. “Until #Pizzagate [is] proven to be false, it’ll remain a story,” Flynn Jr. said, adding: “The left seems to forget [the] #PodestaEmails and the many ‘coincidences’ tied to it.” At the heart of the conspiracy theory was the idea that Podesta’s many references to “pizza” in the WikiLeaks emails were code for pedophilia.
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https://www.theatlantic.com/news/archive/2017/06/dcs-pizzagate-shooter-sentenced-to-4-years-in-jail/531381/
