Self-described Haddonfield pickup artist and ‘relationship strategist’ convicted in Capitol riot case

A self-described Haddonfield sex and relationship strategist and “pickup artist” who livestreamed his participation in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol was convicted Friday by a federal jury in Washington.

Patrick A. Stedman, 35 — who bills himself online as an expert in “female psychology” — was found guilty of one felony count of obstructing an official proceeding as well as four misdemeanor charges tied to his illegal entry into the Capitol as part of the mob of supporters of former President Donald Trump who stormed the building and interrupted the congressional certification of President Joe Biden’s victory.

He now faces up to 20 years in prison on the most serious count at a sentencing set for September and has become the 17th New Jersey resident found guilty of playing a role in the historic attack, which caused millions of dollars in damage, injured scores of officers and threatened the peaceful transition of power.

The vast majority of the convicted New Jersey residents struck deals with prosecutors to plead guilty to misdemeanor counts. Stedman was one of the few to take his case to trial.

“I feel completely at peace,” he tweeted, within hours of the jury reaching its decision Friday.

He thanked his attorney, Rocco Cipparone Jr., said he held no animosity toward prosecutors or the jury, and asked followers to send his family money.

“January 6th was a day of confusion, with high emotions and misunderstanding,” he continued. “The question is simply who created that chaos. Who gave the orders to antagonize the crowd? How did it all start, and why? I pray that we get the answer to that soon.”

Cipparone did not immediately return calls for comment.

Friday’s verdict came after a five-day trial, in which prosecutors alleged Stedman spent more than 40 minutes inside the Capitol — documenting much of it for the thousands who follow his social media accounts.

Before the riot, Stedman had urged them to join him in Washington on Jan. 6.

“Will eventually be a national holiday akin to the 4th of July,” he wrote in a post in the run-up to that day. “You will want to tell your grandchildren you were there.”

He would later brag he was “among the first wave” of rioters who “broke down the doors and climbed up the back part of the Capitol building” and he tweeted video of himself sitting in then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office.

“Patriots took the hard drives from the Capitol,” he tweeted triumphantly, falsely declaring later that Trump had sent the D.C. National Guard to assist rioters. “What did we tell you these last few months? The storm is here.”

Still, logical consistency did not appear to be among Stedman’s strong suits.

In other posts from the day, he blamed antifa provocateurs for storming the building.

“I can tell you having been in the Capitol, those videos the MSM [mainstream media] is showing of fights between cops and protesters are unlike any of the dynamics I saw,” he said in another video.

Moments earlier, he’d posted: “Shots fired, guns drawn by guards.”

Testifying in his own defense at trial, Stedman maintained he’d just been exercising his First Amendment rights to protest and drew distinctions between himself and other rioters who were accused of destroying property or fighting with Capitol police.

He’d been punished enough, he said, by the media attention and public opprobrium directed his way following his arrest.

Federal prosecutors charged Stedman within weeks of the riot after former classmates at Haddonfield Memorial High School and the University of Pennsylvania turned him in to the FBI.

Yet even in the run-up to trial, Stedman appeared to revel in the attention his case brought to his public profile.

Stedman had developed a moderately sizable online following before the riot by casting himself as a pickup artist and trafficking in a steady mix of misogyny, COVID denialism, and QAnon conspiracy theories online.

In a daily “sex and female psychology” newsletter, he promised subscribers he’d answer once and for all the question of what women “really want from men.” He offered relationship coaching classes at $500 a session, promising to unlock the mysteries of “well-executed online dating exchanges” and “the easiest way to ‘supercharge’ your woman’s femininity.”

The Capitol riot charges didn’t curtail his social media use.

In an online fundraising pitch for money to cover his legal fees, Stedman said he’d “cried deep, uncontrollable tears” for “the United States of America I knew and loved” and maintained the case against him was an attack on Biden’s political opponents.

“Classmates and family members informed the FBI on me,” he wrote. “I was disinvited from family gatherings. My father and I were kicked out of the wine group he founded 40 years ago.”

His pitch raised more than $43,000.

Then, in late 2021, the judge overseeing his case admonished him for engaging in a Twitter fight with one of the classmates he believed to have reported him to federal investigators.

Stedman referred to the man as “a self-admitted porn and video game addict” and “a loser from high school I had to look up in the yearbook to know he existed.”

If “these are the kind of people we’re up against,” he wrote, “we will win.”

On Friday, the jury hearing his case had other ideas.