Stew Peters — the prominent, far-right shock jock — was arrested for a DWI in his Minnesota hometown earlier this month after he allegedly overturned an ATV while driving drunk.
Peters is the host of the darkly conspiratorial Stew Peters Show. Peters is also a filmmaker behind viral anti-vax propaganda flicks, as well as a recent movie, Occupiedwhich purports to expose “Jewish supremacy” in the Western world. The film is marketed with an image of the White House under an Israeli flag, shrouded by apparent visages of Jewish men with curls. The Anti-Defamation League labels Peters a “prolific anti-Semite.”
Despite such extremism, Peters has long hosted more mainstream MAGA figures, including GOP congressmen, on his show. His past guests have included fellow antivaxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now Trump's nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, as well as Kash Patel, Trump's nominee to lead the FBI. (The Bulwark reports that Patel and Peters may have had a falling out over US support for Israel.)
Peters, a failed rapper and former bounty hunter, has disturbing ideas about law and order; he has called for show trials and public executions of public figures and journalists — a campaign of “extreme accountability” that he seeks to impose on the likes of former federal scientist Anthony Fauci, presidential son Hunter Biden, and — full disclosure — this reporter.
Peters was arrested on the night of Dec. 1 in Red Wing, a suburb of Minneapolis. A policeman had been called to the scene of a spilled ATV by a neighbor who had unsuccessfully tried to help the driver right the vehicle, but grew concerned that the man might have been driving impaired by alcohol.
The officer tracked down Peters near the crash site walking in the direction of his home. According to the police report, Peters initially acknowledged having flipped the Can-Am ATV, telling the officer that “the fucker is top heavy,” adding that he was in the process of walking home to get his trailer to retrieve the vehicle.
The police officer describes asking Peters where he was coming from, and whether he'd been drinking. Peters allegedly told the cop he'd been at a “buddy's house” and had consumed “three beers probably.” The officer records his impressions of Peters as slurring his speech, “swaying slightly,” and having the “smell of alcohol emanating from his person.” When the officer asked Peters to perform a field sobriety test, the report indicates, Peters' tale began shifting. He allegedly proceeded to “change his story several times” — including suddenly claiming he'd not been driving the overturned vehicle.
Peters was arrested and taken to a county detention center for an alcohol test. After some delay at the detention center — caused by another officer retrieving Peters' cell phone from the ATV so the shock jock could contact a lawyer — Peters blew a .19 on an alcohol breath test, per the police report. The legal limit for blood alcohol in the state is .08. After being Mirandized, per the police report, Peters denied that he'd been drinking, denied that he'd been driving, and denied knowing about the crashed ATV.
Peters was charged with two gross misdemeanor DWI charges, and later set free from jail on a $12,000 bond on Dec. 2. As a condition of his release, court documents indicate, Peters is to be hooked up to an alcohol monitor and barred from alcohol use. A rep for Peters and Peters' lawyer did not to respond to queries from Rolling Stone.
Booking photo courtesy of Goodhue County Sheriff's Office
This is not Peters' first run-in with local law enforcement. Peters was arrested in 2021 on domestic assault and disorderly conduct charges in which intoxication was alleged, per court documents. The assault charges were ultimately dismissed and Peters received one year of supervised probation for the disorderly conduct charge.
Peters is due in court for his current charges on Jan 9. He has been broadcasting since the arrest, continuing to spew conspiratorial bile, including that “Israel has the United States completely bent over the barrel” and that American politicians “do whatever their Israeli masters say to do.”
