Plea deal reached in DC pizza shop incident

A plea deal has reportedly been reached with federal prosecutors for a man who was accused of firing an assault weapon inside a Washington, D.C. pizza shop.

On Wednesday, lawyers said during a status hearing in a U.S. District Court that they had reached a plea deal in principle for Edgar Maddison Welch, a North Carolina man arrested last year after he allegedly walked into the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria and fired a weapon, The Associated Press reported.

The gunman told police last year he was at the pizza shop to “self-investigate” a baseless conspiracy theory that former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and her campaign chairman were running a child sex trafficking ring from the restaurant.

Welch went into the pizza shop with a .38 revolver and the AR-15 assault weapon, according to court documents. He then “surrendered peacefully when he found no evidence that underage children were being harbored in the restaurant,” according to the documents.

No one was injured in the incident.

If he was convicted of interstate transportation of a firearm, assault with a dangerous weapon and possessing a firearm during a crime of violence, he could face up to 10 yeas in prison, according to the AP.

A plea hearing has been scheduled for March 24.

After the incident last year, then-White House press secretary Josh Earnest denounced the “corrosive” effect of fake news. He called it “concerning in a political context,” adding that it is “deeply troubling that some of those fake reports could lead to violence.”