Pro-Trump activist who claims he's from the future will represent himself against federal charges for stealing NFL brain scans

On Tuesday, The Daily Beast's Will Sommer reported that Austin Steinbart — a QAnon activist controversial even within the pro-Trump conspiracy world — plans to act as his own attorney in an upcoming federal criminal case.

The QAnon conspiracy theory — which has been listed as a potential domestic terror threat by national security officials — holds that President Donald Trump is secretly fighting a Democratic Party-controlled ring of pedophiles who consume children in Satanic cannibalism rituals. Steinbart refers to himself under the alias "Baby Q" and claims he is the original government insider who created the movement, time traveling from the future.

Steinbart was arrested by the FBI in April after he uploaded footage of himself at a mental health clinic in Los Angeles, gaining unauthorized access to what appeared to be the brain scans of NFL players. He was originally released on pretrial leave, but was arrested again last month after being caught with a "Whizzinator" — an artificial plastic penis used to smuggle clean urine to beat drug tests.

"During a court hearing on Tuesday, Steinbart admitted to smoking marijuana but sidestepped the Whizzinator issue. Now his release has been revoked, and he’ll stay in jail pending trial," reported Sommer at the time. "The most immediate casualty of Steinbart’s Whizzinator misadventure appears to be the documentary about him. This week, the documentary’s creators said they would have to put the film on hold, both because Steinbart is in jail and because people keep making fun of the Whizzinator."