“Unfortunately we just missed it”He mocked the Trump assassination attempt – no punishment for satirist El Hotzo

March 27, 2026 around 17:53 Clock

Satirist Sebastian Hotz alias El Hotzo compared the shooting of Donald Trump during the 2024 US election campaign to the “last bus”: “Unfortunately, we just missed it.” He added: “I think it’s absolutely fantastic when fascists die.” This brought the self-proclaimed “Internet clown” a shitstorm and almost 50 criminal charges.

Now his case has caught the attention of the judiciary for a second time. The Tiergarten district court ruled last July that the 30-year-old was not guilty of condoning a crime or disturbing the public peace. However, the public prosecutor's office appealed against the acquittal. From the prosecution's perspective, El Hotzo approved the assassination attempt in which Trump was hit in the ear by a bullet in an X-Post. The statements were associated with a “certain incitement,” said senior public prosecutor Frank Mohr.

El Hotzo's defense attorney, however, described her client's comments as “jokes that should not be taken seriously.” She could not understand the public prosecutor's “zeal for persecution”. Freedom of expression and satire is a valuable asset that needs to be protected. Hotz deleted the controversial posts after the online shitstorm broke out.

The Berlin Court of Appeal has now rejected the public prosecutor's appeal, so the district court's acquittal from the first instance remains.

A central question was whether Hotz also disturbed the “public peace” with his sharp remarks. His reach – he has well over 700,000 followers on X – is considerable. However, the presiding judge Gregor Herb rejected the idea. The comments are not suitable to shake the public's trust in general legal certainty. There is also no discernible transition to aggression or an appeal to break the law. The judge said that Hotz “didn’t want to be taken seriously professionally,” so he followed the defense and classified the statements as satire.

In his closing remarks, Hotz said he saw himself as an “internet clown” who had a lot of opinions and outrage, “but very little knowledge.” Satire can also be unfunny and “stupid”. He is surprised that he of all people should have disturbed the public peace.

After the verdict, he expressed relief and joked that a conviction would of course have been better for the promotion of his new book. Asked whether his jokes back then were “really stupid,” Hotz said that without the reactions, it wasn’t a gag he would have remembered for a long time.

Before the trial, Hotz expressed personal frustration and warned that his case could serve as a dangerous example. If he is convicted, satirists “would have to expect that every joke and every post could have legal consequences as long as it is intentionally misunderstood by enough people,” said the comedian. “It’s a world I don’t want to live in.”

The German Journalists Association (DJV) also criticized the fact that the case was reopened. It is incomprehensible that the public prosecutor's office cannot accept the district court's first verdict, said spokesman Hendrik Zörner. “The question arises as to what freedom of satire is actually worth. Or are the prosecutors so humorless that they haven't understood the satire in El Hotzo's post to this day?”

Shortly before the trial, El Hotzo even upped the ante. He posted a drawing on X showing the function of a captive bolt gun on a cow. He wrote: “Tomorrow Trump tweet revision”.

And last week, Hotz took aim at Trump's manners because the US president expressed his delight at the death of former FBI director Robert Mueller, who from 2017 to 2019 investigated possible Russian interference in the 2016 US election on Trump's behalf. El Hotzo commented on this with the words: “It's good that he's just US President, if he were a comedy writer for example, he would have to go to court for something like that.”

Sources used: csp/dpa