‘QAnon Shaman’ Jacob Chansley, face of pro-Trump Capitol riot, to plead guilty
By Spencer S. Hsu,
One of the most visible participants in the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol is set to plead guilty Friday, as a federal judge scheduled a plea hearing for Jacob Anthony Chansley, often referred to as the “QAnon Shaman.”
Chansley, 33, of Phoenix was photographed shirtless and wearing horns, a fur-lined headdress and red, white and blue face paint while carrying a flag-draped spear in the Capitol, where prosecutors said he sat in the vice president’s chair and left Mike Pence a note after the Senate chamber was evacuated.
On Thursday afternoon, U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth set a plea hearing for 11 a.m. Friday. A calendaring notice filed in the court’s electronic docketing system did not specify charges or whether Chansley had entered a plea deal with prosecutors. A guilty plea is not final until it has been entered in court and approved by a judge.
Chansley attorney Albert Watkins would not say what his client would plead guilty to or what sentence he might face under a plea deal, but praised the judge and prosecutors for what he called “a collaborative effort” to address Chansley’s mental health issues.
“This man is iconically and forever linked as the face of January 6th. He is to January 6th what the swoosh is to Nike, whether he likes it or not, and that is a difficult, iconic, visual tagline to overcome,” Watkins said Thursday in a telephone interview.
Chansley, who has said he was a QAnon adherent, “has repudiated the ‘Q’ previously assigned to him” and requested to no longer be identified with the letter, Watkins added in a statement.
Watkins called for “patience and compassion” for those who like Chansley who “were nonviolent, peaceful and possessed of genuine mental health issues which rendered them more vulnerable to the propaganda of the day,” but who seek to be accountable for their actions.
Chansley has been detained since his Jan. 9 arrest in Arizona. He had pleaded not guilty to a six-count indictment charging him with felony counts of rioting and obstructing an official proceeding of Congress, punishable by up to 20 years in prison, as well as misdemeanor counts including trespassing and disorderly conduct.
[U.S. judge scolds ‘QAnon Shaman’ for appearing on ‘60 Minutes+’ without permission]
In March, Chansley said in a jailhouse interview with “60 Minutes+” that the Capitol riots were “not an attack on this country,” and his lawyer argued that he was not really armed although he was recorded carrying a spear.
The judge rejected Chansley’s claims — made in an interview granted without permission of the jail, U.S. Marshals Service or the court — as “meritless,” “mistaken” and “so frivolous as to insult the Court’s intelligence.”
“The statements defendant has made to the public from jail show that defendant does not fully appreciate the severity of the allegations against him,” and his perception of his actions “as peaceful, benign and well-intentioned shows a detachment from reality,” Lamberth wrote in an order.
The judge pointed to videos, photos, social media posts and police interviews that authorities said showed Chansley leading the breach of the U.S. Capitol while holding a six-foot pole topped with a spear tip. Prosecutors added that Chansley forced his way into the Senate chamber, where he sat in the presiding officer’s chair and left Pence a note declaring “ITS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME JUSTICE IS COMING!”
In social media posts before the riot, Chansley also advocated for “identifying and then hanging those he believes to be traitors within the United States government,” according to court documents. FBI agents say that in interviews with them, Chansley said he had plans to go to the Arizona Capitol and that he might engage in similar acts in the future.
The judge also said that Chansley “blatantly lied” when he claimed that a police officer waved him into the building, a claim that was contradicted by security footage and other videos filed by prosecutors. He said Chansley’s suggestion that he entered the building in a calm “third wave” of rioters, only after the Capitol had been violently breached by others, was false.
“To the contrary, he quite literally spearheaded [the breach],” Lamberth wrote.
Using the name Jacob Angeli and in costume, Chansley was repeatedly photographed and interviewed in 2020 at pro-Trump rallies, often carrying a sign saying “Q sent me.”
“When you really do enough research, it all ties together,” he told the Arizona Republic about QAnon, the conspiracy theory that holds that a Satan-worshipping cabal of “global elites” and “deep state” international child sex traffickers plotted to oust Trump.
Chansley also made headlines after his arrest when he asked to be fed only organic foods, citing his obscure religious beliefs, and begged to be released after Watkins said he lost 20 pounds in jail.
Watkins sought and prosecutors did not oppose a psychiatric evaluation of Chansley that was conducted this summer at a federal prison facility in Colorado.
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