A Closer Look At QAnon Shaman

Much of the up to now suppressed January 6 Capitol footage that Tucker Carlson ran Monday night features Jacob Chansley, aka QAnon Shaman. There's been remarkably little commentary on Chansley's legal situation, although he's currently in federal prison serving a 41-month sentence on one count of obstructing an official proceeding, for which he pleaded guilty on September 3, 2021. The severity of the sentence was explained by the judge:

Judge Royce Lamberth has had Chansley held in jail since his arrest, despite his multiple attempts to gain sympathy and his release.

Other judges are likely to look to Lamberth’s sentence as a possible benchmark, since Chansley is one of the first felony defendants among more than 660 Capitol riot cases to receive a punishment.

. . . “He made himself the image of the riot, didn’t he?” Lamberth said to Chansley’s defense attorney. “For good or bad, he made himself the very image of this whole event.”

The release of the January 6 footage that depicts his role more clearly during the Carlson broadcast raises questions about whether this was Chansley's actual intent (a record of the whole show is here.) According to the New York Post,

For several minutes, the video shows, Robishaw and another officer follow Chansley as he tried to enter the Senate chamber. At one point, Robishaw tried a locked door with the Senate seal etched on its frosted glass.

At another point, Chansley and the officers pass a group of seven other cops, who seem to pay them no mind.

Chansley and the two officers eventually find an unlocked door and one of the policemen holds it open after Chansley lets himself onto the Senate floor. The DOJ timeline confirmed that Robishaw followed Chansley into the chamber as the “Shaman” took the seat on the dais recently occupied by Vice President Mike Pence.

The most obvious conclusion I can draw from the footage is that Chansley's own behavior appears to be disorganized and unfocused, irrespective of any other judgment that might be applied to it. He was wandering the halls at random, with no apparent objective in mind, and the police simply followed him, making no attempt to stop him or detain him, and in at least one case, trying to open a door for him, although it isn't necessarily clear if that was what Chansley himself wanted done.

In other words, with only a layman's understandiong of mental health, adding this to his bizarre dress and reported ranting, I've got to wonder if Chansley was all there. The incomplete record we have suggests he wasn't:

Chansley's defense lawyer Albert Watkins said that it's possible his client could cut a plea deal after officials at the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) diagnosed him with transient schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety.

. . . Watkins said his client has expressed some delusions including 'believing that he was indeed related directly to Jesus and Buddha.'

. . . Watkins says Chansley's 2006 mental health records from his time in the U.S. Navy show a similar diagnosis to the BOP's.

Watkins said authorities will need to determine how Chansley can get access to the treatment he needs to 'actively participate in his own defense.' Pleading guilty to a charge negates the need for a trial, but defendants still have to be declared mentally competent to do so.

Chansley was discharged from the US Navy after two years in 2007:

A Navy official told Task & Purpose Chansley was booted from the service after he refused to take the anthrax vaccine. Citing privacy regulations, officials declined to provide the characterization of his discharge.

Chansley's attorney Watkins referred to some type of Navy psychological evalutation, but as is routine, this would be confidential. Nevertheless, given his public conduct on January 6 and the evaluation by the US Bureau of Prisons, it's certainly credible that he'd been displaying symptoms of mental problems throuhout at least the prior 14 years. For whatever reason, Watkins seems not to have pursued an effort to have had him declared mentally incompetent to plead guilty.

On November 30, 2021, only three months after his guilty plea, Chansley appealed his 41-month sentence:

Chansley’s appeal came a day after the federal judge who accepted his plea and who sentenced him in U.S. District Court in Washington signed off on his move to replace his defense attorney Albert Watkins with a new lawyer, John Pierce.

. . . It is extremely difficult to get a guilty plea and subsequent sentence in federal court reversed on appeal, particularly because judges are careful to have defendants confirm that they understand that they are waiving their rights to appeal the plea or sentence in most cases.

However, a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel — essentially an argument that a defense lawyer badly botched the case — is one potential way to win a reversal of a guilty plea.

A legal nonprofit group founded by Chansley’s new attorney last week said ineffective assistance of counsel may be a ground for Chansley to appeal his conviction. A legal filing Tuesday by Pierce did not lay out Chansley’s grounds for his appeal, which will be heard by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Another problem that isn't yet clear is whether Chansley's counsel, either Watkins or Pierce, was aware of the January 6 footage that shows Chansley's actual conduct on that day. He entered the Senate chamber and sat in the vice president's seat only after being escorted there by Capitol police, who made no effort to restrain him and appear to have given him the impression that they were there to assist him. According to this report from Julie Kelly,

Capitol Police and the Justice Department designated the recordings as “highly sensitive” material in March 2021; the trove remains under tight protective orders and defendants must agree to strict rules before gaining access to clips entered as evidence against them.

Capitol Police turned over to the FBI roughly 14,000 hours of video covering the hours of noon and 8:00 p.m. on January 6 but the full 24-hour reel has been in the hands of House Democrats for two years—reportedly the footage that Carlson’s team was authorized to view.

If prosecutors withheld exculpatory evidence in the January 6 recordings from Chansley's counsel, or if Watkins made ineffective use of them, that would be highly problematic for the government's case, and it would certainly support a claim that Watkins had been ineffective as Chansley's counsel.

The response of the Capitol Police to questions about the new footage also doesn't seem to match the depiction of actual events:

The footage appears to show officers walking with the horn-hatted Chansley through the halls of the U.S. Capitol Building.

Capitol police were asked for their response to the footage and the argument that an effort was not made to stop the Jan. 6 demonstrator from reaching the Senate floor.

"Before this video was recorded, a violent group of people fought through multiple police lines and illegally broke into the U.S. Capitol, which was closed for a Joint Session of Congress," the police force said in a statement to Just the News.

. . . The police force statement also reads: "Moments earlier, our officers and agents had to evacuate the Senate chamber, which was closed to the public, to rush elected officials and staffers to safety. After that, multiple people snuck into the chamber. The officer was vastly outnumbered by rioters. At this point, it is clear the officer is trying to get everyone out of the chamber."

However, this refers to an entirely separate event, quite possibly involving a different officer or officers who were with Chansley in the Carlson footage, and who in one scene were with seven other officers, none of whom made any attempt to detain or restrain Chensley. Chensley throughout many minutes in the Carlson footage was never with more than one or two others, and the officer or officers with him and his companions never seem even to have remonstrated with them.

There are many unanswered questions. This story, ostensibly a "major update" following the Carlson show, isn't entirely credible:

A former federal prosecutor representing J6 clients revealed that Chansley very well may be released from custody soon.

“My client, Jake Chansley, was a big part of Tucker’s first big rollout of video tonight,” said his attorney on Twitter. “There is a story beyond just the fact that the Govt had video Jake’s attorney never looked at. Jake is set to be released from custody soon.”

But the story refers only to a Twitter thread by someone going under the name shipreckedcrew. I've been trying to figure out who "shipreckedcrew" is -- possibly Chansley's new attorney, Pierce -- but I've got to say that he isn't acting like defense attorneys I usually see as a true crime fan. His statements on Twitter still leave it unclear whether the Justice Department or the January 6 Committee withheld evidence from the defense.

As a retired guy with nothing else to take priority, I spent maybe three hours off and on researching this case on the web over the past day or so. So far, I haven't seen a single full-time paid reporter or commentator who's done even that much work in the wake of the Carlson Monday night show.

Judge Lamberth says he "made himself the image" of January 6, but it seems to me that the depiction of him was something much more like the exploitation of a mentally handicapped individual to suit the media's purpose.