Self-styled 'QAnon shaman' is sentenced to 41 months in Capitol riot
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Jacob Chansley, whose brightly painted face, tattooed torso and horned cap became a visual icon of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, was sentenced Wednesday to 41 months in prison by a federal judge in Washington. His lawyer had asked the judge to impose a sentence of time already served, basically the entire 10 months since the insurrection, during which Chansley attracted more attention for demanding an organic diet while in jail and giving an interview to “60 Minutes.”
Chansley, 34, was photographed parading shirtless through the halls of the Capitol with a six-foot spear, howling through a bullhorn and then sitting in the vice president’s chair in the Senate. He became known as the “QAnon Shaman” because of his appearances at gatherings of the “QAnon” conspiracy theorists and his Shamanic religious beliefs.
Prosecutors quoted Chansley offering a prayer while sitting on the Senate dais, thanking God for “filling this chamber with patriots that love you. . . . Thank you for allowing us to get rid of the communists, the globalists, and the traitors within our government.”
Chansley’s “now-famous criminal acts made him the public face of the Capitol riot,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo. With a suggested sentencing range of 41 to 51 months, the government asked for the maximum 51 months.
Chansley’s lawyer, Albert S. Watkins, argued that his client had been sufficiently penalized by his 10 months in jail.
“Mr. Chansley is in dire need of mental health treatment,” Watkins wrote in his sentencing memo. He said that a psychological evaluation earlier this year found that Chansley suffered from schizotypal personality disorder, anxiety and depression.Watkins asked U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth to go below the sentencing guidelines range and release his client, due in part to Chansley’s “mental health infirmities of significance.”
Chansley spoke to the judge for about 30 minutes, repeatedly invoking his spiritual guides of Jesus Christ and Mohandas Gandhi.
“Gandhi would allow his loyalty to God and truth to guide him to accepting responsibility,” Chansley said. “I was wrong for entering the Capitol. I have no excuse. No excuse whatsoever. My behavior was indefensible.”
Chansley’s lengthy comments, in which he praised Lamberth’s military service as a lawyer in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, seemed to convince the judge that he had made significant changes.
“I think your remarks are the most remarkable that I’ve heard in 34 years” as a judge, Lamberth said. “I think you are genuine in your remorse. Parts of those remarks are akin to the kinds of things that Martin Luther King would have said.”But Lamberth said he could not reduce Chansley’s sentence below the recommended guidelines. “What you did here was horrific,” the judge said, “as you now concede. And obstructing the government as you did is the type of conduct that is so serious that I cannot justify a downward departure. I do think the minimum end of the guidelines is what you’ve earned because you’ve done everything right from the time that you started, and you’ve certainly done everything good today, convinced the court that you’re a new person.”
Chansley, who lives in Phoenix, had grown a following on various social media platforms in the months before Jan. 6 and posted messages such as, “We shall have no real hope to survive the enemies arrayed against us until we hang the traitors lurking among us,” prosecutors said.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kimberly L. Paschall noted that Chansley and Watkins had frequently claimed that his protests were peaceful. Reading from his social media posts, Paschall said: “That is not peaceful. It’s a call to battle.”