(Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
Today’s edition of “You Tried It” features Jacob Chansley, AKA the Qanon Shaman, AKA that half naked weirdo with the horns smack in the middle of every single Capitol Riot video. Chansley’s attorney Al Watkins was trying to get his client released into the custody of his mother, Martha Chansley. But after the three of them exploited Covid protocols to film an interview with 60 Minutes+, the effort failed in spectacular fashion.
Even without the TV appearance, Chansley would likely still be in federal custody. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth agreed with the government that the defendant was carrying a six-foot spear with an American flag attached to it by zip ties rather than a “flagpole” with a “spear finial” in a “Native American design.” Under the Bail Reform Act, a defendant can be denied bail if he commits a non-violent felony while in possession of a “dangerous weapon.” The court refused to entertain Chansley’s argument that the presence of so many flags at the Capitol meant that it was totes cool to bring another one in and “pound[] it on the ground while screaming obscenities” — an argument the Court described as “most meritless of all.”
Nor was the court persuaded by Chansley’s protestations that he simply “heeded the invitation” of the former president to take a stroll down to the Capitol.
“If defendant truly believes that the only reason he participated in an assault on the U.S. Capitol was to comply with President Trump’s orders, this shows defendant’s inability (or refusal) to exercise his independent judgment and conform his behavior to the law,” the judge wrote. “These are not the qualities of a person who can be trusted on conditional release.”
But the 60 Minutes+ appearance appeared to anger Judge Lamberth most of all. In it, Chansley characterized his activities at the Capitol as some kind of woo cleansing ritual, “creating positive vibrations in a sacred chamber.” He’s conveniently omitting the part where he used a bullhorn to exhort his compatriots to overrun the police, announced that they were there to “get congressional leaders,” then called Vice President Mike Pence a “fucking traitor” and left a note for him on the dais which read “ITS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME JUSTICE IS COMING!”
Details!
And Chansley’s mother did her son no favors either. Here she is telling 60 Minutes+ reporter Laurie Segall what good, innocent boy her son is.
“[D]efendant’s plan to return to his mother’s house would not mitigate his risk of flight,” Judge Lambert wrote, adding later that “The Court is not persuaded that defendant’s mother will ensure his compliance with any conditions of release imposed.”
But the conduct of Chansley’s attorney Al Watkins seems to have positively infuriated the court. In the motion for release, Watkins argued that the prison covid protocols force him to confer with his client via videoconference, compromising the right to privileged communication. This was perhaps not the best argument to make just days before exploiting those self-same protocols to stage an unauthorized media appearance for his client.
The issue, then, it’s not that defense counsel cannot confidentially communicate with his client. The issue is that when defense counsel is able to speak with his client, he squanders the opportunity for private conversations, preferring instead to conduct a public interview. Such media appearances are undoubtedly conducive to defense counsel’s fame. But they are not at all conducive to an argument that the only way defense counsel could privately communicate with his client is if defendant were temporarily released. Given defense counsel’s decision to use what could have been a confidential video conference on a media publicity stunt, that argument is so frivolous as to insult the Court’s intelligence.
OUCH.
Judge Lamberth did not mention the most amazing part of that 60 Minutes+ interview, though. But ATL has got you covered.
Gosh, how could that possibly have pissed the court off? Weird, huh?
US v. Jacob Chansley [Docket via Court Listener]
Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.