The crowd of Trump supporters who invaded the U.S. Capitol last week planned to “capture and murder” elected officials, according to recent court documents.
Investigators believe there was a much more organized effort underway, according to prosecutors who filed a lawsuit Thursday night in the case of suspect Jacob Chansley, who was photographed and recorded in the shirtless riot with his face painted, wearing a horned fur hat, and carrying a US flag attached to a wooden mast with what the authorities identified as a spear.
In their lawsuit, prosecutors wrote that, after Chansley went up to the dais where Vice President Mike Pence presided just moments ago, he wrote a threatening note to Pence: “It’s just a matter of time, justice is coming.”
“Strong evidence, including Chansley’s own words and actions on the Capitol, supports that the Capitol troublemakers’ intention was to capture and murder elected officials in the United States government,” prosecutors wrote in their memo urging the judge to keep Chansley behind. grids.
Pence and Congressional leaders were ushered out of the chamber by the Secret Service and the United States Capitol Police before protesters invaded the room.
The FBI has been investigating whether any of the protesters planned to kidnap members of Congress and hold them hostage, focusing mainly on the men seen carrying plastic handcuffs and pepper spray. Prosecutors are accusing a former Air Force officer of carrying plastic zippered handcuffs because he intended to “take hostages”.
But so far, the Justice Department has not publicly released any specific evidence of conspiracies.
But the suspicious protesters claimed it was a spontaneous outburst of anger over President Trump’s election and defeat. Mike Sherwin, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, told reporters on Friday that his office so far has found “no direct evidence of capture and murder teams”.
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Chansley “had nothing but peaceful intentions” when he entered the Capitol building on January 6, his lawyer, Al Watkins, told Fox News on Friday.
“He was without a bulletproof vest,” Watkins said in a text message. “He had nothing but his megaphone. He wanted his voice to be heard.”
A detention hearing is scheduled for the Chansley case on Friday. Watkins said his client has no criminal record.
Watkins insisted to Fox News that the spear was “to hold the flag” and was not “readily capable of any damage”.
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Chansley, who calls himself “QAnon Shaman” and has long participated in Trump’s rallies, surrendered to the FBI’s Phoenix office on Saturday.
QAnon is a complicated and apocalyptic conspiracy theory, widely spread over the Internet and promoted by some right-wing extremists.
Chansley told investigators that he came to the Capitol “at the President’s request that all ‘patriots’ go to DC on January 6, 2021.” An unsealed indictment on Tuesday in Washington accuses him of civil disorder, obstruction of an official process, disorderly conduct in a restricted building and demonstration in a Capitol building.
Watkins told Fox News that he asked Trump to forgive Chansley because his client believed he had been “summoned … to come to DC” to support the president.
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“And to help the president save our country – these people really believed that,” continued Watkins. “And they were right, they are entitled. They had the right to trust the words of their president.”
He acknowledged that forgiveness is unlikely to be granted.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.