- QAnon Shaman now feels that President Donald Trump has deceived him, his lawyer said.
- Jacob Chansley is in a prison in Washington, DC, and awaits trial for the United States Capitol riot.
- “He realized that the ex-president didn’t really love him,” said his lawyer.
- Visit the Insider Business section for more stories.
Jacob Chansley, the “QAnon Shaman” who has become a symbol of the US Capitol riot, now feels that President Donald Trump has deceived him, his lawyer told the Daily Beast on Wednesday.
Chansley – who carried a spear, wore bull horns and covered himself with war paint in the January 6 rebellion – was arrested and charged with civil disorder, obstruction and disorderly conduct three days later.
QAnon is an unfounded right-wing conspiracy theory postulating that Trump, as president, was secretly fighting a “deep state” conspiracy of satanic pedophiles and cannibals. Trump used to retweet QAnon’s numbers and in August described conspiracy theorists as “people who love our country”.
Trump’s stay in power was a fundamental part of the QAnon ideology, and many supporters thought that January 6 would be the date of “Storm”, on which Trump would clean up Washington from his elites.
After Trump lost his re-election, however, Joe Biden was sworn in as president on January 20.
Chansley, who is in custody in Washington, DC, pending trial, now appears to have turned against Trump.
“He understood the fact that the ex-president didn’t really love him and that all the bulls — about Trump’s army and all the social media-based conspiracy theories took a lot of the vulnerability,” Albert Watkins told the Daily Beast.
“Has my client experienced an indiscriminate rejection of his previous beliefs? No. It is part of an ongoing process. But he recognized his role and my client was astounded and realized that he needs to do the right thing for his country.”
Supporters of President Donald Trump clashed with law enforcement officials at the United States Capitol on January 6.
ROBERTO SCHMIDT / AFP) (Photo by ROBERTO SCHMIDT / AFP via Getty Images
Watkins added that Chansley felt that he fell in love with a “propaganda machine”.
Watkins told the Daily Beast that the president’s decision not to accept a presidential pardon was the last straw, but that Chansley’s apparent epiphany about Trump had been going on for weeks.
Watkins told Arizona TV station KSDK on Jan. 21 that Chansley felt “cheated” by Trump.
“He is very, very sorry that he was not only deceived by the president, but that he was in a position where he allowed this fraud to put him in a position to make decisions that he should not have made,” said Watkins.
On January 28, Chansley offered to attend Trump’s impeachment trial to testify against the president.
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As Insider’s Jacob Shamsian reported, Chansley refuses to eat in prison because the food is not organic. Watkins said his client had not eaten in a week and, as a result, lost 20 pounds in custody.
Watkins told the court on Wednesday that Chansley’s idol was Mahatma Gandhi and that he was a “gentleman” who “catches insects and releases them outside”.
Chansley, who is from Phoenix, served in the United States Navy from 2005 to 2007.