(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
QAnon Shaman Jacob Chansley waltzed into Americans’ hearts when he invaded the Capitol on January 6th dressed as some kind of half-caveman, half-offensive indigenous stereotype. As one of the most recognizable crackpots who tried to undermine the election on Trump’s behalf, prosecutors targeted Chansley to make an example out of him at sentencing. Which is horrifying because the DOJ shouldn’t be trying to turn a specific defendant into a general deterrent simply because he attracted more media attention as a photogenic nutjob. And they definitely shouldn’t be publicly dropping the hammer on a court jester when people were building gallows and storming chambers with zipties and tactical gear. Transforming Chansley into the face of the riot was public relations goal number one for Trump supporters trying to play it off as a bunch of harmless dweebs and the government seems to have walked right into that in an effort to score symbolism points.
Chansley is heading to prison after today’s sentencing because if you mess with the QAnon bull you get the horn helmet in prison for 41 months… or something. Meaning the prosecutors who asked for more than four years in this case are walking away with under two and a precedent that a defendant positioned as one of the most serious set a 41-month ceiling that more egregious actors will now navigate around.
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But I digress.
Running in with a violent mob trying to attack the Vice President was always going to earn a defendant some jail time. What’s more important about today’s sentencing was the absolute drivel that Chansley poured out in his defense and Judge Royce Lamberth’s bonkers acceptance of it.
Most stories will focus on Judge Lamberth handing down a relatively hefty sentence, but his commentary in reaction to Chansley’s allocution suggests the judge developed a soft spot for Chansley that defied expectations and common sense and a basic grasp of American history.
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For more than 30 minutes, Chansley spoke to Lamberth about the impact jail has had on him, and the guilt he feels for breaking the law.
He said he was wrong to enter the Capitol on January 6, and that he is not an insurrectionist or domestic terrorist.
His sprawling speech held the attention of the judge, as Chansley quoted Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and “The Shawshank Redemption,” and described wanting to live his life like Jesus Christ and Gandhi.
If this is any indication of what’s to come, we need a Bingo game for future sentencings. I’m taking William Rehnquist, “Human Centipede,” St. Jerome, and Willy Loman.
“I think your remarks are the most remarkable I’ve heard in 34 years,” Lamberth told Chansley…
No kidding.
But…
…calling his speech “akin to the kind of thing Martin Luther King would have said.”
Oh for fuck’s sake.
Has the whitewashing of MLK really gotten to the point where this meandering Billy Madison statement from a conspiracy theorist is elevated to Letter from the Birmingham Jail or something? You don’t get to claim moral authority as a political prisoner for your conviction that Italian space lasers decided the election.
And Lamberth doesn’t get to shrug this off as an unfortunate “off-the-cuff” comment. The phenomenon of comparing things to Martin Luther King is so ubiquitous that everyone has a personal threshold for when it’s acceptable to invoke that comparison and somehow a half-naked criminal defendant wearing a Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes hat saying he wants to be more like Jesus fits within Lamberth’s zone. Lifetime appointments, y’all!
It really makes you wonder how long Chansley would have gotten if Lamberth hadn’t heard echoes of “I Have A Dream” in the QAnon Shaman’s mea culpa?
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.