Background: Jacob Chansley at the U.S. Capitol, Jan. 6, 2021 (Saul Loeb/AFP Getty). Inset: Jacob Chansley, Feb. 4, 2021 (Alexandria (Va.) Detention Center).
The Jan. 6 rioter known as the “QAnon shaman” has made his plans clear in the wake of President Donald Trump’s vast grant of clemency to those convicted in connection with the insurrection: he’s going to buy guns.
Jacob Chansley, who was memorably photographed wearing a fur-lined helmet and carrying a spear in multiple locations inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, announced his upcoming shopping spree on X on Monday evening, shortly after Trump included him in the mass pardon of around 1,500 convicted rioters in the flurry of executive orders he issued in the hours after taking office.
The post reads:
I JUST GOT THE NEWS FROM MY LAWYER …
I GOT A PARDON BABY!
THANK YOU PRESIDENT TRUMP!!!NOW I AM GONNA BUY SOME MOTHA FU*KIN GUNS!!!
I LOVE THIS COUNTRY!!!
GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!!
J6ers are getting released & JUSTICE HAS COME …
EVERYTHING done in the dark WILL come to light!
As Law&Crime previously reported, Chansley pleaded guilty in September 2021 to obstructing a federal proceeding — a charge that the Supreme Court later deemed as inapplicable to accused Jan. 6 rioters. His defiant post on Monday is a stark departure from what he said during his November 2021 sentencing hearing.
“I was wrong for entering the Capitol,” Chansley told Senior U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth. “I have no excuse, no excuse whatsoever,” he added, calling his behavior “indefensible.” He insisted, however, that he was “not an insurrectionist,” and that he was “certainly not a domestic terrorist,” but rather a “good man who broke the law.”
At that same sentencing hearing, Lamberth chastised Chansley’s actions while also praising his speechmaking, likening the Arizona man’s remarks to something that might have been said by Martin Luther King — and then ordered him to serve 41 months behind bars. Chansley was ultimately released in May 2023.
Trump has previously forecast his mass grant of clemency, insisting that he would “very quickly” issue pardons. Although he had signaled that he would look into each case individually in order to separate the “radical” and “crazy” rioters from those who, in his words, “had no choice” — a sentiment echoed by JD Vance, who said that violent rioters “obviously” shouldn’t be pardoned — Trump ultimately took a broad-brush approach, granting a “full, complete and unconditional pardon” to the vast majority of convicted rioters.
