Left: Jacob Chansley at the U.S. Capitol, Jan. 6, 2021 (Saul Loeb/AFP Getty). Right: Chansley, Feb. 4, 2021 (Alexandria, Virginia, Detention Center).
Federal prosecutors have urged a judge to reject a request from Jacob Chansley of Arizona, the convicted Jan. 6 rioter known as the “QAnon Shaman” who notoriously stormed the U.S. Capitol with a fur-lined helmet and spear, to reduce his supervised release from three years to just 12 months.
As Law&Crime reported, Chansley was sentenced in November 2021 to 41 months in prison and 36 months supervised release. Originally facing six charges, he struck a plea deal with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to only one count: obstruction of an official proceeding. This is the charge that the U.S. Supreme Court narrowed in its recent ruling, Fischer v. United States.
Chansley was in custody for roughly 11 months pending his 2021 trial and he was released to a halfway house in March 2023 to begin his 36-month supervised release program.
In a July 7 request to modify the terms of his release, Chansley’s attorney William Shipley said his client might have been freed on the day of his sentencing had the government not worked to affix “inapplicable guideline enhancements” on his case.
By invoking the case of fellow Jan. 6 defendant and former Air Force lieutenant colonel Larry Brock, who was sentenced in March 2023 to two years in prison, Chansley argues:
The Circuit Court held that the enhancement under Sec. 2J1.2(b)(2) — + 3 levels — does not apply to convictions under Sec. 1512(c)(2) arising out of the events of January 6, 2021, because ‘proceedings before Congress’ under Sec. 1512(c)(2) do not involve the ‘administration of justice’ as that phrase has been historically understood.
Under a parity of reasoning, the +8 level enhancement from Sec. 2J1.2(b)(1)(B) is also inapplicable, as that section also applies only to events that obstruct the ‘administration of justice.’
Shipley argues that without those enhancements and when coupled with a reduction for accepting responsibility, Chansley should have been sentenced under a guideline range of 10 to 16 months but was forced to agree to plea terms that posed a guideline of 41 to 51 months for the obstruction charge.
The Justice Department disagrees.
In their July 19 brief opposing the change, federal prosecutors underlined that “merely complying” with terms of release is “insufficient to warrant a sentence reduction.”
Historically, barring something extraordinary, even “model post-incarceration conduct and unblemished compliance with the terms of supervised release” have been deemed insufficient reasons to grant an early termination, the DOJ’s brief said.
Chansley has “not even argued that he meets the early standard for prosecution, let alone offered support for that position” and his analysis of sentencing enhancements is equally lacking, prosecutors wrote.
“The defendant was one of the most identifiable figures of the riot at the U.S. Capitol building on January 6, 2021. The defendant was at the front of the mob that breached the barricades and police lines on the west side of the Capitol before 2:00 p.m.; was one of the first 30 rioters inside the building through the broken Senate Wing Door; found his way into the Senate Chamber, where he alighted to the dais where the Vice President of the United States had stood not an hour before, and left him a note stating ‘It’s Only a Matter of Time. Justice is Coming!”, and led other rioters in ‘prayer’ to ‘send a message to all the tyrants, the communists, and the globalists, that this is our nation, not theirs’ and thanking heaven for ‘allowing us to get rid of the communists, the globalists, and the traitors within our government,”” the motion states.
Prosecutors reiterated that even in instances where appellate courts have called into question the “alleged illegality of a sentence,” that argument alone does not and has not necessarily overcome the interest of justice, the conduct of the defendant or imposition of existing sentencing rules.
The U.S. attorneys also reminded the judge what happened after Chansley was first sentenced.
Senior U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, appointed to the bench by former President Ronald Reagan, praised Chansley extensively for his remarks before he was sentenced. The Arizona man spent 30 minutes addressing Lamberth, admitting he was guilty and saying he wanted to live his life like Jesus Christ or Gandhi.
As Law&Crime reported, when it was over, Lamberth gushed and called Chansley’s words, “the most remarkable I’ve heard in 34 years” and “akin to the kind of thing Martin Luther King would have said.”
But remember, prosecutors underlined on July 19, it was also Lamberth who said just two years after sentencing that he was “disappointed to learn that, through his filings and public statements, Mr. Chansley has recanted the contrition” and that “such an about-face casts serious doubt on the veracity of any of Mr. Chansley’s claims, here or elsewhere.”
Chansley gave press interviews in 2023 saying he regretted pleading guilty. He took issue with the plea agreement he signed, which included a variety of plea waivers, including some involving “appellate rights and collateral attack” court records show.
Chansley later appealed his conviction and then withdrew that appeal.
In motions since, he has also claimed that the Justice Department failed to give him exculpatory video evidence, specifically, a seconds-long cherry-picked clip from the Capitol on Jan. 6 aired by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, Law&Crime reported in April 2023.
Supervised release is meant to provide people with a pathway back to “civil society,” prosecutors wrote to Lamberth this month.
And Chansley, they say, isn’t ready to be cut entirely loose.
“Here, the defendant — considering his conduct, his threat to a former Vice President, and his behavior after sentencing — should simply remain supervised by U.S. Probation,” they wrote.
Notably Chansley attempted in May to regain possession of the helmet and spear he brought to the Capitol.
In a July 12 filing, prosecutors admitted they “inadvertently missed” this request but noted that what followed was a series of extensions on this and other motions granted by the court in light of the Fischer oral arguments and then the Supreme Court’s ruling on the matter.
Though prosecutors said the items should not go back to Chansley because they are still considered evidence, they acknowledged that they may be willing to give him his spear and helmet back if he assures the Court there will be no further challenges to his criminal conviction.
Marisa Sarnoff contributed to this report.
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