A couple of weeks ago, Jacob Chansley and his mother Martha filmed interviews with 60 Minutes+ that went around the internet. Chansley is the guy you will remember wearing the buffalo headpiece and American flag face paint during the Capitol riot. He has been described by media outlets and others as the “QAnon shaman,” but that’s offensive to shamanism, and his schtick is closer to sports mascot work than anything spiritual. The general tenor of the Chansley interviews was that poor Jacob is a peaceful soul who didn’t really do anything wrong. He felt “bad” about stuff but shouldn’t be in big trouble because, as his mother said, “He walked through open doors.”
A couple of days later, U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth denied Chansley’s attempts to be released from custody pending his trial, writing Chansley had “not met his burden of establishing a ‘compelling reason’ necessitating his temporary release.” Law and Crime reports that Lamberth’s 32-page denial of Chansley’s motion for temporary release included calling out the buffalo clown soldier for his 60 Minutes interview, saying Chansley had “blatantly lied.” More importantly, Lamberth cited video evidence contradicting Jacob and Martha Chansley’s depictions of Jacob’s criminal march through the Capitol as a peaceful waltz.
The court order, which can be read here, includes this: “The government’s video shows that defendant blatantly lied during his interview with 60 Minutes+ when he said that police officers waved him into the building. Further, this video confirms that defendant did not, as defense counsel claims, enter the building ‘contemporaneously with the exiting by Capitol Police.’ … Nor did he enter, as defense counsel represents, in the ‘third wave’ of the breach. To the contrary, he quite literally spearheaded it.” To the defense’s argument that Chansley had a previously unblemished criminal history, Lamberth explained that the “seriousness of the allegations against him and the video footage of defendant’s actions on January 6th reveal defendant’s current state of mind and willingness to break the law.”
As to claims made by Chansley and his defense that his nonpolitical spiritual pursuits and business would ensure Chansley’s fidelity to court orders, Lamberth said that while this may figure into sentencing on some level, it was “irrelevant to the question of whether any conditions will reasonably assure defendant’s appearance as required.” Lamberth found that Martha’s 60 Minutes+ interview didn’t imbue the court with confidence that remitting Jacob into her custody would lessen any flight risk chance.
Finally, defendant’s plan to return to his mother’s house would not mitigate his risk of flight. In the March 4, 2021 interview with 60 Minutes+, the defendant’s mother repeatedly stated that her son did nothing wrong on January 6th. [...] Instead, she said, her son merely “walked through open doors” and was “escorted into the Senate.” [...] Defendant’s mother further stated that she believes defendant to be “innocently sitting in a prison cell.” The Court is not persuaded that defendant’s mother will ensure his compliance with any conditions of release imposed, and defendant identifies no other custodian.
Finally, Lamberth slammed Chansley’s lawyers’ claims that they could not “privately communicate with” their client. The full paragraph of Lamberth’s response is worth reading.
Last but not least, the Court must address what surely must be the most remarkable assertion in defendant’s briefing: that temporary release is “necessary” because defense counsel is currently unable to privately communicate with his client. As defense counsel puts it, the COVID-19 pandemic has made “Meaningful unmonitored protracted periods of consultation” with his client ”Impossible.” To the contrary, just a few days ago, defense counsel conducted a lengthy videoconference with his client. That meeting, however, was not used to discuss legal strategy but instead was used to conduct an interview with 60 Minutes+, a national news media outlet.
