Post by Admin on Feb 3, 2021 23:08:24 GMT
The so-called “QAnon Shaman,” who stormed the U.S. Capitol last month in Viking garb, claims he hasn’t eaten in nine days because his Shaman faith bars him from eating the non-organic food provided in jail.
And during an unintentional fasting that his lawyer says has caused him to lose 20 pounds, the 33-year-old has been pondering his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection—and he has some regrets.
“He has come to grasp that fact that the former president really didn’t love him and that all the bullshit about Trump’s army and all the social media-driven conspiracy theories led to a lot of the vulnerability,” Jacob Chansley’s defense attorney, Albert Watkins, told The Daily Beast on Wednesday.
“Has my client gone through a wholesale repudiation on his previous beliefs? No. It’s part of an ongoing process. But he has recognized his role and my client has bellied up and realized he needs to do right by his country. As part of this process, he is compelled to address a lot of things he has believed in the past from what I would call a propaganda machine.”
Chansley, from Phoenix, Arizona, was infamously photographed carrying a spear and a bullhorn and wearing a headdress made of coyote skin and buffalo horns during the Jan. 6 siege. He was arrested on Jan. 9 and charged with civil disorder, obstruction of an official proceeding, disorderly conduct in a restricted building, and demonstrating in a Capitol building.
But since his arrest, and subsequent order to remain in jail pending trial, Chansley claims he hasn’t eaten. Why? Because his belief in Shamanism means food with unnatural chemicals “would act as an ‘object intrusion’ onto his body and cause serious illness,” an emergency motion filed on Wednesday stated.
During a Wednesday hearing on the motion, Judge Royce Lamberth granted the request for organic food after Watkins said it was “a choice between starvation, death, and consuming something contrary to his long-held faith.”
But a D.C. Department of Corrections official said they’d denied Chansley’s request, not because they doubted the sincerity of his Shamanism but because they found no evidence that an exclusively organic diet “is a tenet of that religion.”
While Watkins admitted he knew little about Shamanism—the emergency motion was the first time he’d ever “cited Wikipedia in a legal brief,” he said—he offered to bring in “a reliable Shamanism adviser” to prove to the judge that the diet was spiritually necessary.
Watkins’ 14-page emergency motion argued that Shamanism is a faith “recognized by the U.S. government” that is “often associated with indigenous tribal societies, and involves belief that shamans, with a connection to the otherworld, have the power to heal the sick, communicate with spirits, and escort souls of the dead to the afterlife.”
Chansley won’t ingest “chemicals, preservatives, and GMOs that would compromise the integrity of his faith,” Watkins told The Daily Beast. “Just like an Orthodox Jew would not feast on canned ham while incarcerated.” (Prosecutors, however, noted in prior filings that Chansley regularly takes drugs like peyote and mushrooms—and lied about it to authorities.)
And during an unintentional fasting that his lawyer says has caused him to lose 20 pounds, the 33-year-old has been pondering his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection—and he has some regrets.
“He has come to grasp that fact that the former president really didn’t love him and that all the bullshit about Trump’s army and all the social media-driven conspiracy theories led to a lot of the vulnerability,” Jacob Chansley’s defense attorney, Albert Watkins, told The Daily Beast on Wednesday.
“Has my client gone through a wholesale repudiation on his previous beliefs? No. It’s part of an ongoing process. But he has recognized his role and my client has bellied up and realized he needs to do right by his country. As part of this process, he is compelled to address a lot of things he has believed in the past from what I would call a propaganda machine.”
Chansley, from Phoenix, Arizona, was infamously photographed carrying a spear and a bullhorn and wearing a headdress made of coyote skin and buffalo horns during the Jan. 6 siege. He was arrested on Jan. 9 and charged with civil disorder, obstruction of an official proceeding, disorderly conduct in a restricted building, and demonstrating in a Capitol building.
But since his arrest, and subsequent order to remain in jail pending trial, Chansley claims he hasn’t eaten. Why? Because his belief in Shamanism means food with unnatural chemicals “would act as an ‘object intrusion’ onto his body and cause serious illness,” an emergency motion filed on Wednesday stated.
During a Wednesday hearing on the motion, Judge Royce Lamberth granted the request for organic food after Watkins said it was “a choice between starvation, death, and consuming something contrary to his long-held faith.”
But a D.C. Department of Corrections official said they’d denied Chansley’s request, not because they doubted the sincerity of his Shamanism but because they found no evidence that an exclusively organic diet “is a tenet of that religion.”
While Watkins admitted he knew little about Shamanism—the emergency motion was the first time he’d ever “cited Wikipedia in a legal brief,” he said—he offered to bring in “a reliable Shamanism adviser” to prove to the judge that the diet was spiritually necessary.
Watkins’ 14-page emergency motion argued that Shamanism is a faith “recognized by the U.S. government” that is “often associated with indigenous tribal societies, and involves belief that shamans, with a connection to the otherworld, have the power to heal the sick, communicate with spirits, and escort souls of the dead to the afterlife.”
Chansley won’t ingest “chemicals, preservatives, and GMOs that would compromise the integrity of his faith,” Watkins told The Daily Beast. “Just like an Orthodox Jew would not feast on canned ham while incarcerated.” (Prosecutors, however, noted in prior filings that Chansley regularly takes drugs like peyote and mushrooms—and lied about it to authorities.)
