The lawyer for the “QAnon shaman” who was part of the deadly siege of the Capitol last week publicly petitioned President Donald Trump on Thursday to pardon his client.
In an interview on CNN, attorney Albert Watkins said his client, Jacob Chansley, “felt like he was answering the call of our president” when he stormed the nation’s seat of government last Wednesday during a riot that resulted in the deaths of at least five people.
Chansley, a 33-year-old man from Phoenix also known as Jake Angeli, was one of the most recognizable perpetrators of the Capitol siege. He carried a spear, wore a furry horned headdress and painted his face in shades of red, white and blue.
On Tuesday, Chansley became one of the first three people indicted by federal prosecutors in connection with the violence at the Capitol. He was charged with a felony violation of the Federal Anti-Riot Act, as well as obstruction of Congress and other offenses.
In a filing on Thursday, prosecutors said Chansley was as “an active participant in” and “the most prominent symbol of” what they described as a “violent insurrection.” Prosecutors also said Chansley had expressed his intention of returning to Washington, D.C., for President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration next week.
The language in the filing suggests more severe charges, such as sedition or insurrection, could be coming for those involved in the siege.
Watkins, Chansley’s attorney, said on Thursday that his client, “like a lot of other disenfranchised people in our country, felt very, very, very solidly in sync” with the president — suggesting Chansley was incited to storm the Capitol in Trump’s name.
“He felt like his voice was, for the first time, being heard,” Watkins said. “And what ended up happening, over the course of the lead-up to the election, over the course of the period from the election to Jan. 6 — it was a driving force by a man he hung his hat on, he hitched his wagon to. He loved Trump. Every word, he listens to him.”
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“We all have to understand that the words that were spoken by the president meant something, not just to my client. They meant something to a lot of people,” Watkins said in his interview.
“They listened to those words. And those words meant something to them. And they had a right to rely on the words of their president that was strewed forth worldwide,” he said. “And they did. And now they’re turning around [and] they’re getting arrested, as well many should be.”
Nevertheless, Trump “needs to stand up and own these people,” Watkins argued. “He has an obligation to them. He has an obligation to our nation. It’s not going to happen.”
Pressed by host Chris Cuomo on what exactly he would like Trump to do, Watkins replied: “Oh, give a pardon.”
As Chansley’s attorney, “my role is not to judge somebody. My role is to be an advocate,” Watkins said. “If there’s one iota of a chance that the guy who’s the president of our country — who invited everybody down Pennsylvania [Avenue] — will give my client a pardon, you know what? I’m going to do it.”
Watkins acknowledged, however, that his plea was unlikely to succeed. “Am I holding my breath thinking that Donald Trump is going to be sitting around going, ‘You know what? … What’s the name of that guy with the horns? Yeah … let’s give him a pardon.’”
But “with Trump, you never know,” Watkins said. “He may say, ‘I want the guy with the horns.’ Next thing you know, maybe he’s represented by the shaman instead of Rudy Giuliani.”
Watkins went on to compare the president’s supporters who stormed the Capitol to the Jonestown cult members who committed mass suicide at their settlement in Guyana in 1978: “You know the only thing different here? There’s no Kool-Aid.”
Reports indicate that President Trump is considering pardoning both himself and others related to the insurrection at the Capitol. At the same time, the House is rapidly moving forward with impeaching Trump for his role. The most coherent constitutional understanding suggests that if the House votes to impeach Trump — even before the Senate begins its trial — he is then barred from issuing a pardon either for himself or those related to the impeachment charges. Congress — not the Supreme Court — can move to decide on whether the president can pardon himself or others directly connected to the high crimes for which he is impeached.
The president’s constitutional power to grant pardons is limited by impeachment
The Constitution makes clear that the president has the power to grant pardons, “except in cases of impeachment.” Some scholars have long seen that clause as an anemic power, only preventing a president from pardoning someone from facing impeachment or undoing the penalties that result from a Senate conviction.
We and other legal scholars understand the clause to mean something different — that the president cannot pardon himself or others in matters directly associated with his own impeachment. Under this view, Trump could issue no pardon for himself or the insurrectionists for criminal charges related to the events of last week. Recently, other scholars, including Lawrence Friedman and Kim Wehle, have adopted this view, which we developed at length here and here.
The key point is this: Even though the pardon power for federal crimes is virtually unlimited, Congress may still vote to impeach and remove a president for abusing the pardon power. Among legal scholars, this is not a controversial point. If a president issues terrible pardons, impeachment and removal is the mechanism to hold that president accountable.
What you need to know about how many Americans condone political violence — and why
But how does this accountability mechanism function if a president issues a pardon designed to disable the impeachment process itself — either by a president pardoning himself or by pardoning others to prevent them from providing vital information to Congress for his own impeachment? As we and other legal scholars have argued, the exception explicitly mentioned in the Constitution — that the president has the power of pardon “except in cases of impeachment”— should be interpreted to preclude pardoning himself or others whose acts were directly connected to his own impeachment.
Woman who took private jet to Capitol riot arrested: ‘I listen to my president’
Texas realtor Jenna Ryan says she hopes she’ll be pardoned by Trump; livestream shows her walking to building saying: ‘Life or death, it doesn’t matter. Here we go’
A Texas real estate agent who is facing charges for allegedly being part of the pro-President Donald Trump mob that stormed the US Capitol last week said she’s a “normal person” who listened to her president....
The agent who signed the complaint also noted that Ryan live-streamed a 21-minute Facebook video of her and a group walking toward the Capitol.
“We are going to [expletive] go in here,” Ryan said in the now-deleted video as she approached the top of the stairs on the west side of the Capitol building. “Life or death, it doesn’t matter. Here we go.”
She then turned the camera to expose her face, the complaint noted, and said, “Y’all know who to hire for your Realtor, Jenna Ryan for your Realtor.” Nearly halfway through, Ryan appears to have made it to the front door, chanting, “USA, USA” and “Here we are, in the name of Jesus.”
Officials said that hours after the riot, she tweeted she had “just stormed the Capital [sic],” and posted a photo online of herself next to a broken window.
In an interview with KTVT-TV in Fort Worth, Ryan said she hoped that Trump would pardon her.
“I just want people to know I’m a normal person, that I listen to my president who told me to go to the Capitol, that I was displaying my patriotism while I was there and I was just protesting and I wasn’t trying to do anything violent and I didn’t realize there was actually violence,” Ryan said.
Jodi