‘QAnon Shaman’ Jacob Chansley Has Mind-Bending Chat With Michael Knowles | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the The Daily Wire. The author of this post is Brandon Drey.

    "QAnon Shaman" Jacob Chansley, dressed in the iconic costume he wore on January 6, sat down with Daily Wire host Michael Knowles for a mind-bending chat, his first extended interview since serving 27 months in prison for his involvement in the Capitol riot.

    The 35-year-old Chansley, who on January 6 roamed the Capitol in a two-horned helmet and face paint while carrying a spear with an American flag attached, opened up to Knowles on politics, spirituality, and dove head-first into the ideology behind "Q," which he insisted was a creation of the highest levels of U.S. military intelligence.

    "Q is a psychological operation, okay?" Chansley claimed, adding that such operations spring from the dark web by forces out to establish a new world order.

    Prosecutors charged Chansley with multiple crimes, including civil disorder, obstruction of an official proceeding, and entering and remaining in a restricted building. Chansley pleaded guilty to one felony of obstructing an official proceeding, and was sentenced in November 2021 to 41 months in prison.

    But the self-proclaimed "evolutionary" had his sentence cut short after previously withheld security footage showed Capitol Police officers appearing to escort him throughout the building. An attorney representing Chansley recently filed a motion to vacate his conviction, and he said he was limited in discussing January 6 while the matter is pending.

    "My attorney has advised me not to say too much at all regarding that because litigation sucks and it's a long process, and the government will and can use anything you say and twist it to make you look a certain way that is going to give more credence to their case," Chansley said. "But I assure you, there's a very good reason why [the Capitol police] were escorting me."

    Chansley did discuss his prison experiences, crediting God with keeping him strong during his darkest moments, especially during the 10 months of solitary confinement he served in an Alexandria, Virginia, prison cell.

    "I'm in a cell. I'm freaking out. I'm like, what the hell?" Chansley said. "You know, 'God, show me you're with me.'"

    "And then that night I would get letters, like a stack of letters . . . there would be biblical verses in those letters that correspond with my prayers. Or there would be people that are being like, 'We don't believe anything in the media . . . we know that what they're saying is a lie . . . we're supporting you, we're praying for you.' All of that stuff."

    Chansley initially issued an apology after he pleaded guilty to his involvement at the Capitol over two years ago. But after being released from prison early, he recently told the BBC he regrets the plea.