Tests Show QAnon Shaman is 'Mentally Ill', According to His Own Lawyer
From the moment that Jacob Chansley set foot on our television screens, we knew that we’d be talking about him for some time into the future.
Chansley, known more commonly as the “QAnon Shaman”, was the iconic character who participated in the January 6th insurrection shirtless, with his face painted, and wearing a large fur headdress adorned with bison horns.
Now, as Chansley faces charges in the storming of the Capitol, his lawyers are trying a rather tricky defense: They’re claiming that the Shaman doesn’t possess full control over his faculties.
In an interview, defense lawyer Albert Watkins said that officials at the federal Bureau of Prisons, or BOP, have diagnosed his client Jacob Chansley with transient schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety.
The BOP’s findings, which have not yet been made public, suggest Chansley’s mental condition deteriorated due to the stress of being held in solitary confinement at a jail in Alexandria, Virginia, Watkins said.
“As he spent more time in solitary confinement … the decline in his acuity was noticeable, even to an untrained eye,” Watkins said in an interview on Thursday.
But is this all just legal maneuvering?
Watkins said authorities will need to determine how Chansley can get access to the treatment he needs to “actively participate in his own defense.” Pleading guilty to a charge negates the need for a trial, but defendants still have to be declared mentally competent to do so.
Watkins said the BOP’s evaluation of his client did not declare Chansley to be mentally incompetent, and he does not expect Chansley to be ordered to undergo what is known as competency restoration treatment.
Watkins turned heads early on in his role at attorney for the Shaman, after making derogatory remarks about his own client’s mental health, using phrases that are deemed unprintable by today’s standards.