WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) - The security video that Tucker Carlson aired on Fox this week included footage of Jacob "QAnon Shaman" Chansley walking peacefully alongside a police officer inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, that his lawyer at the time did not know existed.
Ireland
| Ireland
“Had I had those videos to show at his sentencing, in my opinion, it would have cast Jacob in a far more favorable light…in a light that was consistent with that which I had been advocating for the 11 months preceding sentencing,” said St. Louis attorney Albert Watkins.
Like other Trump supporters who attended the Jan. 6 rally, Chansley was portrayed by prosecutors as dangerous. In Chansley’s case, he accepted a plea agreement that resulted in four years of incarceration.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Randy Ireland, a former Proud Boy chapter president and co-founder of Citizens Against Political Persecution (CAPP). “This is malpractice at the highest level of the Department of Justice and the FBI and the judges involved at pressuring people without giving them the exculpatory evidence that they're required by law to give them to mount an adequate defense.”
CAPP was founded in 2020 to address the conditions in which J6 criminal defendants were detained.
Chansley was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth who has served at the District of Columbia since 1987 by appointment of President Ronald Reagan.
A Republican, the 79-year-old served as chief judge for five years, and is now on senior judge status.
"All of these judges in the D.C. federal court, including Lamberth, who I once held in high regard, have decided among themselves to severely punish peaceful January 6 protestors and it is despicable," said Larry Klayman, an attorney who founded Judicial Watch and its off-shoot Freedom Watch. "They must be held accountable for violating their oath of office."
Despite Watkin's efforts to characterize Chansley as peaceful, he could not overcome the government’s characterization of his client as violent.
“The Department of Justice and the President, if they are prudent, should call for a special investigation into the systemic deficiencies of the discovery protocol employed by the Department of Justice within the context of the J6 cases because the deficiencies that existed here have resulted in a great deal of damage to the detriment of all of the J6 defendants whose cases involved video footage that was part of the government's cache of video,” Watkins said.
Watkins, who no longer represents Chansley, hopes his new attorney will file a writ of habeas corpus alleging that there was fraud upon the court.
“The only thing that can be done is a writ or a special application to serve as a big notice to the courts that there's some monkey business going on here and they’ve got to take care of it,” he said.
Chansley’s legal case file was transferred from Watkins to John Pierce, a Woodland Hills, Calif. attorney who represents more than 20 other J6 defendants and temporarily represented Kyle Rittenhouse.
Ireland, however, does not have confidence in either Pierce or Watkins.
“There are many people, including myself, who want to see Albert Watkins disbarred,” he said. “At one point in time, John Pierce took a 30-day hiatus and basically left his J6 defendants high and dry. Nobody knew where he was.”
While Pierce did not respond to requests for comment, Watkins told Legal Newsline he is aware of calls for Chansley to file an appeal based on ineffective assistance of counsel.
“After I was concluded with Jake, John Pierce suggested there would be an appeal and a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel,” he said. “I was obliged to advise my other J6 clients of that because if that motion for ineffective assistance of counsel was filed, the attorneys representing me would be the Office of the US Attorney. Ultimately, he did not file an appeal. I can only conclude that the decision was made that there would probably be no colorable basis for that.”
Even if an appeal based on a claim of ineffective assistance of counsel was filed, Klayman argues that it wouldn't make a difference.
"It's not likely to succeed," he said. "I don't expect any judge on the D.C. Circuit to ever agree with it. They are all a bunch of establishment hacks."
Klayman sued the FBI in federal civil court on behalf of J6 defendant Siaka Massaquoi who alleges that law enforcement put a gun to his head and confiscated his computer equipment after raiding his Los Angeles home in the early morning hours. The case is currently pending with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals after being dismissed by the district court.
"This Justice Department has acted more like a Gestapo than a justice department for the American people," Klayman added.