[ad_1]
Video evidence from U.S. District Court shows Jake Angeli among the people who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Arizona Republic
The federal court in Washington, D.C., has posted video on that showed a Phoenix man, bare-chested and wearing a fur hat with horns, standing atop scaffolding outside the U.S. Capitol and then among the first to enter a breached door.
The videos were viewed by U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lamberth as he was deciding whether to continue keeping the man, Jake Angeli, in custody.
Angeli, who was charged under his legal name of Jacob Chansley, had asked to be released while awaiting trial on six federal crimes. Angeli, through his attorney, said he was not violent during the raid, had turned himself in to authorities and had since apologized for his actions.
For subscribers: How Jake Angeli became a face of the U.S. Capitol raid
Angeli was described in court filings as being part of a third wave of Donald Trump supporters who entered the U.S. Capitol. It was suggested in the filings that by the time Angeli showed up at the building, law enforcement had ceded entry to the mob.
The judge, however, said the videos he watched of Angeli, unmistakable in his fur hat topped with horns, belied that notion.
“To the contrary,” the judge wrote of Angeli, “he quite literally spearheaded it.”
For subscribers: Before Capitol raid, Jake Angeli and others staged an attempt in Arizona
Lamberth asked prosecutors to provide a reason why the videos should remain sealed from public view. The U.S. government, in a court filing on Monday, said it had no objection to making them public.
The court ordered Monday that the videos be posted on the court’s website. They were available as of Tuesday.
In one of the videos, apparently shot by a member of the mob, Angeli is seen walking a hallway of the U.S. Capitol. A man ducks into what appears to be a commissary and appears to grab at something.
Angeli, in the video, tells the man to stop.
Angeli, in court filings and in an interview with CBS News, said he had stopped a man from taking muffins.
Angeli, a self-studied shaman, had been a longtime presence at street protests in Phoenix, espousing the QAnon conspiracy theory, a loose collection of baseless beliefs built around the idea that the world is secretly controlled by a cabal of politicians involved in sex trafficking.
The Capitol riot Jan. 6 delayed, but did not stop, a joint session of Congress, presided over by then-Vice President Mike Pence. Lawmakers later proceeded to certify the states’ electoral votes confirming President Joe Biden’s win and Trump’s defeat.
Albert Watkins, Angeli’s attorney, issued a plea to the public for video footage of Angeli at the U.S. Capitol. Watkins, in an emailed statement, said he hoped new video would help prosecutors and the judge “garner a heightened degree of appreciation for the peaceful and non-violent nature of the Shaman and that which really occurred on January 6.”
Read or Share this story: https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-breaking/2021/03/16/jake-angeli-jacob-chansley-video-shows-storming-capitol/4716926001/
[ad_2]
Source link