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The man who, by way of his fur hat with horns, painted face, bare tattooed chest and spear, became one of the icons of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol was scheduled to strike a plea deal with prosecutors in a D.C. federal court on Friday.
It was not clear from the federal docket notice announcing the hearing what crimes Jake Angeli, of Phoenix, would agree he committed. A news release from his St. Louis attorney, Albert Watkins, also did not give details.
Angeli had been ordered held in custody since his arrest in Phoenix three days after the raid on the Capitol. He showed up for what he expected to be a follow-up interview with FBI agents upon his drive back from D.C.
Instead, he was arrested. The horned hat and the spear he had with him in his car were confiscated.
Angeli had worn his intentionally eye-catching outfit in and around Phoenix since at least 2019, usually carrying a sign that read, “Q Sent Me.”
His aim, he told The Republic in a previous interview, was drawing attention to the QAnon movement, which imagined that Trump would soon dismantle a global cabal of elite leaders that held power through an international sex trafficking ring.
Instead, that outfit drew attention to Angeli when he wore it during the raid on the U.S. Capitol.
For subscribers: How Jake Angeli went from a Phoenix character to the face of the U.S. Capitol raid
In the news release Thursday, Angeli’s attorney, Watkins, suggested that Angeli had rejected his adherence to QAnon. The release said that Angeli “has repudiated the ‘Q’ previously assigned to him and requests future references to him be devoid of use of the letter ‘Q.'”
Angeli’s face, painted red, white and blue, and draped by wolf tails hanging from his horned hat, became ubiquitous during media coverage of the melee at the U.S. Capitol. He became one of the most high-profile of the more than 500 people arrested for their actions on Jan. 6.
Five people, including a U.S. Capitol police officer, died in the hours-long occupation of the U.S. Capitol.
Angeli, who was arrested under his legal name, Jake Chansley, had insisted in media interviews that he had done nothing wrong. “I walked through an open door, dude,” he told NBC News the day after the insurrection.
But the government described Angeli as one of the leaders of the raid, which succeeded in halting for hours the certification of the 2020 election victory of President Joe Biden over former President Donald Trump.
Judge Royce Lamberth, in a March ruling rejecting Angeli’s request to be released while awaiting trial, agreed with prosecutors.
Lamberth said Angeli did not enter the Capitol “to ponder Statuary Hall, but with an intent to disrupt the functions of our government by means of force.”
Lamberth cited video that showed Angeli walking into the Capitol through a door while people were climbing through a nearby broken window as evidence he was part of the initial incursion of the building. Lamberth wrote that Angeli “quite literally spearheaded” the entry into the Capitol.
Court video evidence shows Jake Angeli at U.S. Capitol
Video evidence from U.S. District Court shows Jake Angeli among the people who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
U.S. District Court, District of Columbia, Arizona Republic
In pleadings filed by his attorney, Angeli asserted that he felt invited to the U.S. Capitol by Trump, who, at one point, in a speech before the invasion of the Capitol, said he would be joining protesters who would march on the building.
Watkins described his client as someone who was led astray by the former president.
“The Defendant is a sweet, gentle, well spoken, smart man whose longstanding commitment to all that is peace and non-violence is second in duration only to his recognized mental vulnerabilities,” Watkins wrote in a motion filed June 22.
Watkins told the court, during a June hearing, that Angeli was cooperating with FBI agents investigating the events of Jan. 6. Watkins said those talks, which he said were not part of a plea deal, “demonstrated the wholesale commitment by the defendant to do what is right for the country.”
Angeli was photographed outside the U.S. Capitol on top of scaffolding set up for the pending inauguration of Biden and, inside the Capitol, squaring off with a police officer. He carried a spear topped with a U.S. flag that had been zip-tied to the top.
In a video captured by a journalist working for New Yorker magazine, Angeli strutted down the Senate floor and took position on the dais. It was the spot where Vice President Mike Pence had been moments earlier presiding over a joint session of Congress certifying the 2020 election results.
Angeli posed for photos on the dais and called Pence a traitor, according to the video. He then scrawled a note for Pence and read it aloud for the New Yorker reporter’s camera. “It’s only a matter of time,” Angeli said. “Justice is coming.”
The next day, Angeli called the FBI, knowing that authorities had posted his image and announced they were looking to speak to him. He agreed to an in-person interview at the Phoenix FBI office once he returned to that city. When he showed up for that interview, he was arrested.
Angeli had faced six federal counts related to his actions inside the U.S. Capitol. Two of the crimes involved him unlawfully being present in a “restricted building,” which the Capitol became once Pence was inside it. He was also charged with disrupting an official proceeding.
An initial pretrial services report suggested Angeli be released while awaiting trial. But a magistrate judge in Phoenix ordered him held partly because his adherence to QAnon showed a detachment from reality.
He was transferred to a jail facility run by the sheriff’s office in Alexandria, Virginia, because it could offer him an all-organic diet. Judge Lamberth ordered that Angeli be fed an all-organic diet in keeping with his professed religious belief as a self-studied shaman.
Angeli had been held in what his attorney described as near solitary confinement, spending 22 hours a day in his cell. Such treatment was taking a toll on Angeli’s well-being, Watkins wrote in court filings.
In May, Lamberth ordered that Angeli undergo a mental health evaluation.
In a 2019 interview with The Republic, Angeli said that he had never sought any mental health treatment. But, he said, part of shamanism was rigorous self-examination.
“The fact of the matter is,” he said, “people who are insane don’t know they are insane. If you question your own sanity, that’s actually a sane act.”
The Patriots: How a political movement took root and became a force in Arizona
The Patriot movement has an increasing influence in Republican politics. The movement and its ties to QAnon were influenced by an Arizona author most don’t know.
David Wallace, USA TODAY
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