One year after the Jan. 6 insurrection, let’s just say that things haven’t worked out well for the QAnon Shaman (real name Jacob Chansley). The freedom-loving dude who posed on the Senate floor while wearing a “Chewbacca Bikini” outfit claimed to have saved the muffins, and all he got for his trouble was a 41-month prison sentence. He’s not only angry that the media made him the face of the insurrection, but he’s also appealing the outcome of his guilty plea. Meanwhile, his attorney who took an unorthodox approach (to say the very least) is again talking about what happened.
Albert Watkins famously attempted to gain leniency for the Shaman by claiming that Trump “groomed” the MAGAs to be rabid conspiracy theorists. Watkins also (via Talking Points Memo) characterized the rioters as “people with brain damage, they’re f*cking r***rded, they’re on the goddamn spectrum.” He also claimed, “[T]hey’re all f*cking short-bus people.” Yikes. Now Watkins is now saying that he has no apologies for his quoted words, via Raw Story, because he believes that this helped his client:
“All it took was one carefully crafted, vulgar, inappropriate quote, well placed for maximum disclosure, to garner within 24 hours mental health care that my client needed, a psych evaluation ordered by the court, and steps of immediate measures to be taken to save my client from the proverbial mental abyss. Once it became clear what I was doing and once the diagnosis of [Chansley] was reconfirmed in 2021, and once the explanation for the basis of doing it came out, I garnered a remarkable amount of support from the very individuals who wanted to string me up by my nether regions.”
Well, the guy has a way with words, and it’s not a great one. And it’s kind-of questionable for Watkins to claim that his “vulgar, inappropriate” description is what led Chansley to receive a psych eval. We’ll probably never know whether or not that’s the case, but one can guess that Watkins’ “defense” tactic certainly didn’t win the Shaman many favors with the court. After all, he didn’t receive credit for time served when a judge handed him 41 months behind bars.
(Via Raw Story)