Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said she was “honored” to meet Jacob Chansley, the Jan.6, 2021 Capitol rioter known as “QAnon Shaman.”
“The entire country knows Jake as the face of the Jan. 6 ‘Insurrection’ because the media plastered his image and slandered him all over the world, the Biden regime’s DOJ wrongfully prosecuted him for innocently and nonviolently walking through the Capital, and he was then treated horrifically in prisons even being held in solitary confinement for over 10 months just like many other J6’ers,” she wrote in a lengthy post on X Monday.
“Yet when I spoke with Jake, he is remarkably positive, happy, forgiving and determined,” she wrote. “Most people would be crushed and forever destroyed after being treated so horrendously by the media and their own government, but not Jake.”
The Georgia Republican met him at the Turning Point USA conference over the weekend. In her post, she attached a photo of herself with him donning the red, white and blue face paint and horned headpiece that he is known for.
Chansley, 35, was sentenced to 41 months in prison in 2021 after he pleaded guilty to a charge of felony obstruction of an official proceeding. He was among the first rioters to enter the Capitol. He served 27 months before being released to halfway house this past March.
In her post, the lawmaker said she is “constantly angry and frustrated” with her Republican colleagues for not doing more to help those who were convicted for their participation in the Capitol attack. She argued that many of them “nonviolently walked in and out” of the Capitol, and compared them to Black Lives Matter and Antifa protestors, who had their charges dropped.
“This is such a hypocritical injustice in America and it makes me sick,” she said.
Last month, House Speaker Mike Johnson released footage of the attack on the Capitol, saying that the decision “will provide millions of Americans, criminal defendants, public interest organizations, and the media an ability to see for themselves what happened that day, rather than having to rely upon the interpretation of a small group of government officials.”
More than 40,000 hours of footage will be posted over the next several months. Not all of the tapes will be made public. About 5% of the footage will be withheld because it may “involve sensitive security information related to the building architecture,” Mr. Johnson said.
Ms. Greene and many of her conservative colleagues are known for being very critical over the way that the Jan. 6 defendants have been treated.
Chansley, an Arizona native, filled out paperwork to run for Congress as a Libertarian for the state’s 8th district.
• Mallory Wilson can be reached at mwilson@washingtontimes.com.
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