On January 6, 2021, a bare-chested man adorned with Norse tattoos and furs, wearing horns on his head and carrying a spear, strode through the US Capitol and sat in the vice president's seat in the Senate chamber. The painted face of the man who would become globally known as the 'QAnon Shaman' was one of the most indelible images of the attack that engulfed Congress and sent shockwaves worldwide.
Chaos erupted as a mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol while lawmakers met to certify President-elect Joe Biden's 2020 election victory. These days, Jake Angeli—though going by Jacob Chansley five years ago—remains a shaman in his native Arizona and insists that his behavior on January 6 was not threatening.
'You know that viral clip where it looks like I'm screaming?' he told the Daily Mail. 'Everybody thinks I'm screaming—common misconception. No, dude, I'm actually singing. I was singing and at the climax of my shamanic song. I was singing to cleanse the ley lines in that harmonic chamber, and the ripple effect of that went global.'
Angeli's prominence that day made him instantly recognizable among the January 6 defendants. He later pleaded guilty to obstructing an official proceeding and, in November 2021, was sentenced to 41 months in prison. In court, minus his headdress, he declared himself 'truly repentant', while the judge described his mea culpa as 'the most remarkable I've heard in 34 years.' Ultimately, he was released after 27 months for good behavior, with part of the remainder served in community confinement. Prison, he said, 'sucked.'
On Trump's first day back in office on January 20, 2025, Angeli was among roughly 1,500 'J6ers' granted clemency in a sweeping proclamation covering offenses linked to the Capitol attack. Now, however, Angeli says he is less enamored of Trump—largely because of what he believes about the still-contentious Epstein files.
Late last year, he appeared in full shaman regalia at a 'No Kings' protest in Phoenix carrying a sign showing the face of convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and the words: 'Distract to deceive.' 'I am moving away from Trump and politics because it is toxic,' Angeli told the Daily Mail. 'Trump is a liar. He deceived the entire country, and he's now taking us into war because he's in the Epstein files. You know, he's taking us into war unconstitutionally. Politically, it's all corrupt as f***.'
'People don't know about the Epstein files, people don't know the truth about what was going on on the island, people don't know the truth about what was going on at Zorro ranch. If they knew what was going on, then Donald Trump would not be president.'
Since his release, Angeli has flirted with running for Congress as a Libertarian or for governor of Arizona. He has also promoted a forthcoming self-published book, Shamanic Apocalypse, which sets out his beliefs. Among his political and spiritual claims is a $40 trillion civil lawsuit filed last September in Maricopa County, Arizona, against the President and a long list of other defendants, including the International Monetary Fund.
In it, Angeli sets out a distinctly America First, anti-war worldview, accusing the government of 'continuing multiple deadly wars for profit' and even allowing foreign leaders to dictate US foreign policy in the Middle East and eastern Europe. He also alleges that the Patriot Act was used to place him under National Security Agency surveillance, and that the NSA catfished him on Facebook. In the lawsuit, he declares himself president of a 'New Constitutional Republic of the United States,' with its capital in Phoenix, and says he would have the Federal Reserve mint a $40 trillion gold coin to wipe out the national debt.
'We must end the Fed,' he said. Angeli says that America is experiencing a 'crisis of consciousness' and his book is intended to be a 'spiritual map out of the mess.' 'We don't have to have a war,' he said. 'We don't have to have a revolution. We can have an evolution, an evolution of consciousness. People don't realize that everything is one, that we're all one, bro. They don't realize that they're destroying their mother earth.'
