Justice Department officials announced Saturday the arrests of three of the most accused riot police in last week’s Capitol siege, including the shirtless, hat-wearing invader who went viral after turning the Senate bench into a throne. Staff worthy of Conan the Barbarian.
Jacob Anthony Chansley called the FBI office in Washington on Thursday and later turned himself in to police, federals said.
“Chansley said it came as part of a group effort with other Arizona“ patriots, ”at the president’s request that all“ patriots ”come to DC on Jan. 6, 2021, the DOJ said.
Chansley, 33, who calls himself the “Shaman Shaman,” was just the most extravagant aspect of the many hundreds of pro-Trump extremists who raped the Capitol on Wednesday and are now being arrested at all. the country.
Federals also announced the arrests of 36-year-old Adam Christian Johnson, seen in a viral video that allegedly carried the lectern of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a West Virginia lawmaker who, for the investigators, had been broadcast live shouting, “Derrick Evans is at the Capitol!”
Thanks in large part to images transmitted by the riot police themselves that day and now flooding the Internet, prosecutors on Saturday had filed at least 17 cases against suspects appointed in a federal district court, alleging crimes as serious and high as violent entry and assaulting federal officers.
At least 40 other cases in the District of Columbia High Court report minor charges, including curfew violations and nonviolent gun crimes. They face a variety of crimes, including assaulting police officers, entering restricted areas of the U.S. Capitol, stealing federal property, and threatening lawmakers.
Prosecutors said additional cases remained under seal.
Federal defendants include Lonnie Coffman of Falkville, Alabama, a 70-year-old man who allegedly carried weapons and 11 Molotov Mason-jar cocktails in protest in his van.
Mark Warner, a Democrat who is the new chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, on Saturday called on mobile phone operators to preserve content on social media related to the insurgency, which left five people dead, including the Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick.
Johnson, the man from Parrish, Florida, allegedly pictured in a viral photo carrying Pelosi’s lectern, was arrested Friday in his home state and is being held at the Pinellas County Jail with a federal order after the picked up U.S. marshals, ABC News reported.
He was charged with a charge of knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or land without legal authority; a count of theft of government property; and a count of violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, the feds said.
Johnson is a father at home who lives with his wife and five children, The Bradenton Herald reported.
The lectern was found the day after the siege, in a aisle of the Senate wing, in front of the roundabout, federals reported.
It has a value of “more than $ 1,000,” according to authorities, who quoted the commissioner of the House of Representatives.
An anti-rioter photographed with the boot on Pelosi’s desk, Richard Barnett, 60, has been charged with violent entry, theft of public property and other federal crimes.
Evans, a first-year member of the West Virginia House of Representatives, was allegedly broadcast on Facebook entering the Capitol with the mob. shouting as he crossed the threshold, “We are inside, we are inside! Derrick Evans is in the Capitol! “
Accused of consciously entering or remaining in a restricted building, of violent entrance and disorderly conduct, he left the House of Delegates on Saturday.
“I hope it helps to begin the healing process,” he said in a letter of resignation, “so that we can all move forward and come together as“ One nation, under God ”.
His lawyer has insisted that he was “not part of the main body” of the riot police and that he did nothing wrong during the breach.
Among the detainees announced Saturday, the strangely horned crown still belongs to Chansley.
“This individual was carrying a spear, about 6 feet long, with an American flag tied just below the leaf,” federals said of Chansley, 33, also known as Jake Angeli, who was busted Saturday. .
Chansley is an avid Trump supporter and wears the same horned armor as conspiracy theories explode in the state capital in Phoenix, according to the Republic of Arizona.
Awakening QAnon supporters at a February 2020 Trump rally in Phoenix, Chansley told the crowd, “The snowball has been rolling and it’s just rising. Now we’re the mainstream,” the outlet reported.
He was charged with knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or land without lawful authority and of violent entry and disorderly conduct on the grounds of the Capitol.
“The fact that we had a lot of our traitors in the office, we put on gas masks and retreated to the underground bunker, I think it was a victory,” Chansley, identified as Angeli, had told NBC News afterwards. of the riot.
He has said his beliefs are based on research on the Internet by groups he believes control the world, such as the Illuminati.
“At one point, everything clicked in a way,” he told the Republic.
“Oh my God. Now I see the reality of what’s going on.”
Also Saturday, the mayor of Gravette, Arkansas, issued a public statement after Barnett, a single resident, was arrested after being broken up sitting in Pelosi’s office, with his dirty work boot on his desk. .
“It’s a shame that something like this is what puts you in front of the public,” Mayor Kurt Maddox told Fox24. “This is not the city of Gravette, this person is not who he is and not who the people are.”
Resident Joseph Cowan told the station: “We are a lot of good people [and] I just had this spoiled egg, I guess it now caused a lot of trouble to Gravette. “
With mail cables