“QAnon Shaman” Jacob Chansley unsuccessfully tried to vacate the guilty plea and prison sentence he received in connection to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, but was admonished by a federal judge for basing his request on a furtherance of conspiracy theories.
Calling the face-painting, pelt-wearing Arizona man “the face of the riot,” Judge Royce Lamberth lambasted Chansley for contending that “cherry-picked” Capitol security footage of him behaving calmly between outbursts — aired without context by disgraced former Fox News host Tucker Carlson — was some kind of exoneration.
”The Court finds it alarming that the host’s viewers throughout the nation so readily heeded his command,” the judge wrote in response to a request filed by Chansley last week, according to the Arizona Republic. Lamberth compared Carlson’s coverage favoring Chansley to the nonsensical reporting that led many people to falsely believe Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election.
At his Nov. 2021 sentencing hearing, Chansley described himself as a man “of honor” who accepts responsibilities for his “mistake.”
But Lamberth wrote that material he’s seen since Chansley was sentenced, including Carlson’s discredited coverage, makes him wish he had actually been harder on the defendant, according to the Daily Beast.
The 35-year-old convict was released to a halfway house in March — 14 months earlier than scheduled.
Carlson’s departure from television followed a $787.5 million settlement between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems, which stopped the right-wing network from having to defend the lies it spread about 2020 election fraud.
Former MAGA radical Ray Epps also filed suit against Fox News last week claiming Carlson fueled lies about his involvement in the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.