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Topics: News, US News, World News, QAnon, Donald Trump
Kit Roberts
Topics: News, US News, World News, QAnon, Donald Trump
The man once described by a federal judge as 'the public face' of the January 6 insurrection has announced he is running for office.
Many of those who were present at the attempted insurrection at the Capitol Building in Washington have since faced criminal charges and jail time.
Among them is Jacob Chansley, who is perhaps better known as the Q-Anon Shaman.
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Chansley, 36, became infamous when he was among those who stormed into the US Capitol Building shirtless, wearing furs, a horned helmet, face paint, and carrying a spear with the US flag.
The bizarre images of him, as well as of people carrying the Confederate battle flag inside the Capitol are among the most widely known of the insurrection.
Chansley was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison, and was released after serving 27.
Now Chansley has confirmed that he intends to run for office as a Libertarian in Arizona’s 8th congressional district.
The seat has been held by Republican U.S. Rep. Debbie Lesko since 2018. Rep Lesko announced last month that she would not be seeking re-election.
Chansley claims that he has denounced Q-Anon since serving his jail time, but his Twitter timeline contains posts which have well-known symbols of the conspiracy, as well as references to the so-called 'Deep State'.
Many far right influencers as well as some members of the GOP have attempted to paint those who were arrested for their part in the insurrection as 'political prisoners'.
But Chansley is not the first January 6 rioter to run for office. Derrick Evans, a former GOP state house representative in West Virginia, is also running for Congress.
In a tweet Evans wrote: "Today, I am running for US Congress so I can take this battle to their front door the same way they brought it to mine."
Presumably literally breaking through the doors of the Capitol Building into the building doesn't count as 'taking this battle to their front door'.
More than 1,000 people have been arrested since the crowd of far-right activists, including Donald Trump supporters and Q-Anon devotees broke into the US Capitol Building.
The attack occurred around two months after Joe Biden defeated incumbent president Donald Trump in the 2020 election.
Trump has since been indicted on charges of attempting to overturn the result of the 2020 election and disrupt the peaceful transfer of power.
The Trump campaign responded by calling the charges 'fake'.