Here's a great new piece in the Arizona Mirror by Caitlin Sievers, which provides a deep dive into Jacob Chansley, aka the "QAnon Shaman," or, "America's Shaman," as he's currently trying to rebrand himself. Chansley pleaded guilty in September 2021 to a felony charge of obstructing an official proceeding when he raided the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. He was sentenced to 41 months in prison, and was moved to a halfway house on March 29, 2023. A week later he was put on house arrest and then was released on May 25, 2023 from the halfway house, to serve three years of probation.
What's Chansley been up to since then? Sievers reports:
Chansley, 35, is out of prison and back in his home state of Arizona. He's living in north Phoenix, and is attempting to rebrand himself as "America's Shaman." He's making podcasts rife with conspiracy theories, selling shaman-branded merchandise and is pitching hour-long coaching sessions for $500 a pop in the wide ranging subjects of spirituality, politics, the environment, astrology, history, philosophy and sociology. As of June 19, Chansley told the Mirror he had booked several sessions.
Sievers also explains that Chansley has walked back his previous statements where he distanced himself from QAnon. That's no longer true, as Sievers explains:
Leading up to Chansley's plea and sentencing, his lawyer at the time, Al Watkins, said publicly that Chansley felt duped by former President Donald Trump and that he renounced QAnon. But Chansley told the Mirror that neither of those things were true.
The rest of the article is great—it chronicles Chansley's attempts to get his sentence overturned, his dissatisfaction with his previous lawyer, his new podcast ("Forbidden Truth"), his shift from self-proclaimed repentance for his role in Jan 6 to reluctance to take responsibility for doing anything wrong, his continued support for Trump, his enduring belief in QAnon conspiracy theories (especially those focused on the New World Order/One World Government, the pedophilic tendencies of left-leaning CEOs and entertainers and the intelligence agencies that blackmail said pedophiles in order to maintain global dominance), and his diagnosis of schizotypal personality disorder and his subsequent rejection of that diagnosis—he says he's not mentally ill but thinks that his "shamanic beliefs" fueled that diagnosis.
