Video of QAnon Shaman Stopping Muffin Theft During Capitol Riot Released by Lawyers

Lawyers for the so-called QAnon Shaman have released video footage of the Capitol riot suspect "thwarting a crime" by stopping someone stealing a muffin while inside the building, in an attempt to have him released from custody.

The short video, recorded during the January 6 attack in Washington, D.C., was made public as part of a motion seeking the pretrial release of QAnon Shaman, whose real name is Jacob Chansley.

The video, entitled "Jake Stops Muffin Stealing", shows Chansley in his horned hat walking down the Capitol corridors with others who stormed the building. The clip then pans to show a man entering a breakroom, with Chansley repeatedly shouting "hey" at him, in an apparent attempt to stop him taking a muffin.

"On March 19, 2021, Defendant's counsel provided to the Government video footage depicting Defendant Chansley during his January 6, 2021 visit to the Capitol thwarting a crime (theft) by yelling at another person in the Capitol who was attempting to steal a 'muffin' from a breakroom in the Capitol," the motion, obtained by Law and Crime, states.

Chansley, one of the most prominent and recognizable people seen during the insurrection on January 6, previously used the muffin defense as evidence he was not committing a crime at the Capitol, telling CBS' 60 Minutes that he was merely attempting to "bring God back into the Senate."

Chansley, of Phoenix, faces years in prison stemming from a number of charges including "knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority," "violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds," "civil disorder," and "demonstrating in a Capitol building."

In the motion pleading for the suspect's release, attorney Albert Watkins compared treatment of his client to that seen in Soviet Union and Cambodian gulags.

The motion states that the solitary confinement the "vulnerable" Chansley is being forced to undertake in custody is similar to atrocities carried out by the Khmer Rouge, the brutal Cambodian regime led by Marxist leader Pol Pot, which claimed the lives of two million people between 1975 and 1979.

"To date, the United States does not acknowledge having laws governing opinion or thought, and while to date the United States does not acknowledge having re-education prison camps a la Cambodia circa 1977, the resultant effect of confining its 'special' citizens in solitude for 22 hours plus per day for an indefinite term is nothing short of a wholesale Khmer Rouge-like protocol designed to send a message that if you are special enough to believe and act with reliance on the words and actions of your standing Commander-in-Chief, you deserve neither compassion nor patience, but rather, deserve the fate of the forgotten," Watkins wrote.

Chansley's lawyers also made reference to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the political prisoner who revealed the horrors of Soviet gulags after being imprisoned for eight years for criticizing Joseph Stalin in a private letter.

"Since January 9, 2021, Chansley has been subjected to COVID-19 response protocol mandated solitary confinement for 22 plus hours per day," the motion states.

"Chansley has been compelled to endure cruel and unusual punishment of a nature akin to the gulag of Solzhenitsyn fame."

On 21 May, a judge ordered a psychological examination of Chansley after Watkins argued that months in detention had taken their toll on him.

Watkins was also recently criticized for suggesting that the Capitol riot suspects were "short-bus people,"—a derogatory term for people with mental disabilities.

"These are people with brain damage, they're f*****g retarded, they're on the goddamn spectrum," he told Talking Points Memo.

"These aren't bad people, they don't have prior criminal history. F**k, they were subjected to four-plus years of goddamn propaganda the likes of which the world has not seen since f*****g Hitler," Watkins added.

Watkins later refused to apologize for the remarks, telling CNN they were part of an overall plan to highlight the mental health issues his clients are facing.

"All I had to do was get vulgar, get vulgar in a short soundbite-driven quote that permitted this very issue to come to the fore," Watkins said.

Watkins has been contacted for further comment.