QAnon shaman's lawyer: “Did Trump cause the assault on Congress? Without a doubt"

“My client, like many Americans, felt that his voice was not being heard,” explains attorney Albert Watkins over the phone.

“When Donald Trump arrived, he felt his voice finally being heard.

It was relevant.

As a result, he had a passionate fondness, even a love for Trump.

He believed that the words of his president were for him.

We are talking about a phenomenon like the followers of the Grateful Dead.

Like those who followed the band from concert to concert, my client followed the president from rally to rally.

There he was recognized, he was part of a group.

When the president, on January 6, asked them to walk with him down Pennsylvania Avenue, they felt not only that the president was speaking to them, but that he was inviting them.

Did our president have a role?

Did it have an influence?

Did it at least partially cause what happened on January 6?

Yes. Categorically.

Undoubtedly".

Watkins's client is Jacob Chansley, 33, from Phoenix, better known as Jake Angeli, The Bison or the Shaman of QAnon.

His image storming the Capitol, bare-chested, armed with a spear, wearing bearskins and horns, went around the world.

Arrested the day after the assault, his lawyer says that now Chansley is "sorry."

He feels "betrayed" by Trump, "the man who gave the Moon and who has turned his back."

"There is a guilt on the part of the president who exonerates my client," defends Watkins.

A defense argument that is gold for Democrats seeking a conviction of Trump in the trial that will be held in the Senate, after his

impeachment

for "incitement to insurrection."

The conspiracy machinery of Trumpism has already manufactured elaborate theories that try to blame the assault on the Capitol on the extreme left or camouflaged Black Lives Matter activists.

The president himself said that his words haranguing the protesters were "totally appropriate."

But, in building the case that the president incited the insurrection, the Democrats have powerful allies: the assailants themselves.

In the report prepared last week by the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives, as an argument for

impeachment

, it is noted that many protesters believed they were obeying the president's orders by storming the Capitol.

He specifically cites Derrick Evans, a member of the West Virginia legislative lower house until his arrest for the assault on Congress, who on the same January 6 said on social media that he had come to Washington to stop the alleged theft of the election "in response to a tweet from the president ”.

The report also mentions Chansley, who assured the police that he was coming "as part of a group effort at the request of the president."

But they are not only evidence collected on the day of the assault.

As the detained insurgents parade before the courts and their lawyers build their defense, several of them choose to directly implicate the president, according to court documents and interviews.

At least four of them, according to a count in

The New York Times,

have alleged that they joined the march that stormed Congress because the president encouraged them to do so.

“They were in love with a leader.

It motivated them.

They believed him.

They thought they were saving our nation at the specific request of our president, ”insists Watkins.

In the judicial documentation of a retired Pennsylvania firefighter, accused of throwing a fire extinguisher at a policeman, it is said that he went to the Capitol "following the instructions of the president."

Jenna Ryan, a real estate agent from Texas, who crossed the country in a

private

jet

to participate in the revolt, later said, in a television interview, that she had come "following the president's call."

Watkins has gone even further, reaching out to Donald Trump's chief of staff to request that his client be included in the round of last-minute presidential pardons.

"Don't think I'm holding my breath," he acknowledges.

"Do I think he's going to pardon him?

No. They have less chance than a rat in hell.

But the unpredictability of our president is such that, who knows?

The District Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia (which houses the city of Washington) reported last week that more than 70 people had already been indicted for different crimes and misdemeanors after the assault on the Capitol, but assured that the figure will climb to several hundred once the investigation is completed, which is still in its early stages.

From the court appearances of the first detainees, it is clear that their testimonies can constitute valuable material for the prosecution's arguments in the Senate trial for the second impeachment of Donald Trump, in which he is attributed the crime of incitement. to the insurrection by haranguing his hordes of followers who stormed the Capitol, endangering the safety of the legislators and the vice president himself, and with the result of five deaths.

It is not likely that the detainees will be called to testify as witnesses to the upper house of the Capitol that they assaulted, but their public statements or before the courts will be wielded by the Democratic legislators in the role of impeachment.

At noon on January 6, President Trump addressed the thousands of supporters he had summoned to the White House and encouraged them to "walk to the Capitol," where Congress, under the supervision of Vice President Pence, was certifying the electoral result that Trump considers fraudulent.

"You will never get our country back if you are weak," he told them, urging them to "fight like hell."

58% of American voters, according to a poll published Monday by public radio NPR, believe that President Trump is guilty of the violent insurrection on Capitol Hill.

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