Attorney: Angeli is refusing to eat
Ariz. man charged over role in riot at US Capitol
The Phoenix man who took part in the raid on the U.S. Capitol, wearing the fur headdress with horns that made him an icon of the incursion, has gone four days without eating, his attorney said Friday during his initial court appearance in Washington, D.C.
The revelation came during the arraignment hearing for Jake Angeli, his first since being sent from Phoenix back to Washington to await trial.
Angeli, in the brief Friday video appearance in court, heard Judge Royce Lamberth formally list the six counts against him.
As charged, Angeli faces a maximum of 28 years in prison.
Angeli, after returning from the Capitol riot to Phoenix, had been arrested and ordered held without bond by a federal judge in Arizona. That situation did not change on Friday. A status conference was scheduled for March 5.
The attorney for Angeli, Albert Watkins, told the court that his client demands an organic food diet for a mix of religious and health reasons. Watkins told the court that his client practices shamanism and his request for an organic diet was “borne not of his faith but in support of his faith.”
A similar request was honored while Angeli was housed in Phoenix, according to his mother, but has apparently not been honored in D.C.
Angeli, Watkins told the court, had not eaten since Monday, the day the Marshals Service moved him to D.C. Nonorganic food, Watkins said, causes “a bacterial response, which is unpleasant, protracted and debilitating with dehydration issues and things of that nature.”
The judge advised Watkins who to speak to at the facility where Angeli was being housed to take care of the situation.
Angeli was charged under his legal name, Jacob Anthony Chansley, but has gone by the last name Angeli in public.
The most serious charge accuses Angeli of obstructing an official proceeding with corrupt intent. Two other charges involve his unauthorized entrance into, and disorderly conduct within, a “restricted building,” which the U.S. Capitol became because Vice President Mike Pence was inside.
Angeli carried a six-foot spear around the Capitol, the same one he hoisted at protests in Arizona. But prosecutors have not accused him of committing his crimes while carrying a deadly weapon, a charge that could bring additional prison time.
Angeli had made himself a presence in the Phoenix area since at least 2019. He started by semiregularly standing outside the Arizona state Capitol or the building that houses The Arizona Republic, while banging on a drum head and shouting in a booming voice.
Angeli, a Navy veteran and self-described former mainstream Republican, said in interviews with The Republic he had become convinced through his own research that a global cabal ruled the world by blackmailing politicians. Angeli felt a need to inform the public.
A self-described shaman, he said he also received visions that told him he was part of a top-secret squadron of super soldiers.
Angeli showed up at all manner of protests and rallies throughout 2020.
After the November election, he became a fixture and featured speaker at protests outside the county building where votes were being counted. He appeared alongside other figures including conspiracy-theorist broadcaster Alex Jones, who fueled the crowd’s unfounded belief that the election had been rigged.
Ultimately, the count determined Joe Biden had won the presidential election in Arizona.
At all these events, Angeli would wear the outfit that would, after Jan. 6, make him the subject of national conversation: fur headdress with horns, face paint, and bare-chested showing off an elaborate series of tattoos.
In early December, Angeli took part in what was described, by participants, as an occupation of the lobby of the Arizona House of Representatives. It was an attempt to get lawmakers to tell the U.S. Senate to not certify Arizona’s electoral votes. The Department of Public Safety cleared the lobby after sunset, arresting two people.
In January, Angeli made his way to D.C., he would tell the FBI, as part of a group of so-called Patriots who felt they were answering President Donald Trump’s call to muster on Jan. 6.
On that day, Pence was presiding over a joint session of Congress that was certifying the states’ electoral votes. That normally perfunctory process was delayed six hours during the raid as senators and representatives were hustled into secure areas as Trump supporters breached the halls of Congress.
Five people died as a result of the melee, including a Capitol police officer. One woman was shot by an officer as she was being lifted up and through a broken window into the lobby of the Speaker of the House.
Video and photos taken inside the U.S. Senate chamber showed Angeli strutting up to the center aisle and up to the dais where Pence had been just minutes before. Angeli posed for a photo, flexing his arm and holding a six-foot spear to which he had attached a U.S. flag.
Angeli wrote a note to Pence, then showed it and read it to a journalist who was taking video footage. “It’s only a matter of time,” Angeli said he wrote. “Justice is coming.”
Angeli’s photograph was circulated by law enforcement as one of several people it wanted the public’s help in identifying. Aware he was being sought, Angeli called the FBI the day after the raid, according to court documents, and identified himself as the man in the fur hat and horns.
Angeli told FBI agents he was able to enter the Senate chamber “by the grace of God.” He told the agents he didn’t intend his note to Pence to be a threat, but accused the vice president of being a traitor who engages in child trafficking.
Angeli, in his appearances at rallies and protests around Phoenix, has professed allegiance to the QAnon conspiracy theory that imagines an array of global leaders and celebrities, all arrayed against Trump, involved in child trafficking rings. Trump, the conspiracy theory posited, had been investigating and arrests had long been promised to be imminent.
In an interview with NBC News the day after the raid, Angeli said he had done nothing wrong. “I walked through an open door, dude,” he told NBC.
He also said the operation was a success because lawmakers had to hide. “The fact that we had a bunch of our traitors in office hunker down, put on their gas masks and retreat into their underground bunker, I consider that a win,” he told NBC.
Angeli was arrested at the Phoenix FBI headquarters a few days later when he showed up for what he thought would be a continuation of his interview with agents. In his car, agents said, were his fur hat and spear. Angeli told them he planned to attend a rally at the Arizona state Capitol after he was done speaking with the FBI.
Angeli was held in Phoenix on two charges listed on a complaint sworn out by a Capitol police agent. Two days later, a grand jury in D.C. indicted him on additional counts. A judge in Phoenix ordered him held in custody ahead of a trial there.
The St. Louis attorney representing Angeli released a statement on Thursday that said his client was available to testify at Trump’s pending impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate.
Watkins said in the statement that Angeli would be available for senators to ask “whether the words of former President Trump were understood by Mr. (Angeli) to be nothing short of an invitation to go to the Capitol with the President to fight like hell.”
Watkins did not grant an interview after releasing the statement. His lengthy release, in which Watkins described himself as Angeli’s “outspoken legal counsel” did not indicate that Angeli was willing to testify at the impeachment trial. It only said that Watkins was available.
Watkins, in a phone interview with The Republic earlier this month, said he took on the case after a phone call from Angeli. He did not detail any financial arrangements.
In a court hearing in Phoenix, a judge asked Angeli whether he could afford an attorney. Angeli said he couldn’t, but might if he could make a phone call to an unnamed friend.
Watkins, profanely, said he had no idea about any friend of Angeli who might have arranged for his services.