An opportunity to discuss anything he wanted had the “QAnon Shaman” opening up about Tucker Carlson’s alleged involvement in his early release.
Prior to getting pulled off the air by Fox News, the former primetime host had been given access to more than 40,000 hours of footage from within and outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The airing of selected clips appeared to demolish the corporate media narrative clung to for two years, particularly as it applied to Jacob Chansley, the face-painted, bison-horn-wearing man widely considered the face of the Capitol breach.
Friday, after months of speculation that Carlson’s aired footage played some role in his early release from federal prison, Chansley joined podcast host Alex Jones where he shot down the idea.
In a clip from their discussion shared on social media, the host offered his guest the floor to speak to “whatever is most important to you to get out there,” and he immediately turned to the former Fox News host.
“Well, to start there’s a lot of people that think that Tucker Carlson’s footage got me released, but in fact I had a year shaved off my sentence,” the former prisoner explained, “six months for good time, six months for doing programs in prison, that’s because of the First Step Act or FSA credits…then I was released to the halfway house two months before my sentence was up.”
J6 ‘QAnon Shaman’ Jacob Chansley says the claims by many right-wingers that he was released from prison early because of Tucker Carlson’s J6 special are false: “I had my release date before that footage even aired.” pic.twitter.com/FPFnXw9pe4
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) August 5, 2023
“I had my release date in mid-February before that footage ever aired, and then the footage aired like three weeks before my release day,” Chansley further explained.
The timeline from the so-called “QAnon Shaman,” who had been released from Federal Correctional Institution -Safford after serving 27 months of his 41-month sentence, aligned closely with previously reported theories over the decision from the tight-lipped U.S. Bureau of Prisons.
While Chansley was spending time at the Behavioral Systems Southwest-owned Phoenix Residential Re-entry Center in Phoenix, Arizona, his former attorney Albert S. Watkins had said, “This was a decision of the US Bureau of Prisons. I cannot speak for the US Bureau of Prisons.”
Around the same time, a spokesperson for the bureau had told CBS News, “For safety, and security reasons, we do not discuss the conditions of confinement for any inmate, including transfers or release plans, nor do we specify an individual’s specific location while in community confinement.”
It had been detailed that the 2018 First Step Act provided for sentence reductions to be calculated in March, near to the timeframe he reported to Jones.
The recent interview from Chansley comes as former President Donald Trump was arraigned in a Washington, D.C. federal court Thursday on charges of conspiracy and obstruction related to the Jan. 6, 2021 certification of the 2020 presidential election and an alleged attempt to disrupt the official proceeding.
Previously, Chansley had spoken to the idea that his presence at the Capitol had to do with fervent support for the then-president, an idea he struck down as he explained, “I support Trump because he addressed a lot of things that I’m concerned about like human trafficking and slavery, China and ending the forever wars in the Middle East.”
“But,” he elaborated while speaking with the New York Post, “I’m not a Trump fanboy. He said some things and did some things that I didn’t support. He made a lot of appointments in his first term that I don’t agree with.”
Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn't researching current events and their impacts, you'll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.
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