Jake Angeli

He believes that global elites are running the world, that United States leaders are part of a secret rings of child abusers who practice satanic worship, and other debunked theories.

He has repeatedly demonstrated dramatic, erratic behavior, an inability to conform to societal norms, and an unwillingness to appreciate the consequences of his actions.

He abides by his own belief system, acts accordingly regardless of the criminal consequences, and brings others along with him.

His ability and willingness to conform his behavior to pre-trial supervision conditions appears to be virtually nil.

Jake Angeli (real name: Jacob Anthony Angeli Chansley) is a conspiracy theorist and QAnon protest figure from Phoenix, Arizona. He is known by the nom de plume QAnon Shaman (usually shortened to Q Shaman), due to being a self-proclaimed "shaman" (it has recently been rebranded to America's Shaman ). In practice, this means appearing in public wearing elaborate costumes and screaming about Satan-worshipping pedophiles controlling the world (i.e., Pizzagate).

In a previous incarnation, Chansley was in the Navy from 2005-2007 and has what one may presume was a less-than-honorable discharge for refusing to take an anthrax vaccine.

He first gained infamy in the fact-checker community for his frequent appearances at protests, usually pro-Trump or anti-lockdown, where he would appear wearing a "Shaman dress" which consists of a coyote-fur headdress with bovine horns and red-white-and-blue facepaint. He is also tattooed with several Norse mythological and religious symbols (e.g., a large Asatru ) popular among the neopagan far-right, despite being a Christian. For the general public, he got his big break during the 2021 U.S. Capitol riot. In September 2021, he pleaded guilty to corruptly obstructing, influencing, or impeding an official proceeding, a joint session of Congress, and in November 2021 he was given a 41 month prison sentence. In March of 2023, however, Angeli was given an early release.

Participation in the Capitol insurrection attempt
Angeli suddenly found himself thrust into the mainstream spotlight when he participated in the 2021 U.S. Capitol riot, where he was photographed storming into the U.S. Capitol dressed in full regalia and armed with a spear. He was promptly listed by the D.C. police as a person-of-interest due to not bothering to hide his identity and was arrested on federal charges of "knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority, and with violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds".

During the insurrection, Chansley gave a prayer in the Senate chamber that referenced Christian nationalist ideology, that the country would be "reborn" "In Christ’s holy name".

Betrayal by his own tribe
After being swiftly identified and arrested by authorities, Angeli was subsequently thrown under the bus by his fellow QAnoners and Trump supporters. Many of them were quick to accuse him of being an Antifa agent provocateur (based on cropped down pictures from a BLM protest, which he was actually protesting against; the cropping left out his QAnon sign because that obviously wouldn't have helped the far-right cover their asses and maintain their "moral high ground" when they got caught), despite all evidence pointing to the contrary. Angeli was not amused.

New Age wackjob
Prior to his arrest, Angeli was a minor New Age figure. He claimed to have become a "self-initiated shaman” following ingestion of magic mushrooms and peyote. He has claimed to have had "numerous paranormal and UFO experiences". At the same time, he had an obsession with finding pedophilia codes wherever he drove, which either derived from his QAnon obsession or fed into it.

In September 2019, he led a cheer in support of a climate strike march.

In October 2019, he was on "Cosmic Gaia Podcast", where he talked about "Timelines, fractals, DNA, California fires, dark weaponry and rising above it and also these amazing patches he sells that helped to cure his father of late-stage cancer and liver disease." The patches in question were alternative medicine hokum from Life-Wave that claim to use phototherapy and which Angeli claimed was a panacea.

In August 2020, he offered a "red pill party" at an astrology store.

By late 2020, he offered something on Facebook and elsewhere called "Star Seed Academy — the Enlightenment and Ascension Mystery School", in which he recommended the use of psychedelic plants in lieu of evidence-based pharmaceuticals.

During his pre-riot phase, he also went by the names Yellowstone Wolf, Loan Wolf, and AlphaMale.

If all of this sounds fucked up, well, there's actually a name for it, conspirituality, which is the overlap of the New Age, conspiracy culture, and the far right. So in a sense QAnon was a perfect target for Angeli: all of his nutty ideas reflect right off the map.

Life behind the costume
When not wearing his super-shaman getup, in real life Angeli is a failed actor who still lives with his mother at age 33, and went on a hunger strike in jail because the guards would not feed him organic food. Crying about it seems to have worked, and he will reportedly be fed his special-needs diet.

In an 18-page briefing against releasing Angeli on bail, the prosecutors argued that the coup plotters intended to capture and assassinate government officials based on a note that Angeli left on Vice President Mike Pence's desk that stated, "It’s only a matter of time, justice is coming." Prosecutors also presented as evidence of mental instability and further against bail a partial transcript from one of Angeli's YouTube videos:

In speaking to The Washington Post before his arrest, Angeli attempted to explain his motivation to mere mortals (and perhaps alluding to the Washington, D.C. street design conspiracy theory):

In May 2021, a judge ordered Angeli to undergo psychiatric evaluation following claims by his lawyer that imprisonment has been taking a toll on Angeli's mental health. Said lawyer then went on to insult many of the defendants in the case by calling them "fucking short bus people with cases of brain damage."

While in prison Angeli made affects to the claim that he felt "betrayed" by Trump and QAnon, but claims that's no longer true, as the Arizona Mirror explains:

Getting on that grift grindset
After his release from prison in March of 2023, Angeli has rebranded himself as "America's Shaman." He has released multiple conspiracist-themed podcasts, selling shaman-themed merchandise, and is providing hour-long coaching services for "only" five hundred dollars per session "in the wide ranging subjects of spirituality, politics, the environment, astrology, history, philosophy, and sociology." What are his qualifications, you ask? PIDOOMA, we answer!

Shortly after his release from the halfway house he was holed up at after his early release from prison, Angeli posted a video to Twitter having abandoned the horns and faux-shaman getup for a "flag-themed bandana" and tie, talking about his prison experiences in a manner suspiciously similar to an "infomercial salesman" :

Of course, another lesson provided by his prison experience is the chance to earn cold hard cash courtesy of his new webshite "Forbidden Truth Academy".