Ex-Lawyer for ‘QAnon Shaman’ Comes to His Defense

The attorney Albert Watkins’s website describes him as “quite candidly, beyond description” and “self-centered, egotistical, and beyond description.” For a time, he was also a lawyer to the so-called QAnon Shaman, Jacob Chansley, representing the rioter for his actions at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. It was under Mr. Watkins’s counsel — he no longer represents the shaman — that Chansley struck a deal with the government, pleading guilty to a felony, obstruction of an official proceeding. He was sentenced to 41 months in prison. The presiding judge, Royce Lamberth, called Chansley the “very image of this whole event.”Mr. Watkins is back in the news because of the January 6 footage aired on Tucker Carlson’s television show. Mr. Watkins took to that same Fox News program to aver that those tapes, which show Chansley wandering the Capitol in the company of police officers, were not available to the defendant when he pleaded.Now, Mr. Watkins, in an interview with the Sun, thunders that “as an American,” he feels “violated” by the government’s behavior in the case, which has “proved to be more destructive of core democratic tenants than anything that happened on January 6.” Speaking over the phone but with the cadence of a veteran courtroom lawyer, he lamented that “our beloved Department of Justice violated our trust.” You can’t, he noted, “unring that bell.”This despite Brady v. Maryland and reams of black letter law that maintains that the government has an affirmative duty to turn over any evidence, at any point, to the defendant that could, even potentially, could help his case. Judges have not looked kindly on Brady violations. In 2008, Senator Stevens of Alaska was indicted on seven counts of failing to properly report gifts. He was found guilty on all counts, only the fifth sitting senator in American history to be convicted of a crime. He lost his next election, ending the longest Republican senatorial tenure in American history.After the verdict a special investigation found that the prosecution engaged in “significant, widespread and, at times, intentional misconduct” by, among other things, withholding evidence in Senator Stevens’s favor. The case was dismissed but the senator subsequently died in a plane crash, and a prosecutor hanged himself. It lingers as an example of prosecutorial misconduct. Translating the holding of Brady for the layman, Mr. Watkins insists that the “DOJ had an absolute duty, not one that involved discretion or subjective undertaking, to provide every criminal accused with Brady evidence.” Not “most of it,” he added. “You get the message” does not suffice.Mr. Watkins bluntly notes that the government, which “garnered and amassed an unparalleled cache of footage,” did not “provide us with the footage shown on the Tucker Carlson show.” Instead, what he calls the “snippets” he received “cast the defendant in a different light than the representations the government made during sentencing.”Albert Watkins, via the lawyer. Mr. Watkins details a “systematically flawed” process of “screening and hiding and shrouding in secrecy” videos from January 6. These “flaws,” he reckons, were not the products of “room temperature IQs doing their best” but rather the “best and brightest who leave the DOJ to work at places like Jones Day,” a prestigious law firm. For its part, the Department of Justice struck back against these accusations in another filing that detailed its “voluminous” production of footage to defendants and asserting that “nearly all” material “has long been in the government’s production to defense counsel.” It tallies that it has turned over “7.36 terabytes of information” and “over 4.91 million files.”Against these protests Mr. Watkins can point to a filing that bears his name from February 2021. It is a request for discovery lodged with the court and directed at the assistant United States attorney prosecuting the case, Kimberly Paschall. This document gains added significance in light of the previously unaired tapes shown by Mr. Carlson. In the request, Mr. Watkins cites Brady and demands “any material or information which would tend to attenuate, exculpate, exonerate, mitigate or reduce or limit the defendant’s involvement in or liability for any of the circumstances alleged in the indictment.”Chansley likewise put in a request for “all videos created by the Government, including the legislative branch, depicting any part or all of the events of January 6, 2021 at the US Capitol Building.” The word “legislative” could be significant, as it covers materials gathered not only by the Capitol Police but also by the January 6 committee, and the trove unveiled by Speaker McCarthy. Mr. Watkins took pains to point out that he harbors no illusions as to Chansley’s role on January 6. “He incited others,” the lawyer said of his former client, “was vulgar and led the charge. He was part of this horrific disruption of our great democracy.” On January 6, Chansley was one of the first 30 people who breached the Capitol. He called Vice President Pence a “f—ing traitor” and left a note on his Senate desk that read, “It’s Only A Matter of Time. Justice Is Coming!”Mr. Watkins understands the government’s Brady requirement as a means toward the end of a “learned, free, informative decision” on the part of the defendant. He explains that “my client was deprived of his right to make that decision. Whether he would have changed his mind is immaterial.”By copping to the obstruction charge, Chansley was able to evade five others, including civil disorder and various trespassing statutes. Judge Lamberth, who, Mr. Watkins surmises, “won’t be happy” with these new disclosures, told Chansley that he was “facing 20 years” behind bars had a jury returned a guilty verdict on all counts. Mr. Watkins will not counsel Chansley going forward. Chansley has a new lawyer, John Pierce, who has telegraphed that he will trot out an ineffective assistance of counsel claim. Watkins declined to “be critical of brethren counsel,” but wondered why the “new counsel elected to focus his time on air bashing me” rather than turning the heat up on the government on Chansley’s behalf by petitioning for a writ of mandamus. Before hanging up, Mr. Watkins tells the Sun that notwithstanding the end of their professional relationship, he “thinks the world” of Chansley and “would stand in front of a bus” for him.

Ex-Lawyer for ‘QAnon Shaman’ Comes to His Defense

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