The face of the Jan. 6 incursion—“QAnon Shaman” Jacob Chansley—was peacefully escorted around the U.S. Capitol by police on Jan. 6, 2021, Fox News host Tucker Carlson alleges in his first special based on exclusive access to 41,000 previously unseen hours of Capitol security video.
Carlson showed CCTV security video footage of Chansley walking calmly through the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Not only did the police not try to stop Chansley, but they also escorted him, Carlson said.
“Virtually every moment of his time inside the Capitol was caught on tape. The tape shows that Capitol Police never stopped Jacob Chansley. They helped him. They acted as his tour guides,” Carlson said during “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on March 6.
“Capitol Police officers take him to multiple entrances and even try to open locked doors for him. We counted at least nine officers who are within touching distance of unarmed Jacob Chansley.
“Not one of them even tried to slow him down. Chansley understood that Capitol Police were his allies. Video shows him giving thanks for them in a prayer on the floor of the Senate.”
Carlson said his producers spent three weeks in Washington with “unfettered access” to security video, thanks to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). Much of the massive video cache was irrelevant, he said, such as footage of empty rooms. Producers used Capitol computers to hone in on relevant times and locations, he said.
Legacy media and much of the Democrat establishment made Chansley into a caricature during and after Jan. 6, 2021. Walking shirtless, bedecked in a fur headdress with horns, and carrying a spear with a U.S. flag attached, the Shaman quickly became the most recognized man in America.
Chansley agreed to plead guilty to one count of obstructing an official proceeding in September 2021. He was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth to 41 months in prison in November 2021. Prosecutors had sought a 51-month sentence.
‘He Should Be Killed’
Chansley wasn’t accused of violence on Jan. 6, 2021. He didn’t vandalize the building. He stood on the rostrum in the U.S. Senate and walked the halls of the Capitol. Yet, he drew one of the longest prison terms among the more than 1,000 Jan. 6, 2021, defendants.
“Contrast the reality of what Jacob Chansley did in the Capitol Building on Jan. 6—the indisputable facts recorded on video, some of which has never before been seen—with the depiction of Jacob Chansley that you’ve seen in the media for more than two years,” Carlson said. “‘He’s a terrorist,’ they said. ‘He should be killed.’”
Prosecutors argued for a heavy sentence for Chansley because they said he encouraged people to come to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, to expose so-called traitors in the government, to “stop the steal,” and halt the agenda of corrupt politicians.
After then-President Donald Trump issued a video telling protesters to be peaceful and leave the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Chansley used a bullhorn to urge everyone to go home, open-source videos have shown.
“I was on the Senate floor. I was sitting in Biden’s chair,” Chansley told the French television program “Quotidien” on the afternoon of Jan. 6, 2021. “It was fun.
“The communists and the globalists are fighting spiritual warfare with us,” Chansley said. “The whole way they fight the spiritual warfare is to desecrate our sacred spaces. The Senate is a sacred space. It is a harmonic chamber for truth, and what has filled it for decades is lies and treason.”
“So, I said a prayer inside of that chamber,” Chansley told reporter Laura Geisswiller. “I said a prayer inside the Senate, one that banishes all evil, one that welcomes the Divine Creator, God, into our lives and into the Senate once again.”
Ray Epps ‘Lied’
Another development on the Fox special alleged that mysterious Jan. 6, 2021, provocateur Ray Epps lied to investigators for the House Jan. 6 Select Committee.
Epps told the Jan. 6 Select Committee that when he sent a text to his nephew at 2:12 p.m. on Jan. 6, 2021, claiming he had “orchestrated” the protests and helped get people to the Capitol, he had already left the grounds, Carlson said.
“Tonight, we can tell you that at the very least, Ray Epps lied in his sworn testimony to the January 6 Committee,” Carlson said. “Epps testified that when he sent the text messages to his nephew, he had already left the Capitol grounds to return to his hotel room. That is not true.”
“The surveillance footage we found shows that in fact, Ray Epps remained at the Capitol for at least another half an hour,” Carlson said. “Now, what was Epps doing there? We can’t say, but we do know that he lied to investigators.”
Epps was captured on viral video on Jan. 5, 2021, encouraging protesters to enter the Capitol the next day. On Jan. 6, 2021, he stood at the Ellipse near the White House and urged everyone to walk to the Capitol. He was at the first breach point of police lines near the west front of the Capitol and charged across barricades with the crowd at another breach point.
Epps was never arrested or charged. He has repeatedly denied working as an undercover agent or informant for the government.
Carlson saved his strongest words for the now-defunct Jan. 6 Select Committee headed by Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), which he accused of lies and deception.
The committee’s role “was never to investigate anything,” Carlson said. “The point was to stage a made-for-TV show trial. From the opening moments, the tone of the hearings was almost comically overheated and polemical. There was not a tragedy in American history that Democrats didn’t liken to the protests of January 6.”
Carlson’s series on the Jan. 6, 2021, tapes will continue on March 7 with an interview of former U.S. Capitol Police Lt. Tarik Johnson, based on investigative reporting by The Epoch Times.
Johnson was in Florida the first week of March taping interviews with Carlson. He’s expected to discuss the breakdown in radio communications in the Capitol Police Command Center and what he described as the repeated failure of then-Assistant Police Chief Yogananda Pittman to authorize evacuation of the U.S. Senate.