QAnon Shaman’s Lawyer Explains Why Capitol Rioters Fell for Trump’s Lies in Wildly Offensive Rant

Former President Donald Trump's months-long smear campaign against the validity of the 2020 election culminated in a deadly failed insurrection against the United States Capitol on January 6, when a mob of pro-Trump extremists stormed the United States Capitol, upending the joint Congressional session acknowledging Biden's victory.

While Americans were inundated with real time footage of the horrors of that day, few images stood out more than ones of Jake Chansley, also known as the "QAnon Shaman." Shirtless with animal horns adorning his head, Chansley made it all the way to the Senate floor just moments after then-Vice President Mike Pence had been evacuated.

Chansley was later arrested and his lawyer has since blamed Trump's election lies for Chansley's actions, claiming he was manipulated into thinking that storming the Capitol was the right thing to do.

The lawyer, Albert Watkins, deployed that defense once again in a wildly offensive rant to Matt Shuham of TPM.

After attributing Chansely's Aspergers as a reason for his susceptibility to Trump's lies, Watkins delivered a diatribe riddled with ableist slurs:

"A lot of these defendants — and I'm going to use this colloquial term, perhaps disrespectfully — but they're all f***ing short-bus people. These are people with brain damage, they're f***ing ret***ed, they're on the goddamn spectrum."

Watkins went on to say:

"But they're our brothers, our sisters, our neighbors, our coworkers — they're part of our country. These aren't bad people, they don't have prior criminal history. F**k, they were subjected to four-plus years of goddamn propaganda the likes of which the world has not seen since f***ing Hitler."

A number of Capitol rioters have pointed to Trump's constant lies that the election was "stolen" by Democrats engaging in election fraud as their reasoning for laying siege on the U.S. Capitol. Up until minutes before the riots, Trump urged them to "fight like hell" claiming they wouldn't "have a country anymore" if the fair and free election was allowed to be certified.

People were stunned and disgusted by Watkins' comments.

Many took issue with Chansley's lawyer using his client's position on the spectrum to justify mob violence.

Hopefully Watkins will choose his words more carefully when defending his client in court.