By Anyon Fak-McDaniels/Cronkite News
PHOENIX – A Phoenix man claims to be the true leader of the free world and has a plan to revolutionize American society — he just needs $40 trillion.
In a 26-page lawsuit filed Sept. 22, consisting of a single paragraph, Jacob Angeli-Chansley, known as the “QAnon Shaman,” sued President Donald Trump for that amount and shared his plans to eliminate the national debt and upgrade American infrastructure in an exclusive interview this week.
Like many of his fellow Phoenicians, Angeli-Chansley says his favorite part of living in Phoenix is the desert and his access to the outdoors. He said he enjoys hiking in his free time. But Angeli-Chansley is better known for donning red-and-blue face paint and a horned fur hat while carrying a bullhorn and an American flag fastened to a spear during his participation in the Jan. 6 insurrection.
“He stated that ‘Mike Pence is a f—-ing traitor’ and wrote a note on available paper on the dais, stating, ‘It’s Only A Matter of Time. Justice Is Coming,” according to the Department of Justice. “He further called other rioters up to the dais and led them in an incantation over his bullhorn.”
He pleaded guilty in federal court and was convicted of obstruction of an official proceeding. The first day of his second term, Trump issued an executive order granting clemency and pardoning him, along with over 1,500 others, including an estimated 15 people from Arizona.
Angeli-Chansley, 37, has since turned his back on the president.
Angeli-Chansley said he worked closely with Trump and his administration off the record since late 2019 in an advisory role, choosing “to invest time, energy, attention, focus into helping the country.” He did not elaborate on how long he had been in this role.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
His tone has changed.
“I’m essentially threatening the system,” he said.
For a while, Angeli-Chansley’s way of thinking lined up with the system. Trump, in his first administration, often made references to the QAnon conspiracy theory and, at one point, referenced one of the group’s code words at a meeting with military officials at the White House. Angeli-Chansley said he stormed the U.S. Capitol when he thought Trump needed him, and it cost Angeli-Chansley his freedom for a time.
Angeli-Chansley was arrested on Jan. 9, 2021, and pleaded guilty on Sept. 3 that year, according to a DOJ statement. On Nov. 17, 2021, he was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison. He was released in late March 2023 and spent another two months in a halfway house in Phoenix.
But now, Angeli-Chansely said, the honeymoon is over between him and the president.
While in prison in 2022, he said he heard Trump speak about freedom cities, flying cars, and streets named after the Founding Fathers — Angeli-Chansley said Trump stole these ideas from him.
Angeli-Chansley said that the Trump administration purposefully kept his adviser role unofficial to preserve plausible deniability. He said he wound up “in deep water” when he refused to work with the new Trump administration.
“After I helped them endlessly and they felt like they could get rid of me, they f—–g stabbed me in the back a thousand times,” Angeli-Chansley said. “They kept betraying me over and over and over again, taking my ideas and giving me the finger.”
Angeli-Chansley said that Trump stealing his ideas was inconsequential to him. He said it was the administration not “doing the things that would actually be good for America” that led him to file his lawsuit.
He listed several reasons he felt betrayed by Trump: American support of Israel, Trump’s statement that the Epstein files do not exist, rising prices, and the continuing wars that he promised to end. Angeli-Chansley said the second Trump administration “bold-faced lied to everybody.”
Angeli-Chansley said his lawsuit is not about the money.
He arrived at the amount it would take to improve the country. Most of it, $38 trillion, would go to pay off the national debt in one fell swoop. His plan is to mint a single $38 trillion coin and plug it “into the slot machine that is the Federal Reserve.” Another $1 trillion would be used to rebuild American infrastructure into technologically advanced, utopian cities, he said.
And the final $1 trillion would be for his “pain and suffering,” he said.
He also promised to hold a new constitutional convention and reinstate what he calls “the old constitutional republic,” which he intends to lead. He said he will winnow all American laws down to the Constitution and “build up from there.”
