Jacob Chansley, the Arizona man widely known as the “QAnon Shaman” for the horned headdress and face paint he wore during the January 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol, has filed a sprawling, self-written lawsuit in Maricopa County Superior Court that seeks $40 trillion in damages and names former President Donald Trump among more…
Jacob Chansley, the Arizona man widely known as the “QAnon Shaman” for the horned headdress and face paint he wore during the January 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol, has filed a sprawling, self-written lawsuit in Maricopa County Superior Court that seeks $40 trillion in damages and names former President Donald Trump among more than a dozen defendants. In a 26-page complaint presented as a single paragraph, Chansley alleges a vast conspiracy to violate constitutional rights and simultaneously declares himself the “rightful” leader of a reconstituted American government. The filing lists Trump, the Federal Reserve, the National Security Agency, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the state of Israel, Elon Musk’s X Corp., T-Mobile, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and Warner Bros. Studios as defendants, among others, and asserts that the country should be governed only by the original Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Local reporters who reviewed the court papers described them as a manifesto rather than a conventional pleading.
The damages demand is broken into three parts, according to that account: $38 trillion to erase U.S. government debt, $1 trillion to rebuild national infrastructure and $1 trillion for Chansley’s alleged personal suffering. In one passage quoted from the filing, Chansley attributes his individual claim to “personal, emotional, mental and spiritual torture and years worth of anguish.” The complaint also asserts that he would order the Federal Reserve to mint a one-ounce gold coin and fix its value at $40 trillion to pay off the country’s debts, an idea he presents as a first act as “the first president of the ‘New Constitutional Republic of the United States.’” The document’s references to exhibits include a handwritten link to an online folder that reporters said could not be accessed.
The Independent reported that Chansley claims in the suit that he is the “true” commander-in-chief and that his constitutional grievances arise from actions by an “elite group” he accuses of orchestrating an unlawful system. The newspaper said the filing “targets Elon Musk, T-Mobile and Warner Bros.” and recapitulates Chansley’s recent public break with Trump, noting that he “withdrew his support for Trump after the president refused to release the Epstein files.” The Independent also reported that Chansley alleges the NSA catfished him online while posing as actress Michelle Rodriguez and that Trump personally emailed him two days after the Capitol riot; those assertions are presented in the article as claims in the complaint, not as verified facts.
