Lawyer for ‘QAnon shaman’ says rioters are ‘short-bus people’
Albert Watkins, the lawyer for the accused U.S. Capitol Hill rioter known as the “QAnon Shaman,” told Talking Points Memo that a lot of the rioting defendants are “short-bus people.” Watkins said the defendants are people with “brain damage, they’re f- - -ing retarded, they’re on the goddamn spectrum,” he said. But he added that the defendants are “our brothers, our sisters, our neighbors, our co-workers,” and they were “subjected to four-plus years of goddamn propaganda the likes of which the world has not seen since f- - -ing Hitler.” Watkins later acknowledged that his comments were vulgar and inappropriate but said they were calculated to draw attention to the mental health and disabilities of those accused in the attacks. Watkins said his client, Jacob Chansley, is on the autism spectrum. (Talking Points Memo, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Hill)