His appearance, with face paint using the colors and symbols of the American flag and a headdress made of fur helped to establish his shaman nicknames.

[1][24] He attended Moon Valley High School in Phoenix, Arizona, and Glendale Community College, where he completed some coursework in psychology, religion, philosophy and ceramics.

[31] In November 2023, he filed a candidate statement of interest to run as a Libertarian in the 2024 election for Arizona's 8th congressional district,[32] but later failed to submit any petition signatures to get on the ballot.

[39] In early 2020 he told The Arizona Republic that he began wearing a fur hat and face paint to attract attention, so that he could then talk about QAnon and "other truths".

[12][41] He camped outside the Maricopa County Courthouse during the vote counting process,[42] and gave a speech at a rally there on November 7, the day that Joe Biden was declared president-elect, saying, "This election has not been called!

[43] He was also photographed standing on the raised platform in front of Vice President Mike Pence's chair in the Senate chamber, gaining him significant media attention.

[44] On March 16, 2021, the U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. released previously unseen video footage of Chansley entering the Capitol building after windows were smashed.

[46] Video footage presented by Tucker Carlson on Fox News in March 2023 depicted Chansley walking through the Capitol building in the company of police officers who appeared to make no visible effort to stop him.

[47] U.S. Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger denounced Carlson's segment, calling the show "filled with offensive and misleading conclusions."

[49] Court transcripts reveal Chansley told the FBI that he had traveled to the Capitol "as a part of a group effort, with other 'patriots' from Arizona, at the request of the President that all 'patriots' come to DC on January 6, 2021".

"[51] After the riot, Chansley told reporters, "The fact that we had a bunch of our traitors in office hunker down, put on their gas masks and retreat into their underground bunker, I consider that a win.

[14] A Capitol police special agent was quoted as saying that he identified Chansley by his "unique attire and extensive tattoos covering his arms and left side of his torso".

[54] In a January 14 court filing, federal prosecutors said that Chansley had left a note on Pence's desk in the Senate chamber that said "It's only a matter of time, justice is coming.

[63] Later in January, Chansley made overtures for a presidential pardon from Trump through White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.

[66][67] Federal judge Royce Lamberth ruled on March 8, 2021, that Chansley should not be released from jail, saying his lawyer's arguments were "so frivolous as to insult the Court's intelligence."

"[68] Chansley pleaded guilty to a single count of obstructing an official proceeding on September 3, 2021, and agreed to accept the prosecution's recommended sentence of 41 to 51 months in prison as part of the settlement.

[19] On March 30, 2023, attorney Albert Watkins announced Chansley had just been released from prison 14 months early and moved to a halfway house.

[23] After the storming of the Capitol, pro-Trump users on Facebook circulated false rumors that Chansley was not a Trump supporter and right-wing advocate but was instead associated with antifa and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and had infiltrated the event as an agent provocateur.

[74] There was also disinformation propagated which falsely claimed Chansley colluded with Nancy Pelosi's son-in-law, Michiel Vos, seen in a photo with him outside the Capitol.

[26] He has also spoken about the Bilderberg conspiracy theory and said that Freemasons designed Washington, D.C., according to "ley lines" (that crisscross one another at sacred sites of civilizational importance, such as temples, pyramids, the buildings on the National Mall,[33] amplify the Earth's magnetic field,[26] and which have been debunked by archaeologists and statisticians).

[81] When asked about her son in the wake of the January 2021 attack on the Capitol, his mother, Martha Chansley, said to KNXV-TV, "he's fine," adding that "it takes a lot of courage to be a patriot".

[24] In an interview with journalist George Packer after his release from prison, Chansley expressed great respect for Donald Trump, who, he insisted, had declassified three U.S. patents: “a zero-point-energy engine, infinite free clean energy; a room-temperature superconductor that allows a zero-point-energy engine to function without overheating; and what’s called a TR3B—it’s a triangular-shaped antigravity or inertia-propulsion craft.