QAnon Shaman refiles dismissed $40T lawsuit against Donald Trump

As the saying goes, if at first you don’t succeed, sue Donald Trump and the Federal Reserve for $40 trillion again.

In September, Phoenix resident Jacob Chansley — better known as the headdress-wearing QAnon Shaman who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 and wound up behind bars — filed a conspiracy theory-filled, self-authored lawsuit against a host of defendants, including Trump, several branches of the federal government, the country of Israel and also T-Mobile. Among the suit’s wild claims were that the U.S. intelligence community spied on him and stole his writings for the movie “Avatar,” that the government catfished him while posing as the actress Michelle Rodriguez and that Chansley was the rightful president of the United States.

The lawsuit, which was filed in Maricopa County Superior Court despite its (tenuous) federal claims, didn’t get laughed out of the courtroom as much as it died a slow death. Chansley had trouble serving the lawsuit to his many prominent defendants — he says he got arrested trying to do so at the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. — and the suit was dismissed in December for lack of service.

Not one to be deterred, Chansley is now back with another lawsuit. On Feb. 2, he filed another self-represented suit, naming many of the same defendants. And while the lawsuit also contains many of the same allegations (a word used loosely in this context), Chansley took the opportunity to rewrite it from scratch. He even broke it into paragraphs this time.

“It actually worked out for the best. I refiled it and I rewrote it,” Chansley told Phoenix New Times in a phone interview. “This time, it’s infinitely better. It’s much more understandable.”

That’s in the eye of the beholder, of course. Chansley’s 60-page lawsuit is quite the up-and-down ride. His lawsuit mixes well-covered episodes of history, such as the forced relocation of Native Americans and the persecution of people of color, with some truly off-the-wall assertions about what is really happening in the halls of power. Some passages might be generously described as woke, such as one paragraph about the FBI surveillance of the (accidentally extraterrestrially-named) “Dr. Martian Luther King Jr.” Others are even mainstream, like Chansley’s description of the “cult like following Trump has with his few remaining followers” and his assertion that Trump “recently invaded Venezuela without a Congressional declaration of war.”

“He has seized foreign oil tankers in international waters, only to deposit a large sums (sic) of currency made from these raids into a personal bank account overseas,” Chansley wrote. “That illegal act is called piracy.”

You know what, hard to argue.

On the other hand, though, Chansley’s beliefs often blow right past woke and superwoke all the way to “maybe you should get some sleep.” Some of his assertions are steeped in antisemitic tropes. Other claims include that:

• A “breakaway civilization” based on classified Nazi technology took root after World War II, and that Adolf Hitler survived the war “in deep underground military bases (DUMBs) around the country”
• The Nazis — among whom Chansley includes the CIA and George H.W. Bush — murdered John F. Kennedy Jr. in 1963
• Marilyn Monroe told JFK about “CIA/Human Trafficking rings”
• That Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Ronald Reagan, Gerald Ford and Bush were members of “Bohemian Grove,” which is “a male exclusive secret society that gathers once a year to do a mock human sacrifice to the owl god Moloch/Baal”

Then Chansley will reel it in long enough to say entirely defensible things like calling out ICE agents “illegally searching, seizing, detaining, assaulting and killing American citizens in the street.” Additionally, he wrote, “The evidence is so clear that our government/bureaucracy is no longer serving the American people, (that) to suggest otherwise is an inadvertent admission of corruption or stupidity.” Few people would buy all of what Chansley is selling in his lawsuit, but a significant number would probably agree with that.

Chansley wrote that the purpose of his suit is to “conclusively prove how through counterfeit, treason or piracy, our nation has been betrayed.” He seeks the “non-violent and legally binding abolition of this unconstitutional government,” which, in his complaint, means elevating him to the role of president over a new United States republic. Phoenix would be the capital of that new republic and would host “Nuremberg style tribunals” for the 250th anniversary of the country’s founding. Additionally, Chansley would direct the Treasury to mint a $40 trillion coin, $38 trillion of which would sit in the Treasury while $1 trillion would be used to create a new society. “The other $1 trillion will be given to me for my years’ worth of pain and suffering,” he wrote.

Both in his lawsuit and in conversation — during which Chansley is unfailingly friendly and upbeat — he shows some recognition of how all this must sound. In the suit, he wrote that his allegations about Michelle Rodriguez may come across as “a product of severe delusion or a desperate and flexible imagination.” Speaking to New Times, he said, “If I were to try to explain it to you, you probably wouldn’t believe me.” In a two-hour video on his X profile, he tries to explain it anyway.

Does he understand how most people view his intricate web of conspiracy theories? “Of course,” he responded, before flipping it around.

“Listen, bro, let me ask you something,” he continued. “Do you think you know everything? Neither do I. If you expect people to go the rest of their life not learning new shit that is going to shock them, then you don’t know what life is all about. You know what I’m saying? Look, bro. We could either have people live in the real world, or we could have them live in this wannabe, Epstein-run fucking fantasy.”

Asked if there’s anyone in his life cautioning him against pursuing his lawsuit, Chansley didn’t answer directly. He said the lawsuit is really all he’s up to. “This is all I’m doing,” he said. “I’m kicking ass and taking names, and I’m doing it for free because I’m a fucking G.” Whether he’ll actually have his day in court, or whether the matter will be dismissed again, remains to be seen.

But Chansley is due to have a different day in court. On Feb. 25, he said, he’s due back in a D.C. court as a result of his earlier arrest there. He insists it will be appointment viewing.

“You better send somebody there,” he said, “because I’m making fucking history.”