See full scans at the bottom of the page.

In the months after Jacob Chansley (the “QAnon Shaman”) was arrested for his role in the January 6th Capitol breach, letters began arriving.

Some came on cheerful greeting cards with flowers and shooting stars. Others arrived on yellow envelopes decorated with hand-drawn smiley faces wearing halos. Strangers wrote to offer prayers, to send money for commissary, to thank him for his military service, to tell him he wasn’t forgotten. One included a detailed legal argument comparing his actions to previous protests by Democrats at the Capitol. Another warned him to avoid conspiracy theories while comparing his situation to Soviet dissidents and Gandhi.

These letters reveal something crucial about January 6th that court proceedings and news coverage often miss: the defendants weren’t isolated extremists. They had communities of support: networks of people who saw them not as insurrectionists but as political prisoners, patriots who crossed a line they genuinely didn’t understand existed, or victims of selective prosecution.

The correspondence shows how movements sustain themselves after the cameras leave, how legal arguments get shaped, and how people convicted of crimes related to an attempted insurrection can simultaneously become symbols of persecution to those who share their worldview.

The Support Network

The letters to Chansley follow familiar patterns of correspondence with incarcerated people, but with distinct political overtones. Regina Krach from Fort Wayne, Indiana wrote on an Easter card: “Thank you so much for your heroic service to our country. We are forever indebted. We are also so sorry for your false imprisonment & the suffering it must’ve caused you & your family.” She enclosed money for lunch or dinner and signed off with “God bless America!”

Another supporter, identifying as “Shavna” and writing as a veteran, thanked Chansley for serving the country and expressed sorrow for “what’s happening to you and the others.” The letter includes scripture references and a prayer: “O Lord my God, in you I put my trust; Save me from all those who persecute me, and deliver me.” It ends with hope that “your Day today your NOT forgotten” and mentions that 14 pages of stories and scriptures are being sent.

A couple identifying themselves as “Mr & Mrs Terry Darga” wrote on patriotic stationery with stars and stripes: “We are praying for you! Stay strong, we love you! Stay strong, we need you! God Loves You!! God Bless You and Your Family! HAVE UNSHAKEABLE FAITH.”

These aren’t generic prison pen-pal letters. They’re political and spiritual support for someone their writers view as wrongly imprisoned for standing up for beliefs they share. The religious language is constant—prayers, scripture, references to God’s protection—framing Chansley’s prosecution as spiritual persecution rather than legal consequence.

The Legal Defense: “What About Them?”

Among the personal letters sits a more calculated document: a multi-page printout titled “Eight Times When Leftist Protestors Illegally Mobbed Congress with Trump as President.” This document, clearly intended to help Chansley’s legal defense, lists eight incidents between 2017 and 2019 when protesters were arrested for disrupting congressional proceedings or occupying congressional office buildings.

The incidents include 575 protesters arrested at the Hart Senate Office Building during immigration protests in 2018, 302 arrested during protests against Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation, 181 arrested during healthcare bill hearings, and multiple other examples of demonstrators charged with “crowding, obstructing, or incommoding”—the same misdemeanor charges many January 6th defendants faced.

The document’s argument is simple and direct: if Democrats who occupied congressional buildings got light sentences or no sentences at all, why should January 6th defendants be treated more harshly? It asks: “Isn’t it fair that you should be treated similar to how those Democrats were treated? They too were angry and they too tried to disrupt the proceedings of Congress. They too occupied Congress illegally. The law must above all be fair.”

This represents a key defense strategy that emerged in January 6th cases: the argument of selective prosecution. The logic holds that previous protests inside or around the Capitol that resulted in minimal consequences establish a precedent that should apply equally to January 6th defendants—especially those who, like many protesters before them, were charged only with trespassing or obstruction, not violence.

The Anonymous Advisor

One letter stands out for its attempt to provide both legal strategy and personal counsel. Written in March 2021 from an anonymous “well-wisher” who claims to have found Chansley’s name on NPR’s list of arrested individuals, the letter offers a complex mix of support and criticism.

The writer acknowledges being “one of hundreds of thousands supporting our President in DC on January 6th” but claims not to have entered the Capitol grounds personally. The letter mentions a January 6th protester from Georgia who committed suicide afterward, calling it “heartbreaking.”

Then comes the strategic advice: “Did you know that large mobs of Democrats stormed Congress at least eight times during the Trump administration? They didn’t storm the Capitol building itself, but they stormed various congressional office buildings illegally.” The writer encourages Chansley to use this information in his defense and “ask for fair treatment.”

But the letter also includes warnings that suggest concern about Chansley’s ideology: “Avoid conspiracy theories—we don’t need them. There are enough problems right before our eyes to protest against.” This is striking advice for the “QAnon Shaman”—essentially telling him to distance himself from the very conspiracy thinking that motivated his presence at the Capitol.

The writer continues: “Also, don’t feel like conservatism is lost. The left’s policies don’t work and so leftists eventually fail in the end. In the Soviet Union, the left had total power and things seemed totally hopeless for people of faith who loved their country. But leftist rule simply doesn’t work and the Soviet system collapsed because of that.”

The letter ends by comparing Chansley to Martin Luther King Jr., Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Gandhi, and Christ—people “mistreated by the law” who “relied on faith to carry them through.” It encourages staying away from “alcohol and substances” and avoiding depression through exercise and nature walks, while asking: “Whatever happens, I hope you can feel honored and even grateful to God for the chance to suffer for the country which you love.”

The Government’s Response

In stark contrast to these letters of support sits the bureaucratic reality: a Federal Bureau of Prisons form dated June 2022, reviewing whether Chansley qualified for early release under provisions that exclude certain violent offenders. The form is clinical and procedural. It lists his conviction under D.C. Code § 23-1331(4) for “crime of violence” related to obstruction of an official proceeding. The review concluded that this conviction “PRECLUDES him/her from early release.”

At the bottom of the form, someone has written in pen: “People who make the decision to with hold FSA [Federal Sentence Reduction] 4 Sc 212 / 4 year off.” This appears to be Chansley’s own notation, documenting his frustration with the decision that kept him incarcerated for his full sentence rather than qualifying for early release programs.

This document represents the other side of the conversation—the government unmoved by arguments about political motivation, religious faith, or comparisons to previous protests. The form reduces Chansley to inmate number 24866-509, his crime to a checkbox on a legal review, his future to a binary decision: qualifies or doesn’t qualify for early release.

What These Letters Reveal About January 6th’s Aftermath

These artifacts matter because they show what happens after the insurrection—how communities form around imprisoned participants, how legal strategies develop, how people make sense of consequences they didn’t expect.

The letters reveal several important dynamics:

Political Prisoner Narrative: To Chansley’s supporters, he wasn’t a criminal. He was a political prisoner, someone punished for his beliefs rather than his actions. The constant religious framing reinforces this: he’s suffering for faith and country, persecuted like biblical martyrs or civil rights heroes.

Selective Prosecution Arguments: The detailed documentation of previous Capitol protests shows a deliberate legal strategy. By establishing that others who disrupted Congress faced minimal consequences, defendants could argue their harsh treatment was politically motivated rather than legally justified.

Movement Maintenance: These letters show how movements sustain members through imprisonment. The messages aren’t just personal support—they’re affirmations of shared political worldview, reminders that supporters still believe the cause was just even if the law disagreed.

Cognitive Dissonance: The letters also reveal tension in how supporters understood January 6th. Some framed it as legitimate protest unfairly prosecuted. Others, like the anonymous letter-writer, seemed troubled by conspiracy thinking and violence while still defending the underlying political motivation.

The Isolation Gap: What’s absent from these letters is perhaps as important as what’s present. There’s no grappling with why breaking through barriers into the Capitol during the electoral certification might be treated differently than sitting in a Senate office building during a hearing. There’s no acknowledgment that the timing, the violence by others in the crowd, or the specific constitutional moment being disrupted might matter legally.

The Question These Letters Force

For museums and historians, these letters create an uncomfortable obligation. They document genuine human connection, spiritual faith, and political conviction. They show people who believed—and perhaps still believe—that Chansley was wrongly imprisoned for doing something patriotic. They reveal communities of support that see January 6th defendants as victims rather than perpetrators.

But these same letters also reveal how people can commit serious crimes while genuinely believing they’re acting righteously. They show how political movements create alternative narratives that insulate members from accountability. They demonstrate how selective comparison—highlighting previous protests while ignoring key differences—can make insurrection feel like just another day of vigorous dissent.

The greeting cards with flowers, the envelopes with hand-drawn halos, the prayers and scripture and commissary money—they’re all real expressions of care. But they’re care directed at someone who forced his way into the Senate chamber during a constitutional crisis, someone who became a visible symbol of an attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power.

These letters don’t resolve the tension between how Chansley saw himself and how the legal system saw him. If anything, they deepen it. They show that months after arrest, trial, and conviction, communities of supporters remained convinced he’d done nothing wrong—or at least nothing worse than what other protesters had done before him. They preserved his status as political prisoner rather than accepting his conviction as appropriate consequence.

For future historians, these mundane objects—greeting cards and legal documents, cheerful notes and bureaucratic forms—will help explain how political movements survive setbacks, how communities form around imprisoned members, and how fundamentally differently people can interpret the same events. One person’s insurrectionist is another person’s political prisoner. One person’s just prosecution is another person’s persecution.

These letters capture that divide in handwriting and scripture and legal arguments sent through the mail.

Special thanks to the USC Digital Imaging Lab for their support in digitizing this item.