The US Bureau of Prisons acts as the coercion arm of the politically weaponized Department of Justice, torturing J6 political hostages to coerce them into flipping on Trump in exchange for their freedom.
Viral photographs of Samsel allegedly locked in a “hard cell” in FDC Philadelphia are a glimpse of the cruel and unusual treatment he’s endured in a series of assaults by correctional officers in pretrial custody and attempts by dirty cops to manipulate him to cooperate in a plea agreement with enhanced interrogation.
COERCED TO PLEA
During multiple interrogations, FBI agents allegedly pressured Samsel into taking a deal that entailed affirming their bogus narrative about the January 6 “insurrection” conspired by the Proud Boys and President Trump to go home or pay the price.
The feds also tried to bribe Samsel into framing Proud Boys leader Joseph Biggs with having a gun on January 6. Biggs was convicted of a bogus seditious conspiracy charge “for his role in the Capitol riot” during which he committed no violent crimes and is serving 17 years in prison in an FCI Alabama.
Choosing to die on his feet rather than live on his knees, Samsel refused to comply to go home.
“‘They said, ‘There was a man with a gun.’ They kept asking me, ‘Did you see him around the Proud Boys? Did they hand him the gun?’ I just said, ‘I don’t know. I am not sure. I don’t know!” Samsel told The Gateway Pundit in an exclusive interview, describing the multiple attempts by the Justice Department to strong-arm him into cooperating.
“There was an article posted in the New York Times claiming that I was going to be the ‘smoking gun’ and I was going to testify against the Proud Boys during their trial — and I wasn’t. So, I was locked in a room in DC,” he said. “Inside, the cops asked me if I was going to testify. I said, ‘No.’ People began spreading these lies and all these rumors.
“I said, ‘I’m not testifying!’ That’s when they ended up beating the shit out of me and telling me that I ‘better start learning to cooperate’ and I ‘better start doing what the government tells me to do or times will get real tough.’ That’s when I was assaulted, the first time,” he said.
The FBI allegedly employed the same intimidation tactics against Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio. Tarrio who was detained in solitary confinement in a 6 by 8-foot freezing-cold cell reserved for serial killers in the Alexandria Detention Facility for 17 months, along with his co-defendants, where they were served inedible food or nothing.
“They told me to LIE about President Trump in order to indict him. I told them to pound sand and because I refused to lie about President Trump it cost me twenty-two years of my life,” Tarrio told TGP after he was sentenced in September.
TORTURE: DIESEL THERAPY
Samsel has been transferred to 17 jails since his Jan. 30, 2021 arrest for protesting at the Capitol and moved from jail to jail 25 times while pleading with correctional officers and the judge presiding over his case to allow him the life-saving surgery he requires after the beatdowns.
In March 2021, while detained in the hole the DC gulag for refusing COVID, Samsel awoke to the correctional officers zip-tying his hands. Then they walked him to an unoccupied cell and smashed his face into the ground.
He was then transferred to the Lewisburg, Virginia correctional facility, and severely beaten again, this time the assault left him with no vision in one eye, a broken eye socket, and the inability to move his left arm. Doctors in Lewisburg told Samsel he required surgery and he was transferred to FDC Philadephia.
“I was moved to Central Virginia Regional Jail. At that jail, they were unable to provide me medical so they sent me off to Northern Neck Regional Jail in Warsaw, Virginia. In Warsaw, I was assaulted during the legal video visitations,” Samsel said. “After I was beaten there, I started suffering from all these health conditions — that’s when I started developing bad blood clots.
“When I was finally able to see a doctor in Warsaw, the doctor wrote a letter to the judge saying, ‘This guy needed to be released. He has way too many medical issues, and we can’t operate on him here, his blood clots are serious and he needs treatment immediately.’ He sent me to Geissinger, a local hospital. They scheduled surgery, rehab and all kinds of treatments that the jail couldn’t provide. But [Judge Jia Cobb] refused to allow me to get the surgery. She said, ‘I’m not giving him bond. I’ll ship him to Philadelphia and we’ll get a second opinion at the University of Pennsylvania.’”
When he finally was transferred to Philadelphia he did not get surgery, treatment, or see a doctor. Instead, he was on the brink of starving to death for over five months on the cell block where inmates notoriously die or get killed.
Locked in the hole on the 8th floor, not only was Samsel in pain from the injuries he sustained from all the assaults, but almost two weeks had gone by and he wasn’t given a single meal.
“Once I arrived in FDC Philadelphia, I was placed in solitary confinement on the 8th floor, locked in 24/7, with no windows, no books — no nothing. The lights are never turned off. I could not store food and they fed little to nothing. The COs in Philadelphia are extremely liberal and hated me because I am a J6er. So they were going to torture me and get away with it,” Samsel said.
***Please Support J6 Political Hostage Ryan Samsel here. ***
‘FOREVER GRATEFUL’
The guards kept serving him empty trays and the hunger pains became unbearable.
“Everything is surveilled,” he said. “When they come to feed you, they would give me an empty tray. So, on camera, it looks like they’re feeding me, but there’s no food in the tray. I was going days without food because this C.O. hated me.”
After starving for 12 days, barred from all communication, Samsel came to a breaking point. In what he considers “a miracle,” he managed to get help from an inmate housed on the floor below.
“In that cell, I thought and thought, alone for hours. Finally, I said, ‘That’s it!’ and I emptied my toilet. Then I made pressure bubbles, I made a cup with paper and used it to scream down the hole,” Samsel explained. “People started to hear me — I would do it during count time when I knew people would be in their cells. So, they emptied their toilet and we would talk. Once I realized Zach was in the jail, I knew he would look out for me, if I could somehow just get to him.
“A few days later, Zach yelled up from the cell 93 feet below me. I said, ‘Dude, I’m not testifying against you!’ He said, ‘You’re not on any of my paperwork! I am sorry everybody is lying about you — I know you’re not a fed,’ and we became friends.
I told him, ‘Check on me every at 6 pm right after meals! I told him, ‘I will cut my sheet and a piece of laundry bag’ and how to send me food.
“Zach, on the 5th floor, was allowed food and coffee. So, I said, ‘Brother, roll the food up small and make a slip knot.’ I knew he was a Marine and knew how to use a slip knot. He said, ‘Okay, I got you. no worry.’ So, every day I would do that. And he would feed me.”
For months, Rehl managed to send Samsel a meal from a rope through the toilet. Samsel also attached letters Rehl would send to Samsel’s family, letting them know he is alive
Then one day, Samsel was finally permitted to leave his cell to attend a court hearing via Zoom. A correctional officer searching his room found the cellophane they used to contain coffee.
“He slammed me against the wall and said, ‘Motherfucker! Where did this come from?’ My wise mouth said, ‘Your mother’ and he punched me in the face. As punishment, to make an example, they put me in their new punishment room, another cell where there was no toilet,” he continued. “They called it the ‘hard’ cell because your time is hard. They put you in a paper outfit, if they even have one, or they just keep all your clothes, take a mattress throw it down, and lock you in the closet as a form of punishment’“I was able to help the other guys survive by teaching them how to ‘fish’ food because we all were always starving and had nothing, not even a toothbrush, nothing. So, despite the repercussions, I’m proud I was able to figure out how to make sure we were all able to eat.
“I am forever grateful to Zach for saving my life. The only way I’ll be able to eat anything was because of Zach– because there’s no way to eat.“
Recovering from the assault and locked in the hard cell where he was forced to use the mop bucket as a toilet, jail guards disregarded Samsel’s court and the judge’s clerk grew suspicious.
“In the hard cell, I was now only allowed on the phone for court,” he said. “My judge’s clerk, Ms. Franklin, could not get me on the call for court because I was so badly beaten. When I finally was able to call into court, I told the judge, ‘Your Honor, I’m in living a hole the size of a broom closet, and surgery is not scheduled for three months, get me the hell out of here! Can I please be allowed in general population?’ She said, ‘No’ and kept in the hole.
“The clerk said, ‘Something is not right.’ Three hours after I described the situation to the judge, the clerk sent somebody to check on me and that man was shocked. He took pictures of how I was living and said, ‘I’m going to get you to fuck out of here. Just be patient and work with me.’ He sent the pictures to my family and requested for me to be transferred to a different facility because of how fucked up that place was and I was out of there in about a week.”
After photos of Samsel on the floor of the hard cell went viral, shared by members of Congress he was transferred back to Lewisburg where he shared a cell with Dominic Pezzola.
“When I got back to Lewisburg, Dominic was my celly. He nursed me back to life feeding me and making me laugh again telling me, ‘We will get through this.’ I never got the surgery I needed, to this day, and my judge refuses to allow me medical treatment.”
Judge Jia Cobb is slated to announce a verdict in Samsel’s case on January 4 following a month-long bench trial that was not attended by a single reporter and blacked out by the media.
Now in the hole of the DC Gulag, Samsel is temporarily able to stay in communication with TGP and has obtained new counsel to assist him with access to a surgeon.
‘FACT-CHECK’
State-run fact-checker Snopes immediately tried to delegitimize Samsel’s story about being tortured, citing a public affairs official at the Federal Bureau of Prisons who claimed the photos where he is locked in the hard cell “do not depict a cell at FDC Philadelphia.” Jail personnel including BOP public affairs officials have a history of demonstrably lying to this publication.
An article published by 1776 Returns.com titled, “The Tangled Web of J6 Truth And Lies In The Case of Ryan Samsel” claims the photos were not real, blasting TGP for publishing “malarkey.” Using a voice-changing device, two men who claimed to be inmates told the publication Samsel’s story was “fabricated” and the photos were taken in a janitor’s closet.
“All of the stories recently on The Gateway Pundit — his interviews with eyepatches saying his arms don’t work, and a picture of him laying down in some broom closet –they are completely fabricated,” a man with a concealed voice told 1776 Returns reporter Mel Hawley. “When I saw that picture I started laughing my ass off. I’m like, he’s in a fucking janitor’s closet… The fact that everybody is blowing it up with this story and I’m sitting back here going really guys — you’re really going to fall for this?”
“I haven’t heard from Ryan in a minute. Maybe he’s just back in the janitor’s closet,” Hawley reports. “Which guard was cleaning out your potty bucket? Who took these pics? How did these pics get ‘leaked?’ Was the janitor mad that his closet was appropriated?”
“All those who were fooled into thinking this is not the American prison system. Think again. This is real,” Samsel said in response to the “fact-checks.”
“I’m not the only one who was caged in that cell, it was just my turn. People don’t believe this is a real thing,” he said. “This is the American prison system.”
BAND OF BROTHERS
Zachary Rehl, who has limited access to communication with the outside world in prison, recalled when he first heard Samsel screaming for help through the toilet:
That’s true about Samsel. So, while at FDC Philly, I was on the 4th floor in the general population. I never came across another J6er the whole first year and a half. The place sucked, it was a dump like any of these federal prisons, but I dealt with it because that was the cards I was handed.
Then a fellow inmate came to tell me I got what they call a ‘kite,’ which is a note from somewhere else in the building. I was confused, but took it.
After reading it, I find out there is this other J6er being held up in the hole, starved. I didn’t know anything about him, who he was. So, I jumped to reply. At the time, there was a line going from one of the cells on my block through the toilet, up to the hole right where he was.
He was in the hole up on the 8th floor. We had a shitty rope made out of bed sheets that went from the toilet on the 4th floor upt to his toilent on the 8th floor.
I was cool with the guys running the line, so I jumped on to send a kite back and see what’s going on — to find out why he was in the hole. I sent some food up and asked if he needed anything else.
I didn’t fuck with the rope. That shit was nasty– no pun intended. Yes its disgusting. But when you wrap something up pretty good, you can send up food and stuff through the toilet without getting feces all over it. I sent him up a whole bag of coffee and some food because I know it sucks up in the hole. Ryan was actually the fist j6er I even came in contact after I was arresteed, which was like a year after I was arrested. It felt so nice to help someone who was in the same position as me.
Guys up in the hole always call down to other floors asking for help for food! They get fed like shit up there, even worse than regular inmates. Every inmate that I’ve seen go to the hole always lost a good 20-30 lbs, at least.
During the Capitol riot, Samsel toppled a bike rack barricade outside the Capitol building in what the DOJ calls “the first breach.”
Rehl surmises Samsel was tortured for refusing to acquiesce to the FBI’s seditious conspiracy narrative that would entrap the Proud Boys and President Trump:
I think the feds are treating him badly because he is actually a witness that would say the Proud Boys did not start any of the shit on January 6. He and his co-defendants knocked down the first bike racks entering the Capitol grounds, which contradicts the entire ‘seditious’ narrative against us. It was Ray Epps who yelled in Ryan’s ear at the bike racks, ‘Wait we need more people.’ That is on video too. It’s on my hard drive.
Why did they want to get on the Capitol grounds? Well, they just came from the Trump rally of course, where Trump said ‘Go to the Capitol, I’ll meet you there.’ They wanted to get upfront and close to the inauguration state, which people mistakenly thought was going to be where Trump was speaking. Then the Captial police were told to start shooting and beating up Trump supporters, probably by Pelosi.
I feel bad — I have letters from Ryan, my former lawyer has them though. He wanted to expose a lot about Epps, he said he had a lot on him. Another reason they want to torture him, basically.
Ryan is not a fed — feds wouldn’t make one of their own sit in prison for almost three years.
Fourteen inmates have been killed in Philadelphia jails in 2023, Metro Philadelphia reports. In June, a man died following an altercation in FDC Philadelphia. In July, a BOP lieutenant pleaded guilty to violating the civil rights of an inmate by “showing deliberate indifference to the inmate’s serious medical needs, resulting in his death,” the Justice Department reports.
“An inmate that died a month after I left there,” Samsel said. “When an inmate leaves his cell, they have to be handcuffed, the other inmate is not handcuffed. So a lot of times the COs will leave you handcuffed and tell the other inmate to beat you up. Sometimes inmates are killed from that.”
