Ryan Nichols: Political Prisoner Of His Own Country

Ryan Nichols’ barbaric treatment as a January 6th political prisoner foretells what will be the fate of every American patriot if the corruption of justice in this country does not soon end.

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No American citizen should ever be a political prisoner of his own country. Period. Every American citizen has the right to assemble and to speak, as protected under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.  Unfortunately, to the millions of Americans who have not grasped the most basic civics lesson, a reminder is in order: the Constitution is the law of the land.  All our rights and freedoms derive from that founding document.  All political offices – including the entire judiciary – derive authority entirely from that sacred and inspired document.  Thus, any official who operates extra-constitutionally – i.e., unlawfully – by making crimes out of rights expressly guaranteed by the Constitution renounces that founding law and, with it, the powers of their own office.  

What is more, Insurrection – which is mentioned once in the entire 4,543-word document – namely, in the Fourteenth Amendment, plainly does not apply to the events of January 6^th, 2021.  American Citizens did not come to the Capitol on J6 to “overthrow the government.”  No reasonable mind would believe that J6 demonstrators had the intent, let alone means, to mount an overthrow of the government.  Indeed, there has never been a legitimate insurrection in the nearly two and one-quarter centuries of American history.  That is not to say there have not been foiled attempts and plots of seditious conspiracy: Aaron Burr famously schemed to overthrow the United States after serving as vice president during Thomas Jefferson’s first term in office, conspiring to establish an independent country in the Southwestern United States aided by the Spanish Empire.  This occurred after Burr had fatally wounded Alexander Hamilton in a duel in Weehawken, where the practice had been outlawed several years prior, and charged with murder (though both charges were later dropped) – in both New Jersey and New York – for fatally wounding America’s first Secretary of the Treasury.  

And yet, John Marshall, the John Adams-appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, acquitted Burr of all charges of treasonous conspiracy, even though the two were political adversaries, ruling that even if the attempt for conspiracy was provable, Burr took insufficient steps to be convicted for the high crime.  The Chief Justice reasoned that to rise to the level of treasonous action, Burr had to have committed “an act of war” – not inflammatory posts on social media, but actual war – i.e., violence that would credibly pose a threat to the order and stability of the national government.  Because the First Amendment stood as a guardrail against government infringements on every type of speech – especially the most incendiary rhetoric directed against the government – Burr’s speech, however offensive, would be protected, full stop.  The dramatic actions Burr took that were ultimately acquitted, and by his political enemies, no less, were far more akin to an actual Insurrection, conceived under the Fourteenth Amendment, than the actions taken by Donald Trump or any of the demonstrators who so dared to appear at the Capitol on January 6^th, 2021, thinking they still might foolishly be able to exercise their right to Assembly, a right also guaranteed under the First Amendment.  And despite everything he did, even Burr’s actions were not found to rise to the level of treason – conspiracy to establish a new country and the death of a famous founding father, included – sufficient to be punishable by law.

To even attempt to compare Burr’s case and the January 6^th demonstrators is a ridiculous exercise.  The only value in making such a comparison is to show that even for a man who got away with treason and murder, his conduct did not qualify as insurrectionary – or treasonous. It also speaks to the utter disregard for American history by most judges and prosecutors today and the extreme incompetence and recklessness with which they nevertheless administer the law.  A decrepit old Attorney General like Merrick Garland, who has been smoldering in his office since being denied the opportunity to sit on the Supreme Court of the United States, is the type of prosecutor representing the worst of the corruption of the justice system.  He thus perfectly captures the stark disparity between what is happening in courtrooms across the country and what is happening on the streets.  Garland is a relic of the bygone age in which he was nominated, where the rule of law and the values of America’s justice system, once the envy of the world, had not yet bottomed out. 

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Alas, those norms increasingly no longer hold true.  The best evidence of this is the wholesale weaponization of the justice department, a process that has been ongoing for decades now – but has entered overdrive in the Biden era, with the political persecution of Donald Trump by rogue actors in both state and federal offices who are beholden to the malicious agenda of Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice.  This marks the corruption of America’s justice system, one of Western civilization’s greatest achievements, into a banana republic-esque sideshow, where might has displaced right as the final arbiter of disputes, debasing the system into something that would have been unrecognizable just a generation ago.  

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The prosecutors tasked with carrying out the government’s orders are reptilian men and women. Douglas Brasher, the U.S. Attorney who has dutifully carried out the regime’s orders to persecute January 6^th victim, Ryan Nichols, is a case in point.  Earlier this month, I was in Federal Court, with a front row seat for the government’s coldblooded operation to take down another innocent man who happened to be at the Capitol on that fateful day. Because, as with virtually every January 6^th prosecution, the government’s case had little on the merits, Brasher had to cook up a malicious character assassination to convince the judge presiding over the case, Royce Lamberth, that Ryan was a danger to society who needed to be put behind bars at once.  Never mind the fact that Ryan, who appeared in court clad in a brand-new suit (which he so obviously found uncomfortable), was calm and well-behaved throughout the entire hearing.  Ryan, who came to court with his wife, Bonnie, and mother, Patti, (Ryan’s father, who has been dealing with heart issues stayed back at home in Longview, Texas, along with Ryan and Bonnie’s two young boys), was noticeably battling health ailments: he quickly lost breath walking over to the dais to make his statement before Judge Lamberth; his memory, debilitated over time by harsh prison conditions, was cloudy; his face was drenched in sweat as he pronounced a last-ditch plea, hoping to draw on the Judge’s common humanity, to spend a final Christmas together with his wife and children.  For his part, the government prosecutor, Brasher, did not strike a supremely confident demeanor.  His voice shook as he recited his laundry list of grievances to the judge: “Ryan’s counsel said not nice things about me on social media” captured the general sentiment, if not the actual words, of his objections.  As Brasher winced and wailed, his hands trembled; his bespeckled face – cloaked by a beard that dropped nearly a half a foot below his chin – tensed up by the mere sight of Ryan in the flesh alongside his attorneys, Joseph McBride and Brad Geyer.  The stark light made the windowless room more resemble a sanitorium or prison than a courtroom.  Brasher’s ghoulish countenance was like that of a gravedigger—McBride and Geyer’s like guardian angels. 

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Though only thirty-two years of age, Ryan’s body and mind had been worn down by several years already spent in solitary confinement and a lengthy at-home arrest.  Ryan has put on a great deal of weight since this whole ordeal began with the first FBI raid on his home nearly three years ago.  As a result, Ryan suffers from severe liver problems, and PTSD – a holdover from the days in which he honorably served in the Marine Corps, worsened over the past two years by the inhumane conditions of the jail now infamously known within the January 6^th community as the “DC Gulag.”

In his last prison stint, Ryan was tortured (there is no better word for it) by the prison guards.  Ryan’s treatment under incarceration was so cruel and unusual that it even drew the attention of Congressman Louie Gohmert, who represented the district that included Longview at the time.  The Congressman in response to this news wrote multiple letters to the Director of the U.S. Marshals Service, alerting him that “Mr. Nichols continues to be mistreated and [that] his constitutional rights have been repeatedly violated since first arriving at the DC Jail.”  Congressman Clay Higgins, who had breakfast with our group on the morning that Ryan Nichols formally pled guilty, likened the treatment Nichols and other J6 victims received in the DC Jail to “Guantanamo Bay” – its facilities akin to the facilities where “murdering terrorist thugs have been held.”  And for being deemed unruly, Nichols was put “in the hole,” prison-speak for solitary confinement. 

Upon receiving notice about Ryan Nichols’ horrendous treatment in the DC Jail, Congressman Louie Gohmert, who represented Ryan at the time, wrote multiple letters, included the one screenshotted above, addressed to the Director of the U.S. Marshals Service, demanding clarity about the squalid conditions in which Ryan was being kept.

I recently had a conversation with another prominent January 6^th defendant, Derrick Evans, who is now running for congress in West Virginia.  Evans, who also served some time in the DC Gulag, was put in solitary confinement for a period of eight days – a much shorter timespan than Ryan.  Evans relayed the horror he went through to me, and explained how solitary confinement was what put so many January 6^th defendants, already mentally broken down, over the edge.  And that was all by design.  Solitary confinement was meant to crush the spirits of those made to suffer this indignity – and there do not even appear to be objective guidelines regulating its administration.  It is entirely arbitrary, adding to the cruelty of the whole experience. Evans called it “jail within jail.”  

“They keep you locked in extremely tight quarters: your feet are pressed up against the toilet bowl.  The sink and toilet share the same water source.  I was put in solitary confinement during the summer months, and the water had only one setting: hot.  I had no access to cold water despite the stifling heat. And the summer heat in Washington, D.C. is Egyptian.  You are locked away without any communication with the outside world.  Humans are social creatures and thus solitary confinement is totally incompatible with our nature.  I had some relief after several days of complete isolation after I started receiving letters from other Americans, expressing their support and prayers for what I was going through.  That offered me some hope, knowing that there were many Americans out there who recognized this grave injustice for what it was, which gave me the strength I needed to persevere, and make it out in one piece.”

Ryan Nichols’s PTSD was exacerbated by the extended isolation he endured in the hole.  In the darkest moments Ryan had suicidal ideations, but the prison wards remained coldly unresponsive to his needs the entire time.  When Ryan informed the lieutenant at the facility that he was suicidal after an extended duration in solitary confinement, he was met with callous “Sorry you feel that way. I hope you don’t die.”

Bonnie Nichols, Ryan’s fiercely loyal wife and greatest advocate, has remained a pillar of strength despite being witness to this nightmare.  However even she, as well as Ryan’s mother, Patti, found it hard to shed any more tears after Lamberth made the decision – which, in hindsight, felt inevitable – to remand her husband into custody that day, rather than allow him to spend one final holiday season at home with his boys, before returning to court in another ninety days or so for formal sentencing proceedings.  As soon as we walked out of the court building, Bonnie confided to us that she was emotionally drained. The process, a kind of procedural bloodletting, is one that erodes the spirit drip by drip like Chinese water torture.  Derrick Evans told me “the process is the punishment” – and the punishment, as seen in the numb expressions of Bonnie and Patti after the hearing, extends beyond the victims to their families and loved ones.  Soul crushing.

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Apparently, according to Judge Lamberth, Ryan was simply too much of a risk to send back home – even though he had been residing in Longview on house arrest for several months previously, following a lengthy sentence in the DC Jail, where he never once attempted to escape (not that he could anyway, given his physical condition) nor did anything even remotely threatening, in both word and deed, that would suggest a need to lock up Ryan right then and there.  Instead, Ryan exhibited, both at home and in the courtroom that day, nothing but contrition – true regret for the actions he took that day, and any shame that he may have caused to his country.

Ryan Nichols was featured on The Ellen DeGeneres Show on September 25, 2018. DeGeneres gave Ryan a ten-thousand-dollar check for a honeymoon trip. Ryan and his wife did not use the check for a honeymoon trip but instead purchased a rescue boat that has since been used to rescue hundreds of lives from dangerous flood waters stemming from natural disasters.

In the context of an otherwise noble – indeed, exemplary – life, where Nichols has not only proudly served his country, raised two young boys, and been a devoted husband and loving son, he made a national name for himself orchestrating search and rescue missions.  In the not-so-distant past, Ryan would routinely spend close to a third of a year away from home where he ventured into dangerous situations, often hurricanes and other natural disasters, to save young children, elderly people, and even house pets that had been abandoned in the devastation.  His valiant efforts were at one point recognized by Ellen DeGeneres and the national media.  Ryan, who even appeared on Ellen’s show, also received a ten-thousand-dollar reward by the talk show host, which was intended for Ryan and Bonnie’s honeymoon, since the two had for long put off their plans due to Ryan’s search-and-rescue commitments.  Ryan instead chose to put that money entirely back into his rescue efforts, given how important the mission was to him – a decision that Bonnie fully supported.  It is thus the irony of ironies that the same national press which a few short years ago hailed Ryan as a folk hero would turn around and stab him in the back today, scapegoating him as a danger to society, and aid the deep state’s assassination of his character.  

When we left the courtroom, our party came out one person less than when we entered.  Nobody said anything, but I believe we all felt like Ryan had just gone before the firing squad – another casualty of this unrelenting war: a white martyrdom, as they say in Catholic circles.  All that remained of Ryan was his jacket and belt, which the bailiff removed before handcuffing him and whisking him out of sight – a cold, bureaucratic goodbye without even a chance to speak one last time to his loved ones.  As they escorted Ryan out of Lamberth’s chambers and into the Gulag, the netherworld, the lawyers went over to console the remaining family members.  I handed Ryan’s jacket and belt over to his mother, who seemed at a loss for words. 

We stepped outside into a raw November day.  Faceless government buildings teeming with faceless bureaucrats encircled us.  Someone, either Bonnie or Patti, muttered. “I just want to get out of this city.”  Washington, much like the former Soviet Union, has completely transformed into a cold, bureaucratic hellscape.  A place where administrative machinery replaced flesh and blood human beings. Ryan’s plea deal was another small victory for the machine; anytime they think they can quash the spirit of a patriot like Ryan is chalked up as another victory.  We proceeded to the Capital Grille on Pennsylvania Avenue for lunch.  Bonnie and Patti were holding back tears.  Ryan’s attorney, Joseph McBride made the following statement:

“This is like the meal you have after burying someone. This must be what the Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, and the Apostle John felt after they lost Jesus. Ryan is gone, and there is nothing we can do to bring him back.  Ryan is a good man and irreplaceable.  This is why we all feel his tremendous loss.  No one more than you, Bonnie, his wife, and you, Patti, his mother. Ryan conducted himself honorably and even had a chance to speak to the Judge. Jesus did the same.  It did not make a difference in Jesus’s case. I think, however, Ryan’s words did make a difference in Judge Lamberth’s heart.  Do not bring this misery home to your family.  Let it die here—now.  Tomorrow, we will begin working on Ryan’s sentencing.  Tomorrow, the path to Ryan’s resurrection from the depths of the hellish gulag begins.  May Jesus bring him home.”

But there are glimmers of hope through the darkness. Meaningful support for J6 political prisoners and the search for what truly happened on January 6, 2021, grows daily.  A little over a week after Ryan’s plea deal, House Speaker Mike Johnson announced the release of the rest of the January 6^th tapes – the tens of thousands of hours of footage that remained unavailable to the public.  A few days before that announcement was made, Congressman Clay Higgins – the last representative to see Ryan before his guilty plea – made national headlines when he pressed FBI director Christopher Wray in a televised hearing about “ghost buses” that unloaded dozens of FBI informants near the Capitol on January 6^th.  Rep. Higgins claimed the revelations were so damning that it would immediately send five to ten key Democrats into early retirement.  For Ryan’s own sake, it is deeply unfortunate that he became an early casualty in this greater spiritual war being waged in the heart of our nation’s capital – but the tides seem to be turning.  Ryan’s cause will not be in vain.  Upon his inevitable release, Ryan will get the justice he deserves and be hailed as the national hero he is when this nightmarish chapter in American history draws to a close.  

Congressman Clay Higgins (R-LA) wrote this letter to Judge Lamberth on the morning Ryan Nichols pled guilty in the District Court of Washington, D.C.  The Congressman described Nichols as a man of “good character, faith, and core principles,” who “had no criminal background and served honorably in the United States Marine Corps.”  A few days later, Congressman Higgins announced that he would make 44,000 hours of January 6^th footage available to the general public – footage that would shock the world, and “reveal the insidious truth that the Left and the corrupt officials at FBI/DOJ do not want Americans to see.”

The reason Ryan Nichols pleaded guilty was not because he committed the crime of Insurrection, seditious conspiracy, or even assault.  But because he so dared to exercise his Constitutional freedoms – his right to speech and assembly that are now considered anathema by the kangaroo courts and judges in Washington, D.C.  The freedom of speech, the inviolable right on which this Republic was founded, is incontrovertible – it cannot be abridged under any circumstances.  That right was intended to protect the very kind of government criticism that Ryan Nichols engaged in.  The quote famously attributed to Voltaire – “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” – captures the sentiment and intent behind that inalienable right to speak, protected under the First Amendment.  Every Founding Father – from Washington to Adams to Hamilton to Jefferson to Madison and countless others (as well as their political descendants: Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Trump) – believed that freedom sacrosanct.  Indeed, preserving the right to speak freely and assemble was so vital that they fought a whole Revolution over it.  Thus bespeaks the importance of Ryan Nichols’ cause – and his cause is our cause. The very possibility of freedom and liberty flourishing throughout this land again depends on whether he – and every other January 6^th political prisoner – receives the justice they deserve.  

These noble men and women are the soldiers at the frontline of a battle of good versus evil – one that is bigger than any individual.  America is due for a spiritual awakening – but it will require the people to rekindle the spirit of the Founding – and divine Providence – and push back against government tyranny whose greatest victims are these political prisoners.  If not stopped, Ryan’s fate will soon be every American’s fate, and the cause of liberty will die forever.  The stakes are truly that high.  As a matter of policy, each and every one of these political prisoners should be pardoned by the next President.  Moreover, they and their families should receive reparations for the untold hardship exacted upon them by their government.  The DC Gulag should be permanently closed, and January 6^th should be rededicated as a national holiday, a day of mourning, for all those brave-hearted patriots who lost their lives from the draconian treatment of a weaponized and tyrannical justice system – as well as be a permanent reminder for what happens when the multitude stays quiet in the face of evil, choosing to believe governments propaganda rather than recognize the threat right before their eyes and say “no, not here.”

To support Ryan Nichols’ ongoing legal battles, please consider making a contribution to his GiveSendGo account here, where you can find more information about Ryan Nichols’ story. Also, follow his attorneys, Joseph D. McBride, Esq. and Brad Geyer, on X, for the latest updates on his sentencing.

Finally, readers interested in writing a letter of support to Ryan Nichols should email Ryan’s attorney, Joseph McBride, at jmcbride@mcbridelawnyc.com. Ryan and his family thank you in advance for your continued support and prayers.

Ryan Nichols (third from right), pictured with his wife, Bonnie (second from right), his mother, Patti (second from left), on the morning he pleaded guilty. Also pictured are two of his attorneys: Joseph D. McBride (L), and Brad Geyer (R). The group is greeted by Congressman Clay Higgins (R-LA), seen embracing Ryan, who has taken on Ryan’s cause as his own — and wrote a letter in support of Ryan to Judge Lamberth that day.

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Paul Ingrassia is a Law Clerk at The McBride Law Firm, PLLC. He graduated from Cornell Law School in 2022 and is on the Board of Advisors of the New York Young Republican Club. He is also a two-time Claremont Fellow. Follow him on Twitter @PaulIngrassia, Substack, Truth Social, and Rumble.