J6er Ryan Smith Tells His Story

Hello, my name is Ryan Wilson. I grew up as a 4th-generation logger on the Oregon coast on a small farm surrounded by trees and wild Roosevelt elk and Blacktail deer. I’m now a 42-year-old wheat farmer from Athena, Oregon. I have been married to my wife for 16 years and have two small children. I am a recovering quadriplegic from a car accident and a surgery that nearly killed me approximately nine years ago, where I had a stroke to my spinal cord that left me completely paralyzed from the jaw down. I was on life support for several weeks and spent several months in ICU in the spinal cord rehab in Spokane, Washington. By the grace of God, I was able to make a recovery and go back to work on the farm. There were many trials and tribulations throughout the years leading up to January 6 that I overcame only because of my beautiful family, friends, and faith in God.

This is my story.

My father, Duke Wilson, and I flew into Philadelphia the evening of January 5, 2021, and then took an Uber to our hotel outside of DC city limits. Early on the morning of January 6, 2021, we took an Uber as close as we could to where the rally was going to be held at the Ellipse, approximately two hours before daylight.

The Rally at the Ellipse

We walked with huge groups of people who were also heading to the Ellipse to watch President Trump and other speakers at his rally. While waiting to get into the event, we noticed many people who didn’t fit the description of typical Trump supporters. These were younger-looking kids in groups with different colored hair, strange tattoos, and piercings, wearing simple Trump garments like beanies. Once we got into the rally, we listened to most of the speakers while waiting for President Trump, who was late for the event. I spent most of my time keeping track of my dad, who was taking videos and pictures with his iPad. At the time, I was struggling with many health issues from being paralyzed years ago and weighed approximately 130 pounds. I am 6 foot one, and this is a very low weight for someone my size.

The Walk to the Capitol and Initial Observations

After the event ended, we slowly began our walk to the Capitol because I struggle to walk and have a very obvious limp. As we neared the Capitol, we were amazed by the massive number of people at this rally; it was packed shoulder-to-shoulder, even a quarter mile from the Capitol. We started seeing police on the upper terrace on the backside of the Capitol shooting flash bangs and lobbing them out into the middle of a peaceful crowd. We could also see other officers shooting what looked like paintball guns down into the crowd. At this time, everyone was completely peaceful, with supporters of every age throughout the crowd, from babies to very elderly adults.

Escalation at the Capitol

As a large American flag came by with a group of people, we joined in carrying it up to the inaugural area of the Capitol. It spanned about 20 x 30 feet. Once we got to the inaugural area, we stood on the far left side as you look toward the back of the Capitol. We could look down on the well of the inaugural area where the tunnel is and also out onto the Washington Mall and the sea of people. We once again noticed that the Capitol and Metro police were shooting down on people with flash bangs and what looked like paintball guns; we later learned these were pepper balls and rubber bullets. We began to notice individuals breaking windows on the opposite side of the tunnel from us and also started to see things becoming chaotic inside the tunnel. So, we decided to go over there to try to stop whoever was vandalizing the windows and see what was going on inside the tunnel.

Chaos in the Tunnel

As we began to climb the stairs, we lost track of each other because it was very dense with people, like a river current pushing us forward. I lost my opportunity to step off to the side to avoid going inside the tunnel, and then I realized my father was inside the tunnel where things were becoming chaotic. Very quickly, we lost any ability to exit the tunnel, and my father was now fending for his life and helping to defend a woman we later found out was named Victoria White. She was being beaten by the police with deadly force and was completely unarmed and defenseless. My dad began pushing back and trying to protect her. The police started beating my dad over the top of the head, and he tried using his tablet to shield himself while also holding onto his wallet. He pushed back against a shield and was beginning to get very angry at the police because they were using such excessive force against unarmed people like himself. When he was hit over the top of the head with a baton, I could hear him screaming for help. I somehow grabbed hold of a piece of half-inch PVC that was thrown over the top of me, and I lunged it forward, trying to protect my father and defend him. I couldn’t see because there were so many people and so much pepper spray in the air, but I could hear my father screaming for help, and it terrified me. I never touched any officer with the PVC or my own hands. I was then sprayed directly in the eyes with pepper spray and blacked out due to my nervous system shutting down from nerve damage I had suffered in the past. I was carried out of the tunnel by other people.

Immediate Aftermath at the Capitol

Roughly 20 to 30 minutes after I was sprayed, I gained the ability to see and breathe normally again. I was frantic, trying to find my dad and expecting the worst. I suddenly spotted him standing off to the side of the tunnel at the top of the steps, bleeding very badly from the top of his head from being beaten with the baton. When I got to him, he didn’t seem to know where he was and was confused. I looked in the crowd for anybody who could help and began asking for a medic. Someone pointed to a Black lady in the crowd who had a backpack; she was with BLM and, therefore, Antifa. I went to her; she was completely dressed in black with a rainbow-colored mask and had a medic bag. I asked her if she would please help my dad, who was badly injured. She followed me up to the top of the steps and helped clean my dad’s three-inch-deep gash on the top of his head. For the remainder of the time, we stood off to the side and took videos and pictures, and my dad stood there the entire time, very dizzy and confused. At that moment, I started scanning the crowd and realized there were at least hundreds of Antifa members in the crowd, identifiable by how violent they were being, the clothes they were wearing, and being fully masked—they made sure to keep their masks on. When you tried to talk to them, they’d be very quiet. Several times, I had to stop people from breaking windows next to us and finally gave up when one of the Antifa members threatened to put his axe through my head. After an hour or so, the police shot tear gas into the crowd, and we began to exit that area.

Return Home and Initial Fallout

We left the Capitol area and later got an Uber ride back to our hotel outside of DC. We cleaned up my dad’s wounds, and we both took showers. I had a very hard time getting any sleep that night. The next morning, the entire city was shut down, and all we could see on the news was how Trump supporters tried to overthrow the government. We were now terrified. The whole Uber system was shut down, so thankfully we had cash and paid for a taxi to pick us up and take us to Dulles Airport. We got to the airport and went through security, very scared and paranoid because of what was on all the news channels throughout the airport. We got through security, made our way home, and flew into Boise. After getting to Boise, my dad went to his house in Nampa, and I came back home to my house in Athena, Oregon. As a week went by, there was nothing but solid news about how Trump supporters were bad and that the FBI was beginning to hunt them down for the actions that happened on January 6.

Father’s Legal Troubles Begin

On January 23, my father was at my house in Athena, Oregon, and it was the night before my son’s birthday. My father received an email from a friend with a picture of him on the FBI’s Most Wanted list. So, first thing the next morning, my dad left for Boise to retain an attorney and turn himself in. His attorney notified the FBI, and they said for him to just go home and they would contact him. After several months, my dad was in Cove, Oregon, at his girlfriend’s house, and he got a call from the FBI at about 8 o’clock in the morning, wanting to know where he was. They had done a pre-dawn raid on his house, kicked the door down, and also busted the window on his camp trailer. The front door of the house, which is wood, was completely shattered. He drove to the Boise Federal Courthouse and turned himself in. After about 24 hours, he was released and put on an ankle monitor. When I went to see him, understandably, he was extremely paranoid and whispered into my ear to watch out because the FBI was probably going to come and kick my door in. Also, at that time, I told him that Darlene was almost three months pregnant.

Personal Stress and Father’s Sentencing

I returned home, and from then on, I rarely slept a full night, constantly waking and expecting the FBI to show up at my house and terrorize my family, especially my son Grant, who was only seven years old at the time. I would make trips to my doctor in Boise because I was having issues with digestion and was now only about 125 pounds, which is a very low weight for someone who is 6 foot one. Since the raid on my dad, my stress levels were extremely high, and he would call me a minimum of five times a day because he couldn’t sleep. When I would make these trips to my doctor’s office in Boise, my dad would want me to call him several times on the way there during the four-hour trip. But I was so paranoid, I would shut my phone off until I got to the doctor’s office, where he would be waiting for me. I would give him a hug before I left, and he would always whisper something in my ear because he was so paranoid about the authorities listening to him. It would usually be something that made me even more stressed and paranoid about my own situation. Roughly a year went by with Dad on pre-trial home confinement while he was sorting out his case, and he eventually took a plea deal. Even though my dad was trying to defend himself against people who were beating him and other defenseless people, he was charged with 11 counts, facing a minimum of 20 years and a maximum of nearly 100 with the charges. He took a plea deal, and his judge still gave him the maximum on one of the charges because he grabbed a police shield. In the spring of 2022, just before Easter, he was sentenced to 51 months in Yazoo City Federal Prison, a low-security facility, even though he had requested to be in a prison closer to home near Oregon and family.

My Legal Troubles Begin

Within a week of his sentencing, two undercover FBI agents showed up at my front door, one of them named Special Agent Chris Lister. For about half an hour, they were extremely pushy, trying to get into my house or garage, and I refused every time they demanded. They showed me blurry pictures of supposedly me at the rally and in the tunnel, saying it was me and that I was doing certain things, and I told them I didn’t recall. I asked for their card and information and said I would contact them. As soon as they left my house, I contacted an attorney in Portland, Oregon, named Jason Short, and retained him. A little over a year later, in the summer around June 2023, I received a call from my attorney after over a year of silence from the FBI. My attorney told me that I had been indicted with eight counts—three felonies and five misdemeanors. He said the FBI was about a week and a half from raiding my house, but he was able to negotiate with them not to do that as long as I did a proffer and sat down with the FBI. We settled on a date to meet up and have this proffer, but then my mother-in-law passed away. I was able to get the meeting with them moved about a week out so we could have my mother-in-law’s funeral.

The Proffer and Arrest

After the funeral, I went to the field office at the Portland airport in Oregon and told them my story but was informed by my attorney not to say anything that would provoke them, like mentioning how the police were being violent toward us and shooting at us, because they had the power to arrest me and detain me at that moment. With my medical history and now having a one-year-old and a nine-year-old at home, I didn’t want to leave my wife with everything going on, plus take the risk of something happening to me in jail with my health issues. So, I told an honest story of everything that happened, but I left out the details of how we were being attacked by police. When I mentioned that there were many Antifa in the crowd and they were being violent, the FBI and the U.S. attorneys had no interest in that or in the Antifa who were vandalizing the Capitol. They also tried to get me to speak negatively about President Trump, and I refused to, changed the subject, and told them I didn’t remember anything from his speech. I didn’t want to put myself in a position where I could be thrown in jail, but I was definitely not going to speak ill of the president falsely. When I mentioned to the U.S. attorneys and the FBI agent that I was very upset about people vandalizing the Capitol and that’s not why Trump supporters were there, they acted repulsed and asked why I was there. I told them it was to have our voices heard and that it was our right to protest. I felt that was hard enough to push back on them. The FBI agent was very hung up on a ski mask that I had that just covered my nose and mouth. I only wore it because it was January and I have very bad circulation from my nerve damage. But they thought I had bad intentions, as if I planned out the whole thing. That was one of the main arguments against me or at least written up against me to make me look bad. They treated me like I was the most awful thing on earth. After the meeting, I was allowed to leave and go home. There was nothing but silence for about a month until my attorney suddenly called me one day and said there was a warrant out for my arrest. The FBI told him they would come get me in eastern Oregon and drive me to Portland to the federal courthouse. I told them I didn’t want to ride with the FBI all the way to Portland and that I would drive myself. The night before, I stayed at my mom’s house, and she went with me to my attorney’s office. When we walked into my attorney’s office, they immediately handcuffed me and shackled my ankles in front of my mom, which was very traumatizing for her because she knows I have zero criminal background and no violent history. I was taken down to the federal courthouse and processed against my will for extreme charges.

Pre-Trial Release and Mounting Stress

One of the U.S. Marshals told me he was completely disgusted by how J6ers were being treated, especially compared to how they weren’t even charging Antifa members who tried to burn down that very same courthouse during the Trump administration. After several hours, I was released, and my attorney gave me a ride back to his office where my mom was waiting. I was allowed to be on pre-trial release and travel within the state of Oregon with a pre-trial release officer I had to regularly stay in contact with, who would come and do home inspections once a month. He didn’t see me as any type of threat, but he was doing his job and basically didn’t care. There was one time when I wasn’t home, working in the field, and I didn’t realize it was him calling me to do a random home inspection, so he couldn’t do it. He was very upset and threatened that I’d be in big trouble if that happened again. During this entire ordeal, I had to start taking anxiety medication because of my nervous system issues. I would have extreme muscle spasms and convulsions that I couldn’t control. I would go visit my mom on the Oregon coast and realize there was an FBI agent sitting at the end of her driveway watching me. The FBI agent admitted to me that he would come by my house regularly to check on me and do a drive-by. Anytime I saw a helicopter or a drone, or thought I heard something like that, I couldn’t sleep for fear of what might happen to my children and my wife. I took high amounts of anxiety medication—way over what the prescription said—and began to get sharp pains in my brain. After a while, I noticed it was affecting my senses, so I completely quit taking all medications several months before my trial. This put a huge amount of stress on me, my wife, and my mother. We didn’t tell our children until several weeks before my trial in October 2024. I had to do several court appearances through Zoom.

Financial and Physical Collapse

I’ve spent over $100,000—money I didn’t really have—to pay for attorneys so I could fight this awful injustice against myself and my family: tens of thousands from my retirement, tens of thousands borrowed from family and friends. I sold anything I could possibly think of that was an asset to pay for my attorneys. Several friends gave us money just because they believed in us and thought what was happening to us was so wrong. I never said anything to many family members and friends or talked to them about what happened on January 6 because I feared them being interrogated by the federal government; I’d seen what happened to other J6ers who fought their cases in court and how the FBI and federal government harassed them, their family, and their friends. Even my wife didn’t know specific details because I was worried they’d come after her and her job. The amount of stress this put on my wife and our family we can never get back. I injured my back in the summer of June 2024 and herniated several discs in my back. I’d become weak and very stressed from everything going on, and my health had begun to deteriorate over the past couple of years due to the enormous amount of stress. I lifted a tire, and that’s what caused my back to herniate; the constant tension and muscle spasms I’d had over the past few years contributed to this from all the stress.

Trial Preparation and Conviction

We asked the court if we could postpone my court date in early October so I could finish my rehab for my herniated discs, but the U.S. attorneys and the judge refused to give me an extension so I could finish healing. This would’ve made a huge difference—just another month or two to finish my rehab and even get spine injections because of my already sensitive spine and spinal cord issues from being a quadriplegic. So, I was forced to fly to DC and face my trial, and I told my wife and family to stay home because I didn’t want them to see or listen to the lies the government would tell about me. I later realized that because I had turned down a plea deal twice, they enhanced three of my misdemeanors into felonies, so now I had six felonies and two misdemeanors. I chose to have a bench trial because it was a 90% dirty jury pool that said J6 people were guilty without a trial. A bench trial was about $50,000 cheaper for attorney fees. My attorneys had mentioned to me that it would be tough to win due to Judge Trevor McFadden being a former police officer, and there were two police officers who were wanting to testify against me. With the judge most likely having a police pension, I assume that would be a strong conflict of interest. I knew I probably wouldn’t win, just because the U.S. Attorney’s Office had a 99.9% conviction rate against J6ers, and it was very obvious during the trial that Judge Trevor McFadden was a lapdog for the U.S. Attorney’s Office. They had phony video that wasn’t me during the trial, claiming it showed a bottle I threw at police. The spliced-in video wasn’t the bottle I threw. They had no video of me inside the tunnel. There was no evidence of me touching or harming any cops. The one cop who testified against me—the same cop who nearly killed my father—shed phony tears in his testimony but also claimed he didn’t remember me and that I had nigdy touched him. They tried getting another officer, named Fanone, to testify against me, but they had only given us several days to prepare for that witness. Even though the judge was very pushy, trying to let him testify, we made a strong argument that a few days wasn’t enough time for a major trial like this, so that witness was removed from testimony. After a day of the judge thinking about the case, I was convicted on all charges on October 10, 2024.

Initial Incarceration in DC Jail

Even though I had extreme medical issues and was still going through rehab for my spine, because of one charge labeled as violent with a deadly weapon—meaning the PVC pipe that never touched anybody—I was taken to the DC jail immediately. The two Black transport guards were very rude and spoke poorly to me, telling me not to bring my shit to their city and that I should’ve never been there. When dropping me off at the jail, I went to intake, where I was stripped, searched naked, told to squat, pull my butt cheeks apart, and cough. I was then given a very stinky wool blanket, sheets, a stained thin mattress, orange clothes, and underwear. I told them I needed my muscle relaxers and digestive enzymes—especially my digestive enzymes because I can’t digest food without them since my body doesn’t produce natural stomach enzymes to break down food. I was told I needed to give a sample of blood; otherwise, I’d be stuck in solitary confinement the entire time I was at the jail. So, I gave a sample of my blood and was walked down to solitary confinement, where I stayed for a week in a cell with another J6er named Edward Kelly. He was a former Marine and father of two small children. He had been through diesel therapy, taken to multiple jails over the last several months in solitary confinement in some of the worst jails across the country, and was barely allowed any contact with his wife, children, or parents. While I was in there with him, I wasn’t given any of my medication, and I started to realize I was extremely constipated. We were let out twice during that entire week to take showers and walk around. I didn’t have the ability to make phone calls because they said their phones didn’t work, and I wasn’t shown how to use the kiosk to order commissary or even knew if I had money to buy commissary. They gave me a tablet they said I could use to call my family or read, but I had zero instructions on how to operate it. While in there, there were many cockroaches coming in and out of our cell during the 24 hours we were locked inside the 8 x 12 cell. There was a small window where you couldn’t see the sky or the ground. I couldn’t eat the food or the juice because it upset my stomach so much, and because I was so plugged up, my intestines were beginning to push against my ribs; I had a blockage that seemed to be very high up in my stomach. Most of my meals I gave to Edward Kelly because when I tried to eat, I’d start to throw up. I wrote sick call notes to the infirmary, but none were responded to while I was in solitary confinement for those seven days. Because I had a bottom bunk profile with my medical conditions, Edward was kind enough to give me the bottom bunk. I was finally given some laxatives the last couple of days I was in solitary confinement, but they didn’t do anything because the blockage was so high up in my intestines. I took all of them, and it did nothing.

General Population in Southeast Three

I was then transferred to Southeast Three of the jail. My cellmate in Southeast Three was a local DC resident, about 53 years old, with back issues. I should never have been put in general population with my severe medical issues. This is also where I was finally able to contact my wife after a week of no ability to have phone calls. My wife was distraught and extremely worried about me because she had heard nothing from me except from what my attorney had told her from the visit he did with me the day after I was placed in jail. She told me how the children were having a very difficult time and our youngest, Henry, who is two years old, was extremely confused. Both of my children are very close to me since I spend most of the time with them since I’m a farmer and I pick them up from school most of the time and spend the afternoons with them. I’m also the one who will stay with them when they are sick since I can take off work when I need to. While in this unit, I missed my youngest son’s third birthday, my 42nd birthday, November 5th Election Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s—memories with my children I will never get back. When I got into my cell with my new cellmate, he told me he had back issues and couldn’t get to the top bunk. With my still-healing back issues, I couldn’t manage to get onto the top bunk since there were no steps or ladders, so I slept on the floor for about two to three weeks. Our cell had no window, and the lights didn’t work. The sink was supposed to have a button for warm and cold water, but it didn’t have any warm water. We had to wash all our sheets and clothes in the sink. It was common for mice and cockroaches to come into our cell because we were right across from the main garbage can, which was always infested with cockroaches. A lot of the time, we weren’t given our full recreational time, which was supposed to be five hours a day; often, we were only let out for two to three hours. At least once a week, a fight would break out, or people would get robbed of their commissary, and occasionally, people would get stabbed. They rarely came by to wash our clothes or sheets or give us new blankets—I think I saw that happen maybe twice in the three-and-a-half months I was there. The guards showed a very obvious hatred for J6 people, but mostly for all the inmates. We were also in a unit that was the overflow for people who were very mentally handicapped. Most of the inmates sold and smoked a drug called K2, and the guards would most of the time just allow it to go on. I still cough quite a bit throughout the night because of all the secondhand smoke that was constantly burning in that jail unit.

Health Crisis in Jail

By week two of being in the jail, I was still constipated and hadn’t had a bowel movement. I wrote one or two sick call slips every day since I was told how to write them a few days after being admitted to the jail. They’d give me more laxatives—small orange pills—but they still weren’t doing anything for me. I begged them to take me to a hospital. I began puking up blood and even had blood come out of my rectum. I tried several times late at night, while my cellmate was asleep, to do a manual bowel program that requires inserting a finger into the rectum to trigger natural peristalsis, but nothing worked. I was now going into week three, constantly begging the guards and writing sick call slips every day and night, still unable to eat much food. I could feel my intestines pressing up against my ribs while lying on my pee-soaked mattress on the floor in my cell. During the day, it hurt to walk around because my ribs were so sore. It was making it very difficult to walk because when my stomach issues get bad, it affects my entire nervous system, and I begin to have severe muscle spasms. Thankfully, when I first got to the Southeast Three unit, another J6er showed me how to use my tablet, and I was able to talk to my wife. Quickly, I was able to connect with J6 advocates outside the jail all across the country and tell them about my situation. After three weeks of passing blood, puking up blood, and losing approximately 20 pounds from stress and not eating, I was finally given a substance called lactulose. I took it, and about a day later, I was relieved and had extreme diarrhea. My body felt sudden relief, and I no longer felt like my intestines were going to rot. But during that entire time, I had extremely sharp pains in my stomach from where I was completely plugged up, and I worried about my intestines rotting.

Adjusting to Jail Life

I was able to start gaining some strength now that I could eat food and was finally given my digestive enzymes and even my muscle relaxers. The most I could sleep was usually 2 to 4 hours throughout my entire stay due to constant noise, heat, smoke from other inmates smoking drugs, and guards constantly flashing their lights in the cells. My cellmate began to steal my muscle relaxer medication, so I told the nurse who came by that I didn’t need them every day—just when I was starting to have muscle spasms. After that, they stopped giving me any muscle relaxer medication. They were giving me a lot of Senokot, which is a laxative, and I had to tell them after several months that I didn’t need any more—the amount they gave me was enough to kill somebody. I was finally able to exercise with some of the other inmates and eventually gained some strength to crawl up onto the top bunk, so I didn’t have to sleep on the floor anymore. After about a month, they finally fixed the light in our cell, so we had light during the 20 hours we were locked in. Other inmates would flush their shanks down the toilets before any inspections. This would usually cause the toilets to back up and spill sewage into the entire jail area, where we would walk to get some sort of exercise. There would be raw sewage all over the floor, and it would usually take them several hours to get someone in there to clean it up. This would leak into other cells. We also did not have a stool in our cell so we could write letters or so we had a place to sit and read. Not once was I given the opportunity to go to a religious service. During my time in Southeast Three, I can only remember two times we were allowed to go outside for one hour, but I’d stay inside because I didn’t have warm clothes, and I was told the coats they gave us were infested with fleas and bugs. I was also told—and witnessed—that if you left, the guards would allow other inmates to go into your cell and steal your belongings. The noise inside that jail was extremely loud from people banging their doors and trays, and others yelling, screaming, and fighting. I was able to tell the administration I needed a kosher diet because I was having a very hard time digesting the regular food they served. Thankfully, my cellmate wasn’t a violent person and was friendly to talk to; the problem was he’d steal my medication, and he had a lot of psychological issues.

Move to Cell 9 and Back Injury

After about two months of being in Southeast Three, they moved me from Cell 24 to Cell 9 with another J6er named Rockne Earls. He’s a 63-year-old retired Army vet who is 100% disabled, so once again, I had to sleep on the top bunk. At this time, the heat began to increase in our unit, and at times, our cell would get up to 90°. The week before Christmas, we were locked in our cell for nearly five days with no showers, no clean clothes, no cold water, and occasionally, they’d bring us ice handled with bare hands. Rockne and I were both beginning to feel extremely exhausted from the extreme heat. One night, while getting down from my bunk and using the sink-toilet combo as a stepping stool, my foot slipped off the sink, and I collapsed all the way to the ground off my top bunk, hitting the floor and then my back against the opposing wall. I lay on the floor, unsure if something was broken. Several days later, I had a big bruise in the middle of my back between my shoulder blades.

Worsening Health and Hospital Visit

During my entire time in the jail, I wrote a sick call slip just about every single day to the infirmary for medical issues I was having or the extreme heat we were dealing with and how it was affecting my health and causing muscle spasms—at this point, they were no longer giving me any muscle relaxers. About a day after I fell off my top bunk, I began having extreme numbness in my legs and hands. I was having the same symptoms as when I herniated my disc back in June. I wrote several sick call slips to the infirmary and begged the guards for help because I was losing feeling in my legs, and my toes were beginning to curl to where I couldn’t control them. Another inmate in the jail who we had gotten to know, who is also a target of the former corrupt justice system, named Denis Postovoy, was very knowledgeable about healthcare and the body structure and physical therapy. I knew this because of the years of physical therapy I had already gone through from my previous spinal cord injury. He offered to help me stabilize my spine and relax muscles around where I was having muscle spasms and increased numbness. During this time, I strongly believe he was able to stabilize my back for the meantime. I was having a very hard time getting onto my top bunk and had to start sleeping on the floor again. I would confide in my friend Mike, who’s also a J6er, and he would calm my mind and help me. I’d call my wife and tell her what was going on, along with all the other J6 advocates, informing them that I was losing feeling and there was a good possibility I’d become paralyzed again. It was getting to the point where I was having a hard time balancing and standing because my legs were becoming extremely weak. This was all due to a re-injured L5 disc that never fully recovered before going into jail—I should’ve been put in a medical unit at the very minimum. After several days around Christmas, I was finally taken to the hospital after hundreds of J6 advocates called and threatened lawsuits if I wasn’t taken to an emergency room right away. At this point, I was beginning to lose control of my bladder and bowels. When taken to Howard University Hospital, I was once again shackled—hands and feet—and placed in the backseat of a car. The guards had to help lift my feet into the backseat because I didn’t have the strength to do it at that point. I shuffled into Howard University Emergency Room, where they handcuffed me to a bed in a room built for prison or jail inmates. The guards were getting calls from the jail to hurry up the process and get me back. Because of my extensive medical history, the nurses and doctors said I needed a CT scan in case there was a head injury and also an MRI of my spine. They did two CT scans, and then the guards were very pushy, saying they didn’t have time for me to do an MRI. But because I was still having severe numbness and lack of bladder and bowel control, the doctors wanted to do an MRI. At this point, they gave me a shot of Toradol, a high-powered anti-inflammatory, to stop whatever swelling might be going on around my spine. After a few hours, I could feel the numbness stop working its way up my body. At that point, it was all the way up to my belly button, and I could feel very little of my legs and feet and was even having issues with feeling in my hands. Even though this was a re-injury of my L5, because of my sensitive spinal cord, it can cause issues even in my upper extremities. By the time they gave me the shot of Toradol, my left arm and hand were numb all the way up to my jaw and left ear. As soon as I told the doctors that the numbness had stopped moving up my body, I was discharged from the hospital and taken directly back to the jail.

Return to Jail and Move to Medical Unit

I was taken back to my cell, where all of my belongings were gone. They had taken all my belongings and put them in a storage area because I’d been kept in the hospital past midnight. After a few hours, a guard came to my cell and made sure I was sleeping on the bottom bunk. At that time, when I returned to the jail, my cellmate Rockne had given me the bottom bunk because of all the issues I’d had, and I no longer had the strength to get on the top bunk. Because of the extreme heat we still had in there, he was only able to handle one night of sleeping on the top bunk, and then he also began sleeping on the floor. In that cell, being on the top bunk with that extreme heat was about 10° hotter than on the bottom bunk. A guard came to our cell several days after Christmas and told me I was going to the medical unit and to grab my stuff. I told them I didn’t have the strength to carry my bags because I now had a lot of permanent nerve damage in my legs and hands and was worried about re-injuring my back by lifting stuff that was too heavy. Reluctantly, the guard carried my heavy bags and eventually got a cart to push them down the hallway. They made me push the cart down the hallway. I then asked, when we were going by the mattresses, if I could grab a new mattress since mine was very disgusting and soaked with urine from whoever had it before. Thankfully, he let me do that. I was taken to Medical Unit 82, where my cell had a toilet that didn’t work and a sink that didn’t work. While I was in there, the toilet began to leak—or had already been leaking the entire time—and the entire floor was flooding. The detail person for that unit brought a mop and a bucket and told me I had to clean it up. This was all at about 11 o’clock at night. I spent about an hour mopping the floor when another guard came and said I was in the wrong unit. I was thankful I didn’t have to stay in that unit because they were locked down for 22 hours a day. So, then again, I had to grab all my stuff, put it on a cart, and take it with him. I was taken upstairs to Medical Unit 96, where it was a better unit.

Life in Medical Unit 96

By then, I had developed a very bad cough and was only given Tylenol or ibuprofen. The other inmates were very upset because I coughed all the time and told me not to come around them. Thankfully, in this unit, we were allowed to be out of our cells for about 10 hours a day, and we had access to ice so I could ice my back. When I went down to the infirmary, I asked for my muscle relaxers but was denied. They would only give me ibuprofen and Tylenol. Also, before I left my other unit, Southeast Three, I was given steroids at my request—they would’ve never given me steroids if I hadn’t begged them. In this unit, I could actually see outside. One of the inmates told me there was a group of people that were outside every night at 7 p.m. When I first saw it, I realized it was Freedom Corner. I let the J6 advocates know through the messaging on the tablet that I could see them from my unit. I called in one time and spoke to the amazing people at Freedom Corner. I was so thankful to see them and know with my eyes there were people out there every night praying for us. I cried almost every night I saw them. No matter the weather—shine, snow, or rain—they were there. While in the medical unit, I received nearly no medical attention and had to fend for myself on doing any type of rehab and would ice my back nearly all day. They told me I had to start using a cane, but my left side, which was the weakest, couldn’t hold a cane in my left hand because I couldn’t feel my left hand at all from whatever nerve damage I had gained from my injury in the jail. After about two weeks, I finally started getting physical therapy, and the physical therapist didn’t know how to treat my condition because they were giving me a heat pack for my back, which was making it worse, and I asked if I could just ice my back. Thankfully, I knew the proper exercises to do and would do them in my cell several times a day, lightly. There was one time I was allowed to use the mop to clean my cell because the floor was very disgusting. Thankfully, one of the other inmates gave me a thick foam mattress to help with my back. Most of the help I got to improve my situation was from other inmates and not from the infirmary or any of the staff.

Conditions and Threats in Jail

I wasn’t allowed more than two envelopes a week to write to family the entire time I was in that jail. Most of the time, I’d have to trade commissary to get envelopes so I could write letters to family and friends. I’d say at least a third of the inmates had shanks, and there were very poor searches—if they did any—to recover shanks from inmates. It was disgusting to see the amount of methadone and Suboxone constantly given to inmates to keep them hooked on the drugs that got them in there. Most of the inmates would sell the synthetic drugs the jail gave them to other inmates, and that was their way of making money while in jail. Several times while in the DC jail, I was threatened by other inmates with being stabbed, probably because I was White or a J6er. The only time I had the ability to breathe fresh air while in that jail was either going to court or the hospital. I didn’t receive any visits from family while in there because my family lived on the opposite side of the country, and we were completely financially broke from selling everything we had and borrowing money from family and friends. My mom had moved in with my wife to help take care of the kids and help around the house. This entire experience at this jail was so demoralizing, and we were treated like subhumans—less than animals.

Final Court Appearance and Pardon

On January 10, I went to court for an argument of a Brady violation by the government. There had been a report that came out showing that the FBI had many informants in the crowd who were violent and provoked the crowd to commit violence or defend themselves. Judge McFadden didn’t let the prosecution or the defense talk during this hearing. He ruled that he believed the Department of Justice did a proper investigation into the FBI and that the FBI didn’t know they had informants, which was a complete lie from what was in the report. This hearing was purely to protect the judge himself from any wrong judgments. I had been taken from my unit at five in the morning and didn’t return until 9 o’clock at night due to short staff issues. On January 20, 2025, President Trump signed a pardon for all J6ers. I wasn’t released until the morning of January 22, 2025. My wife had waited outside the jail for two nights, expecting me to be out on the night of January 20. The morning I was released, January 22, after she had to postpone flights twice and sleep on a friend’s couch, we made our way to the airport and flew home.

Post-Release Struggles and Family Impact

I don’t sleep well and maybe get two to four hours a night. There are many times I still wake up in the middle of the night thinking I’m in jail. I continue to go to physical therapy and still fight bad issues from my injury in jail. I now have extreme nerve pain that I never had before in my feet and hands. Because of the injury from the DC jail from falling off my top bunk, I began having numbness issues the other day out of nowhere. This prompted me to go to urgent care in Walla Walla, and they gave me a shot of Toradol to stop whatever was going on in my spine, which seemed to be swelling. Several days later, I went to my regular doctor, and he prescribed me steroids to help with any healing that may need to happen in my spine. He didn’t know what to do but wanted to take precautions, and I’ll be seeing a spine specialist to possibly have spine surgery or steroid injections in my back. The psychological and physical damage this has done to my entire family we’ll never be able to fully recover from. My two-year-old son screams when I’m out of his sight for more than several minutes, and it took two months before he could start going back to daycare without a complete meltdown. My oldest son, who is 10, also has separation issues now and worries every time I leave. There are people in our town who don’t talk to me and hold very bad judgment against me because of the constant lies they’ve heard over social and mainstream media. Family members have turned their backs on us, and there have been several articles written that are complete lies about myself. I lost 30 pounds while I was in the DC jail and have slowly begun to recover that, but my strength is still very weak, and I have extreme back issues that would’ve been resolved if I’d only been given the opportunity to fully heal before being put in jail or at least put in a medical unit when I was first admitted to the DC jail. But I had nearly no medical help and came close to dying several times while in there, either from being threatened with my life by being stabbed or my intestines rotting from not being able to have a bowel movement for three weeks. I have requested multiple times for copies of all of my sick call requests while being in the DC jail. These requests have been ignored to recover these sick call forms. They tell a very horrific story of my horrific medical challenges during my incarceration. My life will never be the same, and I don’t know how many years it’ll take us to recover financially. My father, Duke Wilson, has extreme balance issues that we believe may be from a possible small stroke due to the extreme stress he went through while being in prison for 30 months and possibly from getting hit over the head by a baton. My entire family has been flipped upside down and destroyed from the entrapment that our government put on not only myself, the president, and thousands of other people. There are many details I could still add to this that are also very important, but I feel can wait for another time. I’ve had many extreme muscle spasms just while writing this from bringing up old memories.

Ryan Wilson,
inmate 391740

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