Posted on 08/29/2022 5:35:07 AM PDT by MtnClimber
"For the first time in U.S. history, the political party in power is hunting down and jailing members of the opposition party for political dissidence, and . . . torturing them in jail."
A lawyer for several of the January 6 political prisoners says his clients are being “tortured” by a system of “anarcho-tyranny” that considers them to be a “subhuman, sub-constitutional class of people.” In an interview this week, Joseph D. McBride said he is building a case to sue the federal government for millions of dollars over the abuses his clients have suffered.
The devout Catholic told the Blaze‘s Daniel Horowitz on his “Conservative Review” podcast Monday that he has witnessed the “deepest part of evil” while representing the political prisoners.
“They are gaslighting the entire American public,” McBride said. “They are calling these people extremists and terrorists, but the extremism and the terrorism lies with them!”
“January 6 did not happen in a vacuum,” he continued. “In the year or so that preceded January 6, you had all the BLM and Antifa riots all over the United States of America. We saw the burning down of cities, the attacking of police officers. Members of antifa out there in black bloc covered head to toe in full riot gear going at it with police, the looting of stores—you name it, we saw it.”
McBride posited that the left-wing agitators got a pass in 2020 because of new and expanded definitions of “civil disobedience, and political protest” which allowed government entities to view even violent riots “as grounded in the First Amendment, not criminality.”
In the wake of this, he explained, the pro-Trump protesters showed up in Washington, D.C. on January 6 with the impression there was this “new and modern definition of political protest.” Of course, most of the January 6 rioters came nowhere near the levels of violence the nation saw during the George Floyd riots, McBride was careful to point out.
Because of who they were, however, (that is, mainly white, middle-class, patriotic, pro-Trump Americans) they were targeted, persecuted, and not given the constitutional protections the much more violent and destructive left-wing rioters were routinely given, he argued.
“For the first time in U.S. history, the political party in power is hunting down and jailing members of the opposition party for political dissidence, and not only that, they’re torturing them in jail,” McBride said. “This is the stuff of dictatorships.”
He said he has two clients who are both currently being tortured in jail: Ryan Taylor Nichols of Longview, Texas, and Christopher Quaglin of New Jersey.
The attorney explained that both of these men are routinely thrown in solitary confinement for long periods of time, which violates international norms, and when their advocates on the outside speak out against the abuse, they get treated even worse.
“Legally, a pre-trial detainee in America is not allowed to be punished, never mind tortured,” he told Horowitz.
In the United States of America, we only punish convicted persons, meaning you had your day in court, and you either were convicted guilty, or you took a plea and you admitted guilt. Then and only then you can be punished and jailed. And even in those sets of circumstances, the punishment for your crime is the deprivation of your freedom.
The standard for a convicted person is no cruel and unusual punishment. The standard for a pre-trial detainee—because that person has not been convicted of any crime, and is still presumed innocent—is that no punishment of any kind is acceptable. Meaning, if you punish somebody, and they’re a pretrial detainee, you have violated their constitutional rights.
Quaglin is an electrician who was out of work in 2020 due to government policies surrounding COVID. “He has neither been in serious trouble before nor arrested prior to this incident,” friends and family of Christopher Quaglin said in a GiveSendGo plea for help. “He has always been an ardent supporter of the police and some months prior to his arrest led a local demonstration in support of the men and women in blue serving his hometown.”
In dozens of letters to the federal court judge, friends and family have testified that Quaglin is not the violent Capitol insurrectionist federal authorities have portrayed him to be, but “an extraordinary neighbor who’d help you work on your home if needed.”
McBride told Horowitz that during the riot, he got into some “shoving matches” with police, picked up a shield at some point, and picked up a can of mace. Government prosecutors allege that he was part of the crowd that attacked Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges, who was seen on video trapped between protesters and a set of doors to the building.
Horowitz quipped that if BLM and Antifa were prosecuted for merely pushing and shoving, new prisons would have to be constructed “to hold hundreds of thousands of people.”
“If this were under normal circumstances, this would be done already. Taken care of a long time ago,” McBride agreed.
Quaglin, who is being held in one of the satellites of the DC Gulag, Northern Neck Regional Jail in Warsaw, Virginia, has Celiac disease, a chronic digestive and immune disorder that damages the small intestine.
“This is a serious underlying condition,” McBride told Horowitz. “He’s highly allergic to wheat and gluten. When he eats it, he has a severe adverse reaction. It’s very bad, he loses weight, he vomits, he has diarrhea, he has intestinal cramps, he breaks out in lesions on his back. It is so bad that he would choose to not eat and starve over the pain of eating these foods,” the lawyer explained. “This is not a lifestyle choice.”
McBride said Quaglin has lost 45 pounds because prison officials refuse to provide a diet that won’t make him sick.
McBride said Quaglin has been transferred to six different facilities since his arrest in April of 2021, and his mistreatment grows worse with each transfer. The prisoner has been at Northern Neck Regional Jail since December 20, 2021.
“He has been moved six times, and each time, his lawyers have to intervene and tell prison officials that he requires a special diet for his condition,” the attorney lamented, adding that every time he speaks out in defense of his client, retaliatory action is taken against him.
“Right now, he is locked away in a cell with no windows—no way to reach out to the world simply because his lawyer and his family are speaking out on his behalf. This is a life or death situation,” he said.
At one point, prison officials took him out of solitary confinement and put him in a block with COVID positive inmates, McBride told American Greatness, so naturally, Quaglin, who was already weak from food deprivation, got COVID.
The attorney noted that Reps. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-Ga.), Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), and about 14 other members of Congress have all spoken out on his behalf.
Ryan Taylor Nichols is a decorated military veteran who served his country honorably in the Marine Corps, and who has no prior contact with the criminal justice system.” After his military service, he was diagnosed with PTSD, which has been left untreated throughout his incarceration. Nichols is currently being held in the D.C. Gulag.
Only a few years ago Nichols was hailed as a hero because of his charity “Rescue the Universe,“ which rescues people and animals stranded during natural disasters.
Nichols “went viral” in 2018 after he rescued puppies during Hurricane Michael. He was invited on to the “Ellen Degeneres Show,” where the host donated $25,000 to the Humane Society in his name. When DeGeneres found out that Nichols couldn’t afford to go on a honeymoon with his wife Bonnie, she gifted him with $10,000, which he used to buy a boat for more rescue operations.
“This guy is the best of what America has to offer,” McBride told Horowitz. “He’s a small business owner, he’s a father to two beautiful young boys, a husband, a son—just a good man who loves his country.”
McBride said Nichols went to the protest on January 6 and ended up having to “defend himself and defend some other people during some really difficult acts of police brutality.”
Prosecutors say Nichols assaulted law enforcement officers during the riot and incited other people to violence. Last December, Judge Thomas F. Hogan denied Nichols’ request to be released pending trial because he allegedly called for “an actual war” after the riot. “It’s clear to me that there is an identifiable threat,” Hogan said.
“He has been in custody since January 18, 2021,” McBride said. He spent most of the first nine months or so in solitary confinement “until we started screaming about it,” he added. McBride said they were using COVID-19 as “a pretext to lock people in solitary confinement.”
We have become a communist banana republic.
The DC jail is the Democrats Abu Ghraib prison.
I’ve been having nightmares about what these people are undergoing. Being politically imprisoned is one of my biggest fears and completely irrational. No free person should ever have to worry about something like that, but here we are.
Gulag Archipelago?
The Leftards are violating their own folk songs. Just listen to these aging hippies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4rc0IvKths
These next 2 Elections will either save them and us or we will perish from the earth.
This country has really gotten weaponized by the Dems, the GOP had better stand up soon, they seem non bothered.
...and the band played on, and the deck chairs were reorganized.
Being forced to eat food that literally makes the person sick? Perhaps he should “identify” as a Muslim and insist on special Halal meals, made to order?
Seems like it - I think we'll know for sure come November, if we make it that far....
“anarcho-tyranny”
the combination of oppressive government power against the innocent and the law-abiding and, simultaneously, a grotesque paralysis of the ability or the will to use that power to carry out basic public duties such as protection or public safety.
” McBride said he is building a case to sue the federal government for millions of dollars over the abuses his clients have suffered.”
Millions of dollars isn’t even pocket lint to this administration.
It's without excuse that Trump and the republican party have been silent as MAGA Americans are in a DC gulag being abused and being denied their rights.
I enlisted in the Marine Corps to kill people who did this sh!t to Americans.
The DC jail is the Democrats Abu Ghraib prison.
/\
I wanttoknow how many of the guards belong to
Nation Of Islam .
The only recreation they are given is
videos on Islam
according to that one leaked video.
He isn’t silent!!!…and I don’t appreciate you suggesting he is !
There are plenty of criminals in this administration, and Congress who are enabling this…..take your wrath out on THEM!
Just say the magic phrase, and you are a Muslim. Real low admission threshold.
Remember everybody, the cops are your friends.
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