The Record They Kept: 1,463 Days, Ten Facilities, and the File I Built From Inside

They took me on January 18, 2021.

Between that day and the pardon on January 20, 2025 — 1,463 days — I was held across ten federal and local facilities. What follows is not my memory of it. Memory can be argued with. This is the file: every claim below carries an exhibit number from the master archive I built one scan at a time, from inside.

The hearing they transcribed

In Tyler, Texas, days after my arrest, the government argued to keep me caged. The full transcripts are in the file now (EX-535, EX-536). Read them yourself. FACT: those transcripts exist and are in the archive. What they show about what the government claimed, and what it later abandoned, is a story the documents tell on their own.

The offer before the offer

RYAN STATEMENT, preserved as a recorded discussion in the file (EX-015): the government's first plea position was ten to twelve years. The final sentence was 63 months and a $200,000 fine (EX-537, EX-538 — the plea agreement and statement of offense, now in the archive). Then a full and unconditional pardon, and dismissal with prejudice. Ten to twelve years, for a man whose own case file contains video of him helping Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone to safety that same afternoon (EX-539, EX-540). That footage sat in my file the whole time.

What the jail looked like from inside

FACT, documented and photographed from inside: inmates passing out in solitary confinement (EX-258). Officers threatening inmates — photographed, twice (EX-260, EX-261). My own notes passed to fellow inmates (EX-262). The conditions record (EX-251, EX-256). A signed complaint about a transport event, filed while in custody (EX-173; a second signed complaint, EX-544, is now in the file awaiting verification of the event details).

FACT: a federal judge — Thomas F. Hogan — acknowledged on the record that my due-process rights had been violated. The moment is preserved on video in the archive (EX-529). I stayed in anyway.

FACT: two sitting members of Congress, Reps. Louie Gohmert and Marjorie Taylor Greene, came to the DC jail to see the conditions we were held in and were turned away at the door. It is on video (EX-541, EX-266).

The grievance machine

I papered every facility that held me. The master set — the same set filed as habeas exhibits — runs two hundred grievance documents (EX-319 through EX-519, indexed in EX-520), with the combined master file now preserved as EX-543. The site's public archive carries 267 grievance forms in my own hand. These are not complaints about cold coffee. They are denial-of-care records, retaliation records, due-process records — DC DOC denials with names on them, appeals climbing level by level, the paper trail the Prison Litigation Reform Act demands. I built it because I knew one day someone would say "prove it."

This is the proof. NEEDS AUTHENTICATION, item by item, in public: each grievance will be connected to its facility, its date, and where the record permits, the official who signed it. That work has begun.

The men who can say they were there

Twenty-two fellow detainees are on the record in the case archive. Sworn affidavits from family and witnesses are in the file (EX-282 through EX-318), including a notarized statement and its retraction (EX-542, EX-285) that the record preserves side by side — because a real archive keeps what cuts both ways. My co-defendant, Alex Kirk Harkrider, has his own detention record in the file (EX-180, EX-290).

The men still missing from this record are the ones who suffered next to me. If you were held in the DC jail's J6 unit — or your husband, son, or brother was — the archive has a place for your statement. Sworn, dated, preserved. That is how this stops being my word and becomes the record.

What the medical file says

FACT: PTSD diagnosis, on file (EX-268; post-release, EX-005). Ketamine treatment records (EX-267). Prescription records (EX-269). Mental-health grievances and a FOIA demand for the complete BOP medical file (EX-007, EX-008). I am not asking anyone to imagine what those years did. I am pointing at the paperwork.

What this proves — and what it does not, yet

It proves the government's own records, my contemporaneous filings, and preserved video document abuse, retaliation, denial of care, solitary confinement, and a due-process violation acknowledged from the bench. It does not yet name every officer, every date, every cell. That is what the next phase of this archive is for: every document connected, every name traced, every facility accounted for — FOIA by FOIA, exhibit by exhibit.

They wanted this buried. I filed it instead.

Read the record: realryannichols.com/case. Walk the documents yourself. And if you carry a piece of this story — a statement, a photo, a grievance of your own — send it. The file has room. It was never for nothing.