WorldNetDaily and Alicia Powe — who writes for both WND and the discredited fringe-right Gateway Pundit — has a thing for Capitol rioter Ryan Samsel and pretending he’s not a violent thug. Powe was at it again in an Aug. 1 article:
Why does the government appear to want to kill January 6 political prisoner Ryan Samsel?
Throughout his nearly four years of pretrial detention, Samsel has pleaded – to no avail – with judges and jail staff to allow him the critical, life-saving vascular surgery he was prescribed before his arrest to stop his blood from clotting.
Instead, he developed 17 blood clots throughout his body while being systemically denied medical treatment during his incarceration. Left untreated, the clots morph into blood-flow-obstructing fibroids.
Thus, each day Samsel is refused surgery his life is literally at risk.
But the Biden Justice Department has essentially played political football with the lives of Samsel and all the other so-called “insurrectionists” who were unprecedentedly assaulted, gassed, bombed and shot at with less-than-lethal munitions by police, terrorized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, denied bail while held in pretrial custody for years for nonviolent crimes, and handed shockingly lengthy prison sentences for trumped-up or trivial charges that are normally treated as misdemeanors punishable by fines or a maximum one-year prison term.
In addition to being denied the lifesaving procedure, Samsel has essentially been tortured while detained in pretrial detention for “his role in the Capitol riot,” repeatedly assaulted by jail guards, from which he has sustained irreversible injuries including loss of eyesight and a broken orbital floor. He has sometimes been detained in solitary confinement for weeks and months at a time.
But Powe provides no actual documentation to prove that anything Samsel says is true. Her article is littered with photos of Samsel’s alleged injuries, but no context is provided and no explanation of how they were obtained is given, leaving open the possibility that some of Samsel’s claimed injuries may have been self-inflicted in a bid for sympathy — something Powe shows absolutely no curiosity about despite her enthusiasm for conspiracy theories. Powe did concede, though, that “During his Feb. 2 verdict hearing, which this reporter attended, Samsel personally pleaded with presiding U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb in the courtroom to grant his medical request, so that he could survive prison. But the judge refused, claiming she had no documentation to validate his claims.”
There’s even more reason to distrust those photos — a previously released photo of Samsel looking sad in what was claimed to be a tiny prison cell — originally published by Gateway Pundit — was debunked by Snopes, as officials confirmed that was not a prison cell, and an other debunker pointed out the photo were actually taken in a janitor’s closet (as the floor drain and mop bucket behind him suggests). Powe has not disproven those claims. Powe also inserted an unsourced photo of someone in a four-point restraint chair in order to illustrate Samsel’s claim of having been confined in one. But she never bothererd to substantiate that claim either, making the photo dishonest.
Powe also included a copy of Samsel’s pro se filing seeking treatment of his “medical emergency,” but she makes no effort to show the medical statements included with it prove anything Samsel has claimed — which tells us they tell us nothing at all. Instead, she framed it as him “making his personal health care history available to the public, so as to avoid more potential obstacles that may impede his access to the simple but critical surgery.”
Powe added to her article benign pictures of Samsel at the Capitol riot, with captions like “Ryan Samsel renders aid to political prisoner Josh Black” and “Flash grenade thrown by police erupted inches away from Samsel’s head, resulting in ear injury from shrapnel wound.” But nowhere did Powe explain what Samsel actually did during the riot — as we pointed out the last time she tried to whitewash him, Samsel knocked over a Capitol Police officer while trying to destroy barricades around the Capitol, causing her to suffer a concussion. She also censored Samsel’s history of violence and thuggery, And Powe definitely won’t tell readers about Samsel’s history of criminality and violence — at the time of the riot, he had an open warrant regarding accusations that he broke into a woman’s house to attack her and was on parole for brutally assaulting his pregnant girlfriend. Samsel also reportedly wrote a letter talking about getting rid of politicians with a woodchipper, and he has previously made several statements about stabbing or punching FBI agents.
Powe concluded her article by letting Samsel spew his unsubstantiated sob story:
Samsel is asking the American public to assist with stopping the transfer by calling Judge Cobb.
“I am going to be sick when they tell me to pack it up to go to D.C. It’s likely going to happen any day now,” Samsel told WND in an exclusive interview. “I just want my medical. I just want to live a good quality of life. I came in here a little broken. I’m so much worse off now.
“I’ve lost the vison in my right eye. My skull is fractured. I’ve lost my teeth from getting punched in the face by prison staff. I’ve been stabbed. At one point, they repeatedly slammed my head in the door. I have blood clots that will never heal for rest of my life.
“Please, I am asking for the America people to call Judge Cobb and let her know they are aware that the government is continuing to do this to Ryan Samsel and that he has serious medical needs. And I thank every person who has contributed a dollar to my legal defense from the bottom of my heart. Your generosity and support strengthen my faith and ease some of the pain.”
Powe didn’t ask Samsel’s traumatized girlfriends — the ones he stalked and brutally assaulted — or the Capitol Police officer whose concussion he caused how they feel about his purported treatment in prison.