CO -

November 2021

Innocent of any wrongdoing on 6 January, Couy Griffin was arrested and imprisoned on a charge fabricated after his release from jail, simply for being a renowned supporter of Donald Trump (see editorial). Our transcription from the documentary Political Prisoner.

The American Gulag

I went back to Washington DC. And the only reason I went back to Washington DC was because I wanted to go see the inauguration with my own eyes. Because I believe nothing the media tells us nowadays, nor the government. So I drove back to Washington DC and I was arrested [by FBI agents] on January 17th, just outside the Capitol building.

[...] They took me down, they booked me, and they put me in [a] jail that ... I wouldn't even have put an animal inside of, I promise you. Whenever I came through they asked me if I had eaten or if I was hungry. And I said, yeah, you know, I haven't eaten today. So they pulled this sandwich out of this black milk crate, wrapped in a brown paper towel, and handed me this baloney sandwich whenever I went by, and I go inside this cell, .... and as soon as I came in there was a toilet with a sink over the top of, a standard jail toilet, and I remember I sat that sandwich down on the top of that sink and I looked at the bunk, and the bunk was just crawling with bugs. Bugs of every size, every make, every model. The wall was crawling with bugs. It was the most disgusting place I have ever seen in my whole life. And as I looked at all those bugs crawling on that bed, I looked back down at that sandwich that I'd sat on top of that sink, and it had already started crawling with bugs too. The most inhumane place I've ever seen in my life. No place for any kind of a human being to be. I don't care what the crime is.

I spent 24 hours locked up in that first jail. Then they admitted me into the next Department of Corrections. In that place I spent the remainder of the three weeks.

When I was first admitted to the DC Department of Corrections, they wanted to give me a Covid test. I told them, look, I'm an elected official, I've taken a hard line on the testing. I believe that all the government does is test people so they can get the numbers so they can use them to scare people and shut our schools down. I'm not sick right now, I'm perfectly healthy, I don't need a test. And I thought they were physically going to take me down and run a swab up my nose. They brought in six or eight guys in all their riot gear, and with the doctor with the swab in his hand, they were fixing to take me down and force that thing up my nose. Another person came in that had a little bit of sense, and turned all those guys around and said no, you can't do this.

So then from there they put me in total solitary confinement for a total of nine days. And I was refused a shower for nine days. I wasn't able to use the telephone to call my attorney or my family for nine days. And it was by far the hardest period I've ever spent in my life. It's real easy to throw the term around, "solitary confinement." But, it's another thing to actually be in solitary confinement. A person doesn't really understand the mental trauma that you go through whenever you're stuck in a cell that's no bigger than a walk-in closet, for days on end, without any kind of human interaction at all.

I was in there the remainder [of my time]. After they finally let me out, after nine days, I finally took the Covid test on day nine. And I can honestly say I didn't take the test because they broke me. I took the test because I felt that I could be of more use outside of that cell than I was inside. I already feel like I proved how far the government is willing to go to force you to comply with what they want you to do because, you know, it was a Covid test that time but it'll be the vaccine next time. They'll be putting people in solitary confinement for refusing the vaccine.

But it's how oppressive, and how horrible our government will treat you if you don't agree with them, you know.

I spent the remainder of my time in that jail in 23-hour-a-day lockdown. We were only allowed to come out of our cell one hour a day. And whenever I was locked in my cell 23-hours-a-day, the conditions ... they're hard to put into words. It's really an experience you really have to have to truly understand it. But being locked up, 23 hours, only being allowed out, outside your cell, only one hour a day, and inside of that one hour is the time when you take your shower, you make your phone calls, and you maybe walk around just a little bit, and you don't realise how quick an hour goes until you only have one of them out of a day to spend outside of the cell.

Typically the day would start off in jail, the jail guards would come by our cells about 3 o'clock in the morning and turn the lights on, bang on the door, and they'd have either a bowl of oatmeal or a bowl of dried cereal, that they would give us for breakfast at about 3 o'clock in the morning. And then typically for lunch, they would bring by a styro foam container that would have one scoop of peanut butter, one scoop of jelly, and about four pieces of white bread, and maybe a scoop of peas or a scoop of potato salad or something. And then for dinner, typically, it was usually four pieces of baloney, and four pieces of white bread, and maybe another scoop of peas and another scoop of potato salad. And that was about all we had to eat.

The jail guards, and the people who worked there, I see stories now of the physical abuse, and such, that those inmates suffered. And I can guarantee I believe everything I read. I was the "f***ing white cracker," you know. And they would be outside our cells and they would be chanting, "F***Trump! F***Trump! F*** Trump!" — the guards were, you know. They'd leave the TV up as loud as they could while we were in there, and all the lights on.

[...] I would walk by [the cell of one of the most "passive, non-violent people I've ever met in my life"], and whenever I was able to look in there... he would be sitting on the edge of his bed with the towel over his head just looking at his feet. All day long. What's that doing to these people. And it's gotta stop. It's gotta stop. There has to be something done. And, you know, that was one of the main questions that kept coming into my mind whenever I was locked up in that cell: why isn't anybody doing anything? You know, I would sit there and I would be like, why isn't anybody doing anything, why isn't there help?

It was by far the hardest time of my life. But it was also a time that was amazingly blessed, because I had a Bible, I had prayer. And I had a God Who was at work in my heart, building me and strengthening me in ways that I'd never been built up or strengthened before. I tell people, that if the government wanted to weaken me by putting me in that jail they should've never given me a Bible. Because all that Bible did was make me strong, and build my faith stronger.

The story's gotta be told and people need to hear it. And these guys that are locked up right now, my heart breaks for them. Whenever they let me out of that jail, I promise you, a part of me didn't want to leave, because I looked in there at those guys and we were all a team, you know, we were all ... we had each other's backs. I was the first one, I think, that they let out, and before I left, as weird as it may sound, there was like a part of me, I felt like I was abandoning those guys. But I knew that I needed to get out to tell the story. I knew that I was better served being able to be out here on camera telling this story of what it's like inside that jail because if they could've kept me inside of there they'd have never let me go. Because they want to silence us. They don't want this story getting out.

I spent three weeks in jail on a [false] misdemeanour charge. When we have car thieves and paedophiles that don't even get thrown in jail for that long nowadays. But that's the dirty end of politics. And I believe the more it goes on, the more it will be exposed. They don't want people to tell stories of the abuse those [hundreds of 6 January] guys are going through, but they're going through it. And when people tell me that they're praying for those guys that are locked up in that DC jail I always respond and say, don't stop, because they need it. They're in a very bad place right now. Yeah. Where it's going to stop, Lord only knows.

Couy Griffin speaking on the documentary Political Prisoner

His arrest in Washington on 17 January 2021.