The Bucks County man behind the moment that kicked off the Jan. 6 Capitol riot convicted at trial

WASHINGTON — The Bucks County man behind the moment that kicked off the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was convicted Friday of several felonies stemming from his role in the attack.

Ryan Samsel, 39, of Bristol clenched his jaw and forced a peeved smile as U.S. District Judge Jia M. Cobb announced she’d found him guilty of felony charges including assaulting an officer, participating in a civil disorder, and obstructing an official proceeding of Congress.

He fervently whispered with his lawyer as the judge continued reading verdicts for his four codefendants and at one point interrupted the proceedings to raise his hand and demand Cobb’s attention.

“If you’re done with this,” he asked her, “can I holler at you, please?”

Samsel’s reaction — after learning that he had become the 71st Pennsylvanian convicted of playing a role in the historic attack that caused millions in damage to the Capitol building, left scores of officers injured, and threatened the peaceful transition of presidential power — continued the unorthodox conduct he exhibited during the run-up to his trial last year.

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Both prosecutors and the 39-year-old barber himself have sought to make him a face of the Jan. 6 insurrection — but each for very different reasons.

Federal prosecutors have called him the instigator of the riot, while right-wing critics have painted Samsel as a poster child for mistreatment they say the thousands who’ve been charged with participating in the attack have endured in the two years since. Samsel’s case has taken on a totemic status outside the courtroom among both conspiracy-mongers and riot defenders who seek to downplay the seriousness of what occurred that day as former President Donald Trump seeks to return to the White House.

And Samsel himself has since written open letters to sympathetic members of Congress including U.S. Reps. Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene, complaining of the medical treatment he’s received while in custody and urging them to come to the his aide and that of other rioters who he’s described as “political prisoners.”

Samsel and his four codefendants — James Tate Grant, 30, of North Carolina; Paul Russell Johnson, 37, of Virginia; Stephen Chase Randolph, 33, of Kentucky; and Jason Benjamin Blythe, 27 of Texas; none of whom knew each other before Jan. 6 — opted to forgo a trial in front of a jury, instead arguing their case directly before Cobb during proceedings last year.

As prosecutors described it during those proceedings, Samsel led the other four in toppling a bike-rack barricade outside the Capitol just before 1 p.m. on Jan. 6, leaving an officer concussed and opening the floodgates to thousands of angry supporters of Trump who would soon overrun the building.

Video shot by bystanders showed Samsel whipping off his denim jacket, turning his “Make America Great Again” hat backward and aggressively lunging toward officers before succeeding in pushing them down.

That bike-rack attack — before the smashing of windows and doors, before the all-out brawls that erupted with police and before the violence that sent members of Congress scurrying from the mob that seized control of their chambers — constituted the first breach of the Capitol security perimeter that day, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kyle Mirabelli said at the start of the trial last year.

Samsel “and his codefendants cleared the way … for the hours of terror, violence, destruction and injury that followed,” he said.

But throughout the proceedings, Samsel’s attorney, Stanley Woodward Jr., pushed back against government efforts to paint his client as the instigator of the riot. He accused prosecutors of “sensationalizing and exaggerating evidence … at every opportunity.”

“Those barricades didn’t fall because of anything Mr. Samsel did or was going to do,” Woodward said. “They were going to fall. … It’s not even remotely possible to pin the events of Jan. 6 on Mr. Samsel.”

Though Cobb convicted all five defendants Friday of felony crimes, she acquitted them of several related charges alleging they’d knowingly engaged in violence in a restricted area under heightened security because of then-Vice President Mike Pence’s presence in the Capitol that day.

She explained that, as other federal judges in Washington have ruled, she believed that the charge required prosecutors to prove that Samsel and his codefendants knew Pence was inside the Capitol building at the time — something she said Friday that prosecutors had failed to do.

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Still, on its own, the felony assault charge on which Samsel was convicted Friday could send him to prison for up to 20 years.

Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards — the woman on the other side of the barrier Samsel was shoving against — testified during his trial that she lost her footing, hit her head on a metal handrail and lost consciousness for several minutes.

She acknowledged, however, that after causing her fall — and as other rioters rushed past them toward the Capitol building — Samsel stopped to help her to her feet.

Still, Edwards testified, that even two years after the attack, she continues to suffer from debilitating migraines that have limited her ability to work.

Samsel’s attack on Edwards isn’t the first time he’s been convicted of violence against women — a history that is likely to shape the punishment Cobb fashions for him at his sentencing in June.

When he traveled to Washington for Jan. 6, he was already on parole in Pennsylvania for another violent assault — in which he smashed a hot pizza in the face of his pregnant girlfriend, poured beer over her head, shoved her into a canal and then held her head under water until she told him she loved him.

» READ MORE: Accused Bucks Capitol rioter once assaulted an ex with pizza and tried to drown her, feds say in bid to keep him locked up

That 2011 conviction followed one two years earlier after an incident in which he held another woman against her will for five hours and choked her to the point of unconsciousness.

Three years earlier, according to court records, Samsel pleaded guilty to running yet another woman off the road, punching her windshield and threatening to kill her in a dispute over $60.

But as Cobb found him guilty of his latest assault Friday, Samsel seemingly had other things on his mind. As the hearing concluded, Cobb finally acknowledged his earlier attempt to interrupt the proceedings asking what he’d wanted to discuss with her.

With U.S. Marshals by his side, he approached the lectern and complained for several minutes about the medical treatment he’d received for a variety of ailments in the Washington, D.C., jail — a grievance he’s lodged with the court again and again in the two years since his arrest.

Ultimately, Cobb said she was willing to look at any documentation Woodward could produce to show that Samsel was not getting the medical care he needs.

“I think what this comes down to,” Woodward said as the hearing concluded, “is a dispute [with jail personnel] over the timing of medical care that Mr. Samsel believes is necessary.”