Ryan Zink is adamant he did nothing on January 6. The events of that day are largely what drove him to run for the Congressional seat Jodey Arrington will soon leave behind.
“I didn’t threaten anyone. I didn’t hurt anybody. I didn’t damage anything. I never went in the building,” Zink said.
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Zink was a journalism student at Texas Tech. He was in Washington D.C. along with his dad, a congressional candidate from Arizona.
“I believed and my dad believed that the vote was going to get contested from Arizona and that Congress was going to kick the vote back to the states, which would have been the first time in history. States would have voted down their party lines and it would have installed Donald Trump as the president. So that is what we were expecting,” Zink said.
One of the documents prosecutors filed said Zink was recording video of himself and said, “We knocked down the gates! We’re storming the Capitol! You can’t stop us!”
Federal official indicted him on four counts. One was dropped. A jury in D.C. found him guilty of obstruction of an official proceeding, entering a restricted building or grounds and disorderly or disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds.
“It was not a fair jury,” Zink told LubbockLights.com.
“No one who went to trial in DC received a fair trial on the basis of the split between Republicans and Democrats,” Zink said.
Zink, like all the January 6 defendants, received a presidential pardon and his case was dismissed while still on appeal.
For Zink that’s not the end.
“When people vote for someone like me, I have lived this. I have faced the giants. … After having my constitutional rights stripped away from me for five years, I saw that there was a need in our area for somebody who is strong, somebody who’s not willing to back down.” Zink said.
“I work in oil field safety and I am in charge of auditing 55 gas plants,” Zink said.
Zink graduated high school in Borger. Zink never finished his degree with Texas Tech because he was hit by a drunk driver and injured his shoulder, he said.
When asked if would like to finish his degree, he at first said, “If given the opportunity, I would go back and finish.”
“It probably does not benefit me to go finish that degree because I completely disagree with the way that media is handled today,” Zink said.
Unless he could follow in the footsteps of someone like Shaw Ryan or Tucker Carlson, he’s not interested in the media.
Carlson interviewed Zink right before LubbockLights.com talked to him. He called it “amazing.”
“Jesus is number one. Meeting my wife’s number two. Having both my children are three and four and the Tucker Carlson interview’s number five,” Zink said.
Carlson’s website published a link Monday morning entitled “Ryan Zink on What It’s Like to Disappear Into the American Gulag for Political Crimes.”
If elected, the priorities
“The single most important thing that Americans need to be focused on is election integrity. We need to get the SAVE Act through the Senate so that we can have clear and accurate elections,” Zink said.
SAVE is short for Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act. Critics claim the bill could cut off legal voters – for example a woman whose married name is different from her birth certificate. Supporters claim the SAVE Act instructs states to establish a process for those whose legal names do not match their birth certificates.
“I think that goes hand in hand with border security. I believe that ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] is doing a great job. There’s been some unfortunate circumstances that have happened across the last couple of weeks, but we have to look at those cases individually,” Zink said.
“The responsible thing to do is to return people back to their countries that have not been properly vetted,” Zink said.
That issue, in turn, is tied to federal spending, he said.
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“I think that we’re on spending life support that we have got to drop everything that is not essential and pay down our debts. You know, we’re hemorrhaging a trillion dollars just to pay the interest on our spending,” Zink said.
“Sending money to every country that basically needed it – that’s not America first. We have to start focusing on our debt,” Zink said.
The national debt is currently more than $38.6 trillion dollars, according to the Federal Treasury website.
“A majority of the executive orders that Donald Trump has put in place – we need to make sure that those get codified in law,” Zink said.
Zink wanted to especially emphasize his support for veterans who need healthcare. Zink wants to expand exceptions so that more veterans can keep their benefits without a reduction or their healthcare costs.
“I am in 100 percent full support of the Major Richard Starr Act,” Zink said.
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