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Ryne Simmons Describes Being Asked to Erase His Video

What This Video Is​

A 1 minute 19 second vertical clip, held locally in the investigation's capture archive. It is the witness speaking for himself, straight to a phone camera, in a room with a teal accent wall. On-screen captions include the phrase "ERASE THE VIDEO" and the handle @rynestimetwo, with a credit caption for @BasedSamParker, indicating it circulated as an amplified repost. Cut into the monologue is a few seconds of the raw event footage he is describing.

This is the shortest and most direct statement of the deletion account in the corpus. The longer versions on this site quote the same words.

What Is Said​

Simmons describes the sequence in order. He submitted the video as a tip and says his motive was straightforward: "I thought I was doing a service, and, you know, to Charlie and helping out." The transcription engine renders the agency name imperfectly at several points, but the escalation he describes is clear: he first spoke to "someone at the local field office, there in my local state, and then it jumped up a few levels. Then I was talking to someone on, like, the national level."

The instruction, as he reports it, came from that national-level contact and was framed as concern for him: "because this was your friend, I think it's best that you erased the video from your phone, 'cause it's gonna give you PTSD." He says a further call followed "to ask if I had erased it," and then another: "I got a call back and was asked to confirm that it was gone."

It is the repetition that he says changed his mind. In his account, being asked more than once to confirm a deletion is what made him feel "it was even right to post these videos." He also says a prior account of his, five years old, "was gone" and had been removed. His response was to distribute rather than delete: "that's when I started sharing, posting, and saving on many different hard drives in many different places." He closes on the cost of it: "It's been crazy. It's been rough."

He does not allege a crime, does not name any individual, and does not claim the file was remotely destroyed. What he reports is a request, repeated, and his refusal to comply.

What The Footage Shows​

A split-screen opening frame, then a medium close-up of Simmons from about 00:01 to 00:07. From about 00:07 to 00:11, handheld footage of tiered seating under a canopy at an outdoor event with crowd noise and a public-address voice, interrupted by sharp reports and screams; a seated figure in a light shirt goes backwards. From about 00:11 to 00:18 the same moment repeats, cropped and slowed. From 00:18 the clip returns to Simmons for the remainder.

Two cautions on the visual material. First, the event footage is a few seconds long and heavily cropped, so it is illustrative rather than the "close-up 4K at 60fps" file the account is actually about. Second, the stored machine description of this clip identifies the event footage as the July 2024 Butler, Pennsylvania rally. The on-screen banner text captured in that same description reads "THE AMERICAN COMEBACK TOUR," which is the Utah Valley University event of September 10, 2025. The stored description appears to be wrong on that point and should not be relied on.

How It Connects​

Other Videos In This Section​

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