Col Zone Media on January twenty sixth, twenty twenty five. Matthew Huddle died. That much we know for certain. Usually I tell you a story that's old enough that the ink is not only dry, but it's begun to fade a little. The reports are in, the motions have been filed, argued and ruled on. The official story is set in stone. That's not the case today. As I'm writing this. There are still questions left unanswered. There is a state police investigation into an officer involved shooting still underway. But Matthew Huddle is dead. That much we know. Just days before he died, he'd gotten some long awaited good news. His uncle Dale was coming home. Both men were among the nearly sixteen hundred people pardoned by Donald Trump in one of his first actions after being sworn in his president. Matthew had already served his six month sentence, but when the pardons came through, Dale Huddle was just a few months in to a two and a half year term at a prison in Illinois. On the afternoon that he died, Matthew Huddle was driving somewhere in Jasper County, Indiana. I don't know where he was going, but I do know he wasn't supposed to be driving, and according to the Jasper County Sheriff, he was speeding. I can only assume that the altercation that allegedly ensued began after the sheriff's deputy discovered that Huddle did not have a valid driver's license. The deputy claims Huddle resisted when he tried to place him under arrest, and it was during this altercation that the sheriff says the deputy discovered that Huddle was in possession of a firearm, which he was not legally allowed to have, the final moments of Matthew Huddle's life will eventually be settled in some sort of official report. Maybe they'll release the deputy's body worn camera footage. Maybe his family will file a lawsuit. The final page hasn't been written yet. I don't have the answers. All I have is a sad story, but a man who believed in nothing and died on the side of Indiana State Road fourteenth. I'm Molly Conger in This is Weird, Little Guys. At noon on January sixth, twenty twenty one, President Donald Trump took the stage at the Ellipse, a generally unremarkable patch of grass between the White House and the Washington Monument. More than fifty thousand of his supporters had been standing out in the cold all morning waiting to hear from him. For months, he'd stoked the fires of a growing conspiracy the election had been stolen. He gave speeches, held rallies, fired off late night tweets, and filed lawsuits for those who wanted to believe. There seemed to be mountains of evidence of a deep and systemic rot. But the lawsuits were failing, the votes were counted, and time was running out. Today was the day that Congress would have the final say in the twenty twenty election, and less than two miles away, legislators were taking their seats in the Capitol Building to certify the election. The crowd at the Ellipse had come from all over the country to be a part of history, and as their president spoke, many of them heard the permission they'd been waiting for.

Col Zone Media on January twenty sixth, twenty twenty five. Matthew Huddle died. That much we know for certain. Usually I tell you a story that's old enough that the ink is not only dry, but it's begun to fade a little. The reports are in, the motions have been filed, argued and ruled on. The official story is set in stone. That's not the case today. As I'm writing this. There are still questions left unanswered. There is a state police investigation into an officer involved shooting still underway. But Matthew Huddle is dead. That much we know. Just days before he died, he'd gotten some long awaited good news. His uncle Dale was coming home. Both men were among the nearly sixteen hundred people pardoned by Donald Trump in one of his first actions after being sworn in his president. Matthew had already served his six month sentence, but when the pardons came through, Dale Huddle was just a few months in to a two and a half year term at a prison in Illinois. On the afternoon that he died, Matthew Huddle was driving somewhere in Jasper County, Indiana. I don't know where he was going, but I do know he wasn't supposed to be driving, and according to the Jasper County Sheriff, he was speeding. I can only assume that the altercation that allegedly ensued began after the sheriff's deputy discovered that Huddle did not have a valid driver's license. The deputy claims Huddle resisted when he tried to place him under arrest, and it was during this altercation that the sheriff says the deputy discovered that Huddle was in possession of a firearm, which he was not legally allowed to have, the final moments of Matthew Huddle's life will eventually be settled in some sort of official report. Maybe they'll release the deputy's body worn camera footage. Maybe his family will file a lawsuit. The final page hasn't been written yet. I don't have the answers. All I have is a sad story, but a man who believed in nothing and died on the side of Indiana State Road fourteenth. I'm Molly Conger in This is Weird, Little Guys. At noon on January sixth, twenty twenty one, President Donald Trump took the stage at the Ellipse, a generally unremarkable patch of grass between the White House and the Washington Monument. More than fifty thousand of his supporters had been standing out in the cold all morning waiting to hear from him. For months, he'd stoked the fires of a growing conspiracy the election had been stolen. He gave speeches, held rallies, fired off late night tweets, and filed lawsuits for those who wanted to believe. There seemed to be mountains of evidence of a deep and systemic rot. But the lawsuits were failing, the votes were counted, and time was running out. Today was the day that Congress would have the final say in the twenty twenty election, and less than two miles away, legislators were taking their seats in the Capitol Building to certify the election. The crowd at the Ellipse had come from all over the country to be a part of history, and as their president spoke, many of them heard the permission they'd been waiting for.

And we fight, We fight like hell.

And we fight, We fight like hell.

And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have country anymore.

And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have country anymore.

This profound corruption would have to be excised by force before this grave injustice could be done. He'd all but confirm that for them, And then, in the final seconds of his speech, before he was played off the stage by his favorite song, The Village People's Gay Anthem YMCA, he gave the crowd their marching orders.

This profound corruption would have to be excised by force before this grave injustice could be done. He'd all but confirm that for them, And then, in the final seconds of his speech, before he was played off the stage by his favorite song, The Village People's Gay Anthem YMCA, he gave the crowd their marching orders.

So let's walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.

So let's walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.

I want to thank you all.

I want to thank you all.

God bless you, and God bless America.

God bless you, and God bless America.

Thank you all for being here. This is incredible. Thank you very much.

Thank you all for being here. This is incredible. Thank you very much.

Some in that crowd, perhaps anticipating the instructions he would give at the end of his hour long speech, never even heard him say that line. They'd already started walking the mile and a half to their final destination that day, the Capitol Building. Most certainly already know how that day ended. Even if you live in a cave in the woods without access to the internet, you can't possibly have escaped this news. Thousands of Trump supporters descended on the United States Capitol Building. They tore down police barricades, They engaged in a pitched battle with the Capitol Police on the steps outside, and some of them forced their way into the building. People died. United States Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick passed away on January seventh after suffering a series of strokes. His cause of death was eventually ruled to be natural causes, though several neurologists have argued that the events of the prior day almost certainly contributed to his death. Qute On believer Ashley Babbitt was shot as she forced her way into the building through a broken window. Roseanne Boylen was trampled by the stampeding crowd, though her official cause of death was ruled to be an amfetamine overdose. And Kevin Greeson had a heart attack on the Capitol grounds this week. As I was combing back through my own videos of that afternoon, I discovered that I had captured the moment that I realized I was watching a man die.

Some in that crowd, perhaps anticipating the instructions he would give at the end of his hour long speech, never even heard him say that line. They'd already started walking the mile and a half to their final destination that day, the Capitol Building. Most certainly already know how that day ended. Even if you live in a cave in the woods without access to the internet, you can't possibly have escaped this news. Thousands of Trump supporters descended on the United States Capitol Building. They tore down police barricades, They engaged in a pitched battle with the Capitol Police on the steps outside, and some of them forced their way into the building. People died. United States Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick passed away on January seventh after suffering a series of strokes. His cause of death was eventually ruled to be natural causes, though several neurologists have argued that the events of the prior day almost certainly contributed to his death. Qute On believer Ashley Babbitt was shot as she forced her way into the building through a broken window. Roseanne Boylen was trampled by the stampeding crowd, though her official cause of death was ruled to be an amfetamine overdose. And Kevin Greeson had a heart attack on the Capitol grounds this week. As I was combing back through my own videos of that afternoon, I discovered that I had captured the moment that I realized I was watching a man die.

Over the roar of the crowd.

Over the roar of the crowd.

You can hear someone next to me say they've been giving him chest compressions for way too long. And then there's my own voice. I know it's my voice, but I don't remember saying it from years in the past. I heard myself say he's going to die, and a few minutes after that, I saw his dead body being carried away. Surely other people saw him too, but no one seemed to react at all to the sight of a corpse making its way through the crowd. Over the last four years, federal charges were filed against nearly sixteen hundred members of that crowd. Nearly thirteen hundred had been convicted, with another three hundred cases still open as of the four year anniversary of the riot. Those cases will never go to trial, though, because last month, hours after being sworn in as president for the second time, Donald Trump issued a blanket pardon, pardoning almost every single one of them, with the small exception of a handful of rioters who only had their sentences commuted. There are those who would rewrite the story of that day, people who would tell you that it was a peaceful protest, that they were patriots and tourists, that they couldn't have known that their conduct was unlawful. I'm not sure there's anything I can do to change anyone's mind. The evidence to the contrary is readily available, but it's never seemed to matter. I could tell you that I saw a man, eyes red with pepper spray and wide with wild determination, pry a metal drain grate out of the ground with the end of an American flagpole, before pressing back into the fray with his newly acquired weapon. I could tell you I saw a man with a literal pitchfork sprinting down the Capitol lawn. I could spend the next year covering a different January sixth rider every week, painstakingly tracking their affiliations with militias and white supremacist street gangs. But I don't really want to. There's plenty of media about the men who were there that day. Whole books have been written about them, Whole podcasts have dedicated themselves to that work. There are some weird little guys who ended up there that day, but I'll get to But I can't bear the thought of returning to that well for too many stories, because one of those stories are kind of the same. While the seditious conspiracy at the heart of the violence was cooked up by oathkeepers and proud boys, men with an ideological commitment to violence and ties to organized groups dedicated to carrying it out, most of the crowd was made up of men far too ordinary to be considered a weird little guy. And maybe that in itself is a subject worth exploring. How could an ordinary man end up crawling over broken glass on his way to break into a Senator's office. How could a reeltor from the suburbs step over a woman's dead body in his haste to physically confront a member of Congress. How did men with back the blue bumper stickers on their brand new forward pickup trucks end up fistfighting cops on the steps of the Capitol. I don't think I'm equipped to answer the but I can try to tell you the sad story of how one of them ended up dead. Matthew Huddle did not vote for Donald Trump in the twenty twenty election. Perhaps he would have, It's impossible to say, but he'd lost his right to vote years ago after his first felony conviction. He struggled with alcohol addiction for his entire adult life, racking up charges for driving while intoxicated at a pretty alarming rate, and he was back in jail for yet another dui in November of twenty twenty when the election took place. He was fresh off this stint in the county jail when his uncle Dale asked him for a favor. He needed a ride to Washington, d c. The reason given in the court documents is that Dale, at sixty nine years old, had poor eyesight and quote should not drive, especially at night. But I'm not sure how to square that with the knowledge that Dale was at that time employed as a delivery driver at an auto parts store. Nor has any explanation offered as to why Matthew agreed to drive his uncle seven hundred miles from Indiana to DC without a valid driver's license. In Matthew's own words, though he had nothing better to do at the time, so he agreed. According to his defense.

You can hear someone next to me say they've been giving him chest compressions for way too long. And then there's my own voice. I know it's my voice, but I don't remember saying it from years in the past. I heard myself say he's going to die, and a few minutes after that, I saw his dead body being carried away. Surely other people saw him too, but no one seemed to react at all to the sight of a corpse making its way through the crowd. Over the last four years, federal charges were filed against nearly sixteen hundred members of that crowd. Nearly thirteen hundred had been convicted, with another three hundred cases still open as of the four year anniversary of the riot. Those cases will never go to trial, though, because last month, hours after being sworn in as president for the second time, Donald Trump issued a blanket pardon, pardoning almost every single one of them, with the small exception of a handful of rioters who only had their sentences commuted. There are those who would rewrite the story of that day, people who would tell you that it was a peaceful protest, that they were patriots and tourists, that they couldn't have known that their conduct was unlawful. I'm not sure there's anything I can do to change anyone's mind. The evidence to the contrary is readily available, but it's never seemed to matter. I could tell you that I saw a man, eyes red with pepper spray and wide with wild determination, pry a metal drain grate out of the ground with the end of an American flagpole, before pressing back into the fray with his newly acquired weapon. I could tell you I saw a man with a literal pitchfork sprinting down the Capitol lawn. I could spend the next year covering a different January sixth rider every week, painstakingly tracking their affiliations with militias and white supremacist street gangs. But I don't really want to. There's plenty of media about the men who were there that day. Whole books have been written about them, Whole podcasts have dedicated themselves to that work. There are some weird little guys who ended up there that day, but I'll get to But I can't bear the thought of returning to that well for too many stories, because one of those stories are kind of the same. While the seditious conspiracy at the heart of the violence was cooked up by oathkeepers and proud boys, men with an ideological commitment to violence and ties to organized groups dedicated to carrying it out, most of the crowd was made up of men far too ordinary to be considered a weird little guy. And maybe that in itself is a subject worth exploring. How could an ordinary man end up crawling over broken glass on his way to break into a Senator's office. How could a reeltor from the suburbs step over a woman's dead body in his haste to physically confront a member of Congress. How did men with back the blue bumper stickers on their brand new forward pickup trucks end up fistfighting cops on the steps of the Capitol. I don't think I'm equipped to answer the but I can try to tell you the sad story of how one of them ended up dead. Matthew Huddle did not vote for Donald Trump in the twenty twenty election. Perhaps he would have, It's impossible to say, but he'd lost his right to vote years ago after his first felony conviction. He struggled with alcohol addiction for his entire adult life, racking up charges for driving while intoxicated at a pretty alarming rate, and he was back in jail for yet another dui in November of twenty twenty when the election took place. He was fresh off this stint in the county jail when his uncle Dale asked him for a favor. He needed a ride to Washington, d c. The reason given in the court documents is that Dale, at sixty nine years old, had poor eyesight and quote should not drive, especially at night. But I'm not sure how to square that with the knowledge that Dale was at that time employed as a delivery driver at an auto parts store. Nor has any explanation offered as to why Matthew agreed to drive his uncle seven hundred miles from Indiana to DC without a valid driver's license. In Matthew's own words, though he had nothing better to do at the time, so he agreed. According to his defense.

Attorney, matt is not a true believer in any political movement. He cannot legally vote, and he knows very little about politics and does not follow it. He is somewhat distrustful of the government in general, but he did not know if the twenty twenty election was stolen or.

Attorney, matt is not a true believer in any political movement. He cannot legally vote, and he knows very little about politics and does not follow it. He is somewhat distrustful of the government in general, but he did not know if the twenty twenty election was stolen or.

Not, so he claims he was only there that day as something to do a favor for his uncle, and he thought maybe he would be a historic event that he could document through photos and video, and he did. He took quite a bit of video that day, recording himself as he and his uncle made their way down the National Mall after listening to Trump's speech at the Ellipse as the Capitol came into view, Matthew Huddle says, allowed to no one in particular. We're going to see if we can get inside. But moments later he turns to his uncle Dale and says he's not sure they're going to be able to get close because of the police presence. His uncle replies, quote, I think we ought to bum rush the Capitol building arrest them all. We've got enough people to do that, and Matthew agrees they could try to get close. By two pm, they were deep within the mass of rioters at the base of the steps at the west entrance of the Capitol. Police on the steps firing flash bangs and tear gas canisters, trying to keep the crowd at bay. In his video, as described in the court filings, Matthew was surprised by the flashbangs and asks if the cops are shooting a cannon. I didn't manage to dig up the video evidence filed in his case, but based on the description of flashbangs and scattered chants of you say, you say, and it being shortly after two pm, here's my best guess at that exact moment being described, Oh yes, that is my little squeal of surprise at the sound of the flash bangs. I was having a weird afternoon and it was chaotic. At this point, the crowd was starting to press forward and engage with the officers. No longer a mere observer of history, Matthew Huddle joined them. He and his uncle Dale fought their way to the front of the crowd, where rioters were tearing down the bike racks that had been set out in a feeble attempt to keep people off the stairs. As officers struggled to keep the metal bike racks out of the hands of the men who were trying to seize them as weapons, Dale Huddle lunged forward, jabbing his wooden flagpole into an officer's stomach, knocking him off his feet. During the battle on the stairs, Dale is seen in an officer's body worn camera footage screaming at them, saying things like, look back there, there's a million of us. You think you can stop us, and it's going to get real ugly if you don't let us in. Man, it's going to get real U We're coming in. And at some point he turns to his nephew and points up at the Capitol building and he says, we're going in the front door. But Dale Huddle never did make it inside. The men got separated on the steps. The officers who'd been trying to hold them at bay retreated under attack, giving Matthew Huddle an opening to run up the stairs, but Dale stayed behind and kept fighting. Instead of taking his chance to climb the steps and actually go inside, he followed the retreating officers, continuing the attack. Another video shows the old man, red faced with tears streaming from his eyes from pepper spray unloaded by a rioter behind him, and he's charging toward an officer trying to rip his gas mask off, and then he tries to wrench the baton out of another officer's hands. With his uncle preferring to stay behind and fight, Matthew followed the crowd through the now open doors on the upper West Terrace. In his own video, he says we're going in as he crosses the threshold. And for sixteen minutes he just wandered around in there. He didn't hurt anyone, he didn't steal anything, he didn't break anything. He really was just kind of wandering around. It's hard to square the reality of the situation with his behavior. On one hand, you have to assume he knew what he was doing was wrong. He hadn't actually engaged in any of the violence outside, but he knew full well he was only standing inside that building because men like his uncle had fought their way through a police line to clear the path to the stairs. But once he's inside, he's trying to chat up the cops. He sidles up to one officer and casually asks him, has this ever happened to you guys before he briefly joined in with a group of guys just marching around chanting us say, us say. Another rioter asked him if he knew what floor the legislators were on, and, oddly, considering he claimed to know nothing about the situation he'd found himself in that day, he answered confidently the third floor. And then he thought for a moment and turned to a nearby police officer and asked the cop if the legislators had already gone down to the basement, and by that point the Senate chambers had indeed been evacuated through the underground tunnels. And as the group piles into the elevator, leaving Huddle behind, he turns back to his phone, which is still recording, and he narrates into his video, they went up third floor to the offices. He would later tell the FBI that when he told that group of rioters they should head up to the third floor, he was actually trying to divert them away from members of Congress, who he assumed were already being evacuated through the underground tunnels. Either way, though, that is a curious level of insight into the building's floor plans for a man who said he was just somebody else's ride. After getting maced again, the novelty of being inside the building seemed to have been wearing off. Officers were relatively futilely trying to convince people to leave, trying to direct them down a hallway and towards an exit, and Huddle says into his video that he has a bad feeling about that that might be a trap, so he found his way to a different exit. Outside, he found his uncle Dale again, and the two men just hung around outside on the Capitol grounds for a few hours.

Not, so he claims he was only there that day as something to do a favor for his uncle, and he thought maybe he would be a historic event that he could document through photos and video, and he did. He took quite a bit of video that day, recording himself as he and his uncle made their way down the National Mall after listening to Trump's speech at the Ellipse as the Capitol came into view, Matthew Huddle says, allowed to no one in particular. We're going to see if we can get inside. But moments later he turns to his uncle Dale and says he's not sure they're going to be able to get close because of the police presence. His uncle replies, quote, I think we ought to bum rush the Capitol building arrest them all. We've got enough people to do that, and Matthew agrees they could try to get close. By two pm, they were deep within the mass of rioters at the base of the steps at the west entrance of the Capitol. Police on the steps firing flash bangs and tear gas canisters, trying to keep the crowd at bay. In his video, as described in the court filings, Matthew was surprised by the flashbangs and asks if the cops are shooting a cannon. I didn't manage to dig up the video evidence filed in his case, but based on the description of flashbangs and scattered chants of you say, you say, and it being shortly after two pm, here's my best guess at that exact moment being described, Oh yes, that is my little squeal of surprise at the sound of the flash bangs. I was having a weird afternoon and it was chaotic. At this point, the crowd was starting to press forward and engage with the officers. No longer a mere observer of history, Matthew Huddle joined them. He and his uncle Dale fought their way to the front of the crowd, where rioters were tearing down the bike racks that had been set out in a feeble attempt to keep people off the stairs. As officers struggled to keep the metal bike racks out of the hands of the men who were trying to seize them as weapons, Dale Huddle lunged forward, jabbing his wooden flagpole into an officer's stomach, knocking him off his feet. During the battle on the stairs, Dale is seen in an officer's body worn camera footage screaming at them, saying things like, look back there, there's a million of us. You think you can stop us, and it's going to get real ugly if you don't let us in. Man, it's going to get real U We're coming in. And at some point he turns to his nephew and points up at the Capitol building and he says, we're going in the front door. But Dale Huddle never did make it inside. The men got separated on the steps. The officers who'd been trying to hold them at bay retreated under attack, giving Matthew Huddle an opening to run up the stairs, but Dale stayed behind and kept fighting. Instead of taking his chance to climb the steps and actually go inside, he followed the retreating officers, continuing the attack. Another video shows the old man, red faced with tears streaming from his eyes from pepper spray unloaded by a rioter behind him, and he's charging toward an officer trying to rip his gas mask off, and then he tries to wrench the baton out of another officer's hands. With his uncle preferring to stay behind and fight, Matthew followed the crowd through the now open doors on the upper West Terrace. In his own video, he says we're going in as he crosses the threshold. And for sixteen minutes he just wandered around in there. He didn't hurt anyone, he didn't steal anything, he didn't break anything. He really was just kind of wandering around. It's hard to square the reality of the situation with his behavior. On one hand, you have to assume he knew what he was doing was wrong. He hadn't actually engaged in any of the violence outside, but he knew full well he was only standing inside that building because men like his uncle had fought their way through a police line to clear the path to the stairs. But once he's inside, he's trying to chat up the cops. He sidles up to one officer and casually asks him, has this ever happened to you guys before he briefly joined in with a group of guys just marching around chanting us say, us say. Another rioter asked him if he knew what floor the legislators were on, and, oddly, considering he claimed to know nothing about the situation he'd found himself in that day, he answered confidently the third floor. And then he thought for a moment and turned to a nearby police officer and asked the cop if the legislators had already gone down to the basement, and by that point the Senate chambers had indeed been evacuated through the underground tunnels. And as the group piles into the elevator, leaving Huddle behind, he turns back to his phone, which is still recording, and he narrates into his video, they went up third floor to the offices. He would later tell the FBI that when he told that group of rioters they should head up to the third floor, he was actually trying to divert them away from members of Congress, who he assumed were already being evacuated through the underground tunnels. Either way, though, that is a curious level of insight into the building's floor plans for a man who said he was just somebody else's ride. After getting maced again, the novelty of being inside the building seemed to have been wearing off. Officers were relatively futilely trying to convince people to leave, trying to direct them down a hallway and towards an exit, and Huddle says into his video that he has a bad feeling about that that might be a trap, so he found his way to a different exit. Outside, he found his uncle Dale again, and the two men just hung around outside on the Capitol grounds for a few hours.

Went home.

Went home.

In the days after the Huddles returned home to Indiana, the FBI set to work identifying the rioters. Those who assaulted federal officers were understandably a high priority, and the bureau released images of those suspects, each identified by the letters AFO for assault on a Federal Officer and given a unique number. Just three months after the riot, photos of AFO two nine to nine went up on the FBI's website. Over the next few months, more than a dozen tips came in about AFO two nine nine, but none of them were right. It sounds like it was facial recognition that Gotdale Huddle. The charging documents just say that law enforcement databases were used to match the images to his passport photos, and by August, FBI agents were watching Dale Huddle. They surveilled him at his home and his workplace several times in late twenty twenty one. In March of twenty twenty two, they approached his boss, who identified Dale in several photos from the riot and provided records showing he'd taken off work the week of January sixth, twenty twenty one. Both Matthew and Dale Huddle were eventually charged and arrested. In November of twenty twenty two. Dale was picked up in the parking lot on his way into work one morning, and Matthew was for reasons not entirely clear to me arrested in Boise, Idaho, and both men would eventually take plea agreements, just like over one thousand others of the approximately thirteen hundred January sixth defendants who'd been convicted before those blanket pardons. Matthew pled guilty to a scene misdemeanor count of entering and remaining in a restricted building and was sentenced to six months. He finished serving that sentence in July of twenty twenty four. Dale bled guilty to a single felony account of assaulting an officer with a dangerous weapon, specifically for jabbing that officer with his flagpole during the struggle on the stairs. He was sentenced to thirty months in July of twenty twenty four, meaning he was one of about two hundred January sixth defendants who were actually still in federal custody at the time of the pardons. And like I said, almost everyone who is convicted led guilty, actually going to trial in a federal criminal case is pretty rare, a fact we've talked about before in other episodes. It's not really a good system. There is a lot of pressure to take a plea deal, and that may not always be fair. In Dale's case, though, I think the plea was absolutely the right call. A few days after his arrest, after he'd been released on bond, a CBS News reporter from Chicago, knocked on his door in a conversation that lasted more than seven minutes, much to his attorney's dismay. I'm sure the reporter pulled out a printed copy of the criminal complaint. You know, they're saying that this is that, this is you, that you know you have a flag pole and that you're assaulting an officer.

In the days after the Huddles returned home to Indiana, the FBI set to work identifying the rioters. Those who assaulted federal officers were understandably a high priority, and the bureau released images of those suspects, each identified by the letters AFO for assault on a Federal Officer and given a unique number. Just three months after the riot, photos of AFO two nine to nine went up on the FBI's website. Over the next few months, more than a dozen tips came in about AFO two nine nine, but none of them were right. It sounds like it was facial recognition that Gotdale Huddle. The charging documents just say that law enforcement databases were used to match the images to his passport photos, and by August, FBI agents were watching Dale Huddle. They surveilled him at his home and his workplace several times in late twenty twenty one. In March of twenty twenty two, they approached his boss, who identified Dale in several photos from the riot and provided records showing he'd taken off work the week of January sixth, twenty twenty one. Both Matthew and Dale Huddle were eventually charged and arrested. In November of twenty twenty two. Dale was picked up in the parking lot on his way into work one morning, and Matthew was for reasons not entirely clear to me arrested in Boise, Idaho, and both men would eventually take plea agreements, just like over one thousand others of the approximately thirteen hundred January sixth defendants who'd been convicted before those blanket pardons. Matthew pled guilty to a scene misdemeanor count of entering and remaining in a restricted building and was sentenced to six months. He finished serving that sentence in July of twenty twenty four. Dale bled guilty to a single felony account of assaulting an officer with a dangerous weapon, specifically for jabbing that officer with his flagpole during the struggle on the stairs. He was sentenced to thirty months in July of twenty twenty four, meaning he was one of about two hundred January sixth defendants who were actually still in federal custody at the time of the pardons. And like I said, almost everyone who is convicted led guilty, actually going to trial in a federal criminal case is pretty rare, a fact we've talked about before in other episodes. It's not really a good system. There is a lot of pressure to take a plea deal, and that may not always be fair. In Dale's case, though, I think the plea was absolutely the right call. A few days after his arrest, after he'd been released on bond, a CBS News reporter from Chicago, knocked on his door in a conversation that lasted more than seven minutes, much to his attorney's dismay. I'm sure the reporter pulled out a printed copy of the criminal complaint. You know, they're saying that this is that, this is you, that you know you have a flag pole and that you're assaulting an officer.

Well, you know they were trying to take the pole from me, the flag from me. As you can see, they're bent over backwards trying to get the pole away. That's what looks like an attack. It was not that thought. Okay. So you're saying in court you'd like to see video. Absolutely, I will see testimony and body camps as well. But you you agree this is you? Absolutely, Okay. I'm not ashamed of being there. It was our duty as patriots.

Well, you know they were trying to take the pole from me, the flag from me. As you can see, they're bent over backwards trying to get the pole away. That's what looks like an attack. It was not that thought. Okay. So you're saying in court you'd like to see video. Absolutely, I will see testimony and body camps as well. But you you agree this is you? Absolutely, Okay. I'm not ashamed of being there. It was our duty as patriots.

First of all, never admit to a crime on camera, even if you don't think you're guilty of it. Don't say you did it, don't talk to the reporter. And second of all, I'm not sure they were trying to take my flag is a great defense given the context here. Even if this picture did show an officer trying to take Dale's flagpole away from him, it's not like he was taking candy from a baby. Dale Huddle was not the only man out there that day using his American flag as a deeply ironic weapon. A link the criminal complaint in the show notes, and you can see the picture they're talking about on the second page. The officer is leaning back, almost as if he could be engaging in a sort of tug of war over the flagpole. But Dale's right about one thing. Pictures can be deceiving. The officer isn't leaning back, he's falling down because an old man poked him hard on the torso with a big stick. And while Matthew's lawyers had argued that their client had no real opinion on the twenty twenty election one way or the other, that he simply found himself there, Dale's lawyers did have to concede that he was a true believer in that on camera interview right after his arrest, he told the reporter that he still believed the election had been stolen, and he believed he'd been following a lawful order from his president.

First of all, never admit to a crime on camera, even if you don't think you're guilty of it. Don't say you did it, don't talk to the reporter. And second of all, I'm not sure they were trying to take my flag is a great defense given the context here. Even if this picture did show an officer trying to take Dale's flagpole away from him, it's not like he was taking candy from a baby. Dale Huddle was not the only man out there that day using his American flag as a deeply ironic weapon. A link the criminal complaint in the show notes, and you can see the picture they're talking about on the second page. The officer is leaning back, almost as if he could be engaging in a sort of tug of war over the flagpole. But Dale's right about one thing. Pictures can be deceiving. The officer isn't leaning back, he's falling down because an old man poked him hard on the torso with a big stick. And while Matthew's lawyers had argued that their client had no real opinion on the twenty twenty election one way or the other, that he simply found himself there, Dale's lawyers did have to concede that he was a true believer in that on camera interview right after his arrest, he told the reporter that he still believed the election had been stolen, and he believed he'd been following a lawful order from his president.

And do you believe that Trump invited you there and that he wanted you to overthrow, invite us to go down there? Issues seen out film, let your voices be heard? Okay, But do you think he encouraged violence? Well, I just sat there or stood there with half a million people listening to a speech. And in that speech, both Juliani and hisself said we were going to have to fight like hell to save our country. Okay. Now, rather it was a figure of speech or not, it wasn't taken that way, right, You didn't take it as a figure of speech.

And do you believe that Trump invited you there and that he wanted you to overthrow, invite us to go down there? Issues seen out film, let your voices be heard? Okay, But do you think he encouraged violence? Well, I just sat there or stood there with half a million people listening to a speech. And in that speech, both Juliani and hisself said we were going to have to fight like hell to save our country. Okay. Now, rather it was a figure of speech or not, it wasn't taken that way, right, You didn't take it as a figure of speech.

No, So they couldn't really say that he didn't mean it, and instead they argued that he'd been tricked. He was seventy years old in twenty twenty one. He was a blue collar worker who didn't even own a computer. From the defense sentencing memo, he is.

No, So they couldn't really say that he didn't mean it, and instead they argued that he'd been tricked. He was seventy years old in twenty twenty one. He was a blue collar worker who didn't even own a computer. From the defense sentencing memo, he is.

Not knowledgeable about the Internet. He was not aware that Facebook and other social media platforms use machine learning algorithms to individualize ads and to dictate content based on previous cliques. Mister Huddle believed that the news he was reading was covering the general scope of mainstream media, and that it was a representation of current events from his viewpoint. The vast majority of the media agreed that the democratic process had been undermined by fraud.

Not knowledgeable about the Internet. He was not aware that Facebook and other social media platforms use machine learning algorithms to individualize ads and to dictate content based on previous cliques. Mister Huddle believed that the news he was reading was covering the general scope of mainstream media, and that it was a representation of current events from his viewpoint. The vast majority of the media agreed that the democratic process had been undermined by fraud.

And I don't doubt that he and many men just like him have absolutely rotted their brains on Facebook, clickbait right wing news. I have no trouble believing that he was trapped in a cycle of seeing nothing but memes where a minion in a maga hat is spreading election misinformation or links to stories on sites called patriot windnews dot biz with headlines like deep state destroyed, new election lawsuit, bombshell rocks DC swamp. I have a separate email account where I get one hundred emails that look like that every single day. I know exactly what his Facebook feed looked like, so that part's probably true. But I wish that the government, with their vast investigative resources, had dug into a curious incident in Dale's past, because I don't think this was the first time that dale Huddle got worked up about the need to go to war with the government. Now, to be clear, dale Huddle had no criminal history. That's true. The government didn't miss something that egregious and I'm even willing to believe the Defense memo is being truthful when they say that at seventy years old, Dale wasn't a member of any extremist groups. But I found a picture, a single photograph taken on November fourteenth, two thousand, and if I had the kinds of resources that the government has, I would have tried to find out more about this picture. It's just one picture in the newspaper, snapped by an Associated Press photographer, and it's a picture of Dale Huddle with a flag. Unlike the photo of Dale using an American flag as a that on January sixth, this photo shows a slightly younger Dale Huddle and he's trying to figure out how to affix his Gadsden flag, you know, the one with the snake that doesn't want to be stepped on, and he's trying to affix it to the window of a church. November fourteenth, two thousand, was the first day of a ninety two day standoff with US marshals at the Indianapolis Baptist Temple. After years of litigation, a federal judge had finally given the order for the church to vacate the premises for seventeen years, the Indianapolis Baptist Temple under Pastor Greg Dixon, had not been paying its taxes. You're probably saying, wait, I thought churches were tax exempt, and they are. That's true. Churches are generally speaking automatically exempt from federal income tax, but if they have paid employees, they still have to withhold and remit employment tax. And the Indianapolis Baptist Temple had been refusing to do that since nineteen eighty four, and so by the year two thousand they owed the irs over six million dollars. And this was an intentional, deliberate act. They didn't forget that they had to do payroll tax. They didn't make a mistake. The church had originally been incorporated in nineteen fifty and for almost thirty four years the church had a valid employer identification number. They filed paperwork with the state to keep their corporate entity in good standing. They paid employment taxes to the federal government. And then in nineteen eighty three, Greg Dixon, who'd been the pastor at the church since nineteen fifty five, changed his mind. He transferred all of the church's assets into an unincorporated religious society and then he changed the corporation's name, which had previous been Indianapolis Baptist Temple. He changed it to Not a Church Incorporated, and so the church itself no longer exists on paper at all. And Dixon is using this not a Church corporate entity to run a group called the American Coalition for Unregistered Churches. It would later be known as the Unregistered Baptist Fellowship. Greg Dixon believed that doing business with the federal government was against his religion. Having to do things like tell the irs that your church would like to be recognized as a five oh one C three tax exempt entity or filing paperwork with the state actually contravenes the authority of Christ and if you make him do it, you're violating his religious liberty. The unregistered Church movement wasn't just refusing to pay their taxes. They wanted to avoid almost any contact with the government. Churches shouldn't have to abide by bill codes or zoning laws, or get fire inspections. Babies shouldn't have birth certificates. A wedding shouldn't involve a marriage license. In fact, no one should have any kind of license. Many of the articles I found about this movement make sure to add that they do believe that they can use the United States Postal Service, but it is a sin to use zip codes. The almost complete overlap of guys who don't want to pay their taxes and guys who are willing to take up arms against the government is something I'll surely explore in depth in an episode dedicated to some character in the tax protest or movement, But the reason for it is probably pretty obvious, and Pastor Greg Dixon wasn't just refusing to pay his taxes. He wanted war. In nineteen ninety two, Greg Dixon gave a speech at an event nicknamed the Rocky Mountain Rendezvous after the siege at Ruby Ridge. A Christian identity preacher in Colorado put out the call the disparate elements of the radical right needed to put their heads together and come up with a strategy. Klansmen, Neo Nazis, anti Semitic pastors, militia leaders, Neo Confederates, tax protesters, bigots, and anti government extremists of all stripes convened in Colorado, and all the big names were there. Willie Muther Peers from National Alliance, Richard Butler from Arian Nations, Louis Beam, Kirk Lyons, James Wickstrom. As Kathleen Blue wrote in her book Bring the War Home, the militia movement as we know it today emerged from the leaders, organizations, and tactics of white power organization. And this meeting is widely regarded as the birthplace of the modern American militia movement. And so at the Rocky Mountain Rendezvous, just before Louis Beam's beach about leaderless resistance, pastor Greg Dixon took the stage to call for the establishment of Christian militias, declaring we are at war. And Greg Dixon was hardly new to organized racism. In the nineteen seventies, his church had hosted meetings of a group called Americans for America, a KKK affiliated organization that opposed school integration. Indiana's Grand Dragon Bill Cheney was a member of the congregation, but in the early nineties he was at the bleeding edge of a new frontier in white power. All that to say, this old picture of Dale Huddle outside of a church might sound terribly innocuous. Maybe that's his church, and maybe he didn't know why his pastor wasn't paying his taxes. But it was not. Dale Huddle isn't even Baptist. He grew up Lutheran, but has been a member of a non denominational megachurch called the Family Christian Center since nineteen eighty eight, ever since his mother died.

And I don't doubt that he and many men just like him have absolutely rotted their brains on Facebook, clickbait right wing news. I have no trouble believing that he was trapped in a cycle of seeing nothing but memes where a minion in a maga hat is spreading election misinformation or links to stories on sites called patriot windnews dot biz with headlines like deep state destroyed, new election lawsuit, bombshell rocks DC swamp. I have a separate email account where I get one hundred emails that look like that every single day. I know exactly what his Facebook feed looked like, so that part's probably true. But I wish that the government, with their vast investigative resources, had dug into a curious incident in Dale's past, because I don't think this was the first time that dale Huddle got worked up about the need to go to war with the government. Now, to be clear, dale Huddle had no criminal history. That's true. The government didn't miss something that egregious and I'm even willing to believe the Defense memo is being truthful when they say that at seventy years old, Dale wasn't a member of any extremist groups. But I found a picture, a single photograph taken on November fourteenth, two thousand, and if I had the kinds of resources that the government has, I would have tried to find out more about this picture. It's just one picture in the newspaper, snapped by an Associated Press photographer, and it's a picture of Dale Huddle with a flag. Unlike the photo of Dale using an American flag as a that on January sixth, this photo shows a slightly younger Dale Huddle and he's trying to figure out how to affix his Gadsden flag, you know, the one with the snake that doesn't want to be stepped on, and he's trying to affix it to the window of a church. November fourteenth, two thousand, was the first day of a ninety two day standoff with US marshals at the Indianapolis Baptist Temple. After years of litigation, a federal judge had finally given the order for the church to vacate the premises for seventeen years, the Indianapolis Baptist Temple under Pastor Greg Dixon, had not been paying its taxes. You're probably saying, wait, I thought churches were tax exempt, and they are. That's true. Churches are generally speaking automatically exempt from federal income tax, but if they have paid employees, they still have to withhold and remit employment tax. And the Indianapolis Baptist Temple had been refusing to do that since nineteen eighty four, and so by the year two thousand they owed the irs over six million dollars. And this was an intentional, deliberate act. They didn't forget that they had to do payroll tax. They didn't make a mistake. The church had originally been incorporated in nineteen fifty and for almost thirty four years the church had a valid employer identification number. They filed paperwork with the state to keep their corporate entity in good standing. They paid employment taxes to the federal government. And then in nineteen eighty three, Greg Dixon, who'd been the pastor at the church since nineteen fifty five, changed his mind. He transferred all of the church's assets into an unincorporated religious society and then he changed the corporation's name, which had previous been Indianapolis Baptist Temple. He changed it to Not a Church Incorporated, and so the church itself no longer exists on paper at all. And Dixon is using this not a Church corporate entity to run a group called the American Coalition for Unregistered Churches. It would later be known as the Unregistered Baptist Fellowship. Greg Dixon believed that doing business with the federal government was against his religion. Having to do things like tell the irs that your church would like to be recognized as a five oh one C three tax exempt entity or filing paperwork with the state actually contravenes the authority of Christ and if you make him do it, you're violating his religious liberty. The unregistered Church movement wasn't just refusing to pay their taxes. They wanted to avoid almost any contact with the government. Churches shouldn't have to abide by bill codes or zoning laws, or get fire inspections. Babies shouldn't have birth certificates. A wedding shouldn't involve a marriage license. In fact, no one should have any kind of license. Many of the articles I found about this movement make sure to add that they do believe that they can use the United States Postal Service, but it is a sin to use zip codes. The almost complete overlap of guys who don't want to pay their taxes and guys who are willing to take up arms against the government is something I'll surely explore in depth in an episode dedicated to some character in the tax protest or movement, But the reason for it is probably pretty obvious, and Pastor Greg Dixon wasn't just refusing to pay his taxes. He wanted war. In nineteen ninety two, Greg Dixon gave a speech at an event nicknamed the Rocky Mountain Rendezvous after the siege at Ruby Ridge. A Christian identity preacher in Colorado put out the call the disparate elements of the radical right needed to put their heads together and come up with a strategy. Klansmen, Neo Nazis, anti Semitic pastors, militia leaders, Neo Confederates, tax protesters, bigots, and anti government extremists of all stripes convened in Colorado, and all the big names were there. Willie Muther Peers from National Alliance, Richard Butler from Arian Nations, Louis Beam, Kirk Lyons, James Wickstrom. As Kathleen Blue wrote in her book Bring the War Home, the militia movement as we know it today emerged from the leaders, organizations, and tactics of white power organization. And this meeting is widely regarded as the birthplace of the modern American militia movement. And so at the Rocky Mountain Rendezvous, just before Louis Beam's beach about leaderless resistance, pastor Greg Dixon took the stage to call for the establishment of Christian militias, declaring we are at war. And Greg Dixon was hardly new to organized racism. In the nineteen seventies, his church had hosted meetings of a group called Americans for America, a KKK affiliated organization that opposed school integration. Indiana's Grand Dragon Bill Cheney was a member of the congregation, but in the early nineties he was at the bleeding edge of a new frontier in white power. All that to say, this old picture of Dale Huddle outside of a church might sound terribly innocuous. Maybe that's his church, and maybe he didn't know why his pastor wasn't paying his taxes. But it was not. Dale Huddle isn't even Baptist. He grew up Lutheran, but has been a member of a non denominational megachurch called the Family Christian Center since nineteen eighty eight, ever since his mother died.

No.

No.

Dale Huddle had no direct connection to this church that I can find, but a call had been put out. In September of two thousand. After years in court, a judge gave the order they had until noon on November fourteenth to get out of the building. The government was taking possession of the property, and US Marshals were authorized to use force if necessary. Michigan Militia leader Norman Olsen ordered militias around the country to do their duty and defend the church, telling his followers that this was going to be Waco Part two. Charlie Puckett of the Kentucky Militia was there on November fourteenth. As congregants waited for the US marshals to arrive and with news crews rolling in the parking lot, Pastor Dixon asked the contingent of klansmen who showed up to s for him to maybe stay outside the church, but he didn't ask them to leave or disavow their support. And that's when this photo was taken on November fourteenth, two thousand, parking lot full of klansmen militia men standing by, and Dale Huddle is outside the Indianapolis Baptist Temple trying to figure out how to hang a Gadsden flag on the windows. He'd driven two hours from his home in Crown Point and there was no Facebook in two thousand. He didn't see a meme that convinced him to go to Indianapolis. There's no indication that he was a member of any of the militia or clan groups that were there that day, but it does seem quite possible that he got the same message they did about showing up for Waco Part two, and just so this threat isn't left hanging, the big crowd that showed up on day one of the standoff got board and went home. US marshals obviously did not want Waco Part two, so they just kept their distance and waited them out. It took three months, but in February of two thousand and one they did seize the building. No one was injured, but Greg Dixon was carried out on a stretcher because he refused to walk. So that's a rather lengthy aside just to contextualize a single twenty five year old photograph that doesn't prove anything at all, But it left me wondering if the US Marshals had taken a heavier handed approach at the Indianapolis Baptist Temple, would I be looking at two photos twenty years apart of Dale Huddle trying to skewer a cop with a flagpole. His lawyers argued that he was just a confused old man who didn't know how to use the internet, and he got tricked into believing he needed to go to DC to stop the steal. But the possibility that twenty years earlier, some militia newsletter tricked him into thinking he needed to stop a different theft, that of church property by the irs, really changes the story for me. Back in twenty twenty one, though, after the riote of the Capitol, Matthew Huddle was just living his life as usual. Matthew Huddle's life as usual involved getting charged three separate times between July and November for driving with a suspended license as a habitual offender whose driving privileges had been revoked after repeated to UIs each new offense of this kind was a felony. In August of that year, his son's mother died of a drug overdose. He filed for bankruptcy that same week, and filing show he owed more than thirteen thousand dollars in child support to a different woman, the mother of his daughter. Neither of those children were in Matthew's custody after his conviction. In his January sixth case, his lawyers wrote that he had a quote great relationship with his son. I hope that's true, and even if it's not, my heart breaks for a teenage boy who lost his mother to an overdose in twenty twenty one, he saw his father go to prison in twenty twenty three, and then he lost his father entirely just last month. But great is the only word used there to describe a relationship that I suspect may have been more complicated than that. In two thousand and nine, Matthew Huddle flew into a rage after his son, who was just three years old at the time, had what court records describe as a bathroom accident. It's a very normal thing for a three year old to do at that age. You're still sending a change of pants with them to school just in case. What's not normal, though, is beating a toddler so severely that he can't sit down for a week, and the court records call it a spanking. But nothing I could find offered me any kind of explanation for how a spanking could leave bruises on a child's neck. After Huddle died last week, several of the articles I read about his death quoted an attorney who had been representing him in his dui cases for nearly twenty years, and his lawyer says that the man he'd known was not violent. I don't know what else you call this, I guess in that lawyer's defense, it does look like he'd hired a different attorney when he was charged with beating his son and his son's mother. After Matthew Huddle blood guilty in twenty twenty three to that single misdemeanor charge of entering and remaining in a restricted building on January sixth, his lawyers asked for a sentence of probation with no jail time. They cited his lack of ideological motivation for being there, his need to be there for his children and his tragic backstory and struggle with alcoholism. And there is a strange and tragic backstory here, but they don't actually get into it in this court filing. This part I pieced together from state court records, old newspapers, and Facebook posts. After serving his sentence for beating his son, he was released from jail in twenty thirteen, and he very quickly took up with a new girlfriend. Based on the apparent age of a photo of their daughter that he posted online in twenty fifteen, she had to have been pregnant with Huddle's child before she ended her marriage to another man. I have said this before, comes up often oddly, but I don't care about that. Her infidelity is between her, her husband, and her boyfriend. I only mention it because of a curious coincidence of dates. The same week her divorce was finalized, someone shot Matthew Huddle. There's a single mention in the local newspaper in February twenty fifteen, just a few days after his daughter's mother finalized her divorce, that Huddle had been shot in what was only described as quote an incident between family members, and The article quotes an officer who says that no one was taken into custody at this time, and he wouldn't say how the shooter was related to the victim. I couldn't find any court records that indicated the charges were ever filed against anyone, but I could only check the names I thought of his suspects. So it's a bit of a needle in a haystack whoever it was. Though someone close to him shot Matthew in the back of the knee and left him with a lifelong injury, and three years later, in twenty eighteen, he was asleep in his bed when he woke up to two men beating him with baseball bats and hammers. The local newspaper reported the attack was motivated by a child custody dispute. One of the assailants, Kurt Falkenberg, was in a relationship with the mother of Huddle's son. The other man was Falkenberg's uncle, Jeffrey Martin, though the two men were only a few years apart in age, and the men focused their blows on Huddle's left leg because they knew he had a metal rod in there from the surgeries he'd gotten after getting shot in the leg in his last domestic dispute. Much like the story of Matthew and Dale Huddle, this story of a very stupid crime committed by an uncle and a nephew ends tragically. As Falkenberg and Martin fled the scene, they crashed. Falkenberg, who had been driving, was pronounced dead at the scene. Officers responding to the car accident, which put another driver in the hospital with two broken legs, found an open bottle of whiskey in Falkenburg's car, and they eventually found Jeffrey Martin passed out drunk in a creek bed on the side of the road. The following year, in twenty nineteen, Matthew Huddle was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver. Twenty years of alcoholism had finally caught up to him. The dui he got that summer was the one that put him back in jail until shortly before he drove to Washington, d c. In January of twenty twenty one. Now I've read a lot of sentencing memos. That's the document filed at the end of a case after a guilty plea or a guilty verdict, where each side makes their case one last time. Not about guilt or innocence. Now that's settled, but about what they think the punishment should be. And we have an adversarial court system. Everyone is technically ethically bound to be honest, and the purpose of the courts is supposed to be to seek the truth, but really everyone is there to win, to have their version of the truth ruled to be the most true. So I'm really used to seeing a defense attorney's sob story and a prosecutor's exaggeration. But I wonder maybe if Matthew Huddle's lawyers really were telling a mostly true story. He didn't vote, he couldn't. His family doesn't seem very political. No one in his family has ever donated so much as a dollar to any federal election. And he did have a long history of making spectacularly bad decisions and finding himself in some really outlandishly bad situation. I mean, he got his legs broken in two unrelated domestic disputes. That doesn't even sound possible. So maybe Matthew Huddle is the only January sixth defendant who really did end up there by accident with no ideological motivation or violent intent. Plenty of them claimed that in court, and it never really rings true. But maybe for Matthew Huddle, wandering into the Capitol that day was just the same kind of criminal accident he was often finding himself in, like driving away without paying for a tank of gas because he was too drunk to figure out how to operate the payment system, but somehow not too drunk to drive. When I first saw the news that had recently pardoned January sixth defendant had been shot and killed while resisting arrest during a traffic stop, I can't say that I was surprised, but I was wrong in my initial assumption. I figured a guy who found himself on that trajectory would be I don't know, as sovereign citizen or a guy who'd done real violence at the Capitol, a guy who had violent plans for the future. Surely those two facts about his life being at the Capitol that day and dying the way that he did. Surely those two facts would be directly related. But I'm not sure they are. It's unwise to speculate about the altercation that may have occurred in the minutes before Huddle was shot and killed by a Jasper County Sheriff's deputy. I don't know what happened there on the side of Indiana State Road fourteen. We don't know what was said, or why things escalated, or where exactly the deputy saw the gun, but I do know that Matthew Huddle was due back in court next week for a status conference on a stack of still unresolved felony cases for driving without a license, just days after getting his federal pardon. He was probably happy for his uncle Dale, but he'd already done his federal time, and now he was looking down the barrel at another stay in the county jail, and when those blue lights came on behind him, he probably knew that this would be yet another felony charge. He had a long list of state charges. A federal pardon did nothing for him. In the end. It didn't matter who the president was. But I guess it never really did matter to Matthew. Weird Little Guys is a production of Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio. It's research, written, and recorded by me Willy Conger. Our executive producers are Sophie Littterman and Robert Evans. The show is edited by the wildly talented Rory Gagan. The theme music was composed by Brad Dickert. You can email me at Rubuguy's podcast at gmail dot com. I will definitely read it, but I'm not going to answer it. It's nothing personal. You can exchange conspiracy theories about the show. We have the listeners on the Weird Little Guy subreddit. Just don't post anything that's going to make you one of my weird Little Guys.

Dale Huddle had no direct connection to this church that I can find, but a call had been put out. In September of two thousand. After years in court, a judge gave the order they had until noon on November fourteenth to get out of the building. The government was taking possession of the property, and US Marshals were authorized to use force if necessary. Michigan Militia leader Norman Olsen ordered militias around the country to do their duty and defend the church, telling his followers that this was going to be Waco Part two. Charlie Puckett of the Kentucky Militia was there on November fourteenth. As congregants waited for the US marshals to arrive and with news crews rolling in the parking lot, Pastor Dixon asked the contingent of klansmen who showed up to s for him to maybe stay outside the church, but he didn't ask them to leave or disavow their support. And that's when this photo was taken on November fourteenth, two thousand, parking lot full of klansmen militia men standing by, and Dale Huddle is outside the Indianapolis Baptist Temple trying to figure out how to hang a Gadsden flag on the windows. He'd driven two hours from his home in Crown Point and there was no Facebook in two thousand. He didn't see a meme that convinced him to go to Indianapolis. There's no indication that he was a member of any of the militia or clan groups that were there that day, but it does seem quite possible that he got the same message they did about showing up for Waco Part two, and just so this threat isn't left hanging, the big crowd that showed up on day one of the standoff got board and went home. US marshals obviously did not want Waco Part two, so they just kept their distance and waited them out. It took three months, but in February of two thousand and one they did seize the building. No one was injured, but Greg Dixon was carried out on a stretcher because he refused to walk. So that's a rather lengthy aside just to contextualize a single twenty five year old photograph that doesn't prove anything at all, But it left me wondering if the US Marshals had taken a heavier handed approach at the Indianapolis Baptist Temple, would I be looking at two photos twenty years apart of Dale Huddle trying to skewer a cop with a flagpole. His lawyers argued that he was just a confused old man who didn't know how to use the internet, and he got tricked into believing he needed to go to DC to stop the steal. But the possibility that twenty years earlier, some militia newsletter tricked him into thinking he needed to stop a different theft, that of church property by the irs, really changes the story for me. Back in twenty twenty one, though, after the riote of the Capitol, Matthew Huddle was just living his life as usual. Matthew Huddle's life as usual involved getting charged three separate times between July and November for driving with a suspended license as a habitual offender whose driving privileges had been revoked after repeated to UIs each new offense of this kind was a felony. In August of that year, his son's mother died of a drug overdose. He filed for bankruptcy that same week, and filing show he owed more than thirteen thousand dollars in child support to a different woman, the mother of his daughter. Neither of those children were in Matthew's custody after his conviction. In his January sixth case, his lawyers wrote that he had a quote great relationship with his son. I hope that's true, and even if it's not, my heart breaks for a teenage boy who lost his mother to an overdose in twenty twenty one, he saw his father go to prison in twenty twenty three, and then he lost his father entirely just last month. But great is the only word used there to describe a relationship that I suspect may have been more complicated than that. In two thousand and nine, Matthew Huddle flew into a rage after his son, who was just three years old at the time, had what court records describe as a bathroom accident. It's a very normal thing for a three year old to do at that age. You're still sending a change of pants with them to school just in case. What's not normal, though, is beating a toddler so severely that he can't sit down for a week, and the court records call it a spanking. But nothing I could find offered me any kind of explanation for how a spanking could leave bruises on a child's neck. After Huddle died last week, several of the articles I read about his death quoted an attorney who had been representing him in his dui cases for nearly twenty years, and his lawyer says that the man he'd known was not violent. I don't know what else you call this, I guess in that lawyer's defense, it does look like he'd hired a different attorney when he was charged with beating his son and his son's mother. After Matthew Huddle blood guilty in twenty twenty three to that single misdemeanor charge of entering and remaining in a restricted building on January sixth, his lawyers asked for a sentence of probation with no jail time. They cited his lack of ideological motivation for being there, his need to be there for his children and his tragic backstory and struggle with alcoholism. And there is a strange and tragic backstory here, but they don't actually get into it in this court filing. This part I pieced together from state court records, old newspapers, and Facebook posts. After serving his sentence for beating his son, he was released from jail in twenty thirteen, and he very quickly took up with a new girlfriend. Based on the apparent age of a photo of their daughter that he posted online in twenty fifteen, she had to have been pregnant with Huddle's child before she ended her marriage to another man. I have said this before, comes up often oddly, but I don't care about that. Her infidelity is between her, her husband, and her boyfriend. I only mention it because of a curious coincidence of dates. The same week her divorce was finalized, someone shot Matthew Huddle. There's a single mention in the local newspaper in February twenty fifteen, just a few days after his daughter's mother finalized her divorce, that Huddle had been shot in what was only described as quote an incident between family members, and The article quotes an officer who says that no one was taken into custody at this time, and he wouldn't say how the shooter was related to the victim. I couldn't find any court records that indicated the charges were ever filed against anyone, but I could only check the names I thought of his suspects. So it's a bit of a needle in a haystack whoever it was. Though someone close to him shot Matthew in the back of the knee and left him with a lifelong injury, and three years later, in twenty eighteen, he was asleep in his bed when he woke up to two men beating him with baseball bats and hammers. The local newspaper reported the attack was motivated by a child custody dispute. One of the assailants, Kurt Falkenberg, was in a relationship with the mother of Huddle's son. The other man was Falkenberg's uncle, Jeffrey Martin, though the two men were only a few years apart in age, and the men focused their blows on Huddle's left leg because they knew he had a metal rod in there from the surgeries he'd gotten after getting shot in the leg in his last domestic dispute. Much like the story of Matthew and Dale Huddle, this story of a very stupid crime committed by an uncle and a nephew ends tragically. As Falkenberg and Martin fled the scene, they crashed. Falkenberg, who had been driving, was pronounced dead at the scene. Officers responding to the car accident, which put another driver in the hospital with two broken legs, found an open bottle of whiskey in Falkenburg's car, and they eventually found Jeffrey Martin passed out drunk in a creek bed on the side of the road. The following year, in twenty nineteen, Matthew Huddle was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver. Twenty years of alcoholism had finally caught up to him. The dui he got that summer was the one that put him back in jail until shortly before he drove to Washington, d c. In January of twenty twenty one. Now I've read a lot of sentencing memos. That's the document filed at the end of a case after a guilty plea or a guilty verdict, where each side makes their case one last time. Not about guilt or innocence. Now that's settled, but about what they think the punishment should be. And we have an adversarial court system. Everyone is technically ethically bound to be honest, and the purpose of the courts is supposed to be to seek the truth, but really everyone is there to win, to have their version of the truth ruled to be the most true. So I'm really used to seeing a defense attorney's sob story and a prosecutor's exaggeration. But I wonder maybe if Matthew Huddle's lawyers really were telling a mostly true story. He didn't vote, he couldn't. His family doesn't seem very political. No one in his family has ever donated so much as a dollar to any federal election. And he did have a long history of making spectacularly bad decisions and finding himself in some really outlandishly bad situation. I mean, he got his legs broken in two unrelated domestic disputes. That doesn't even sound possible. So maybe Matthew Huddle is the only January sixth defendant who really did end up there by accident with no ideological motivation or violent intent. Plenty of them claimed that in court, and it never really rings true. But maybe for Matthew Huddle, wandering into the Capitol that day was just the same kind of criminal accident he was often finding himself in, like driving away without paying for a tank of gas because he was too drunk to figure out how to operate the payment system, but somehow not too drunk to drive. When I first saw the news that had recently pardoned January sixth defendant had been shot and killed while resisting arrest during a traffic stop, I can't say that I was surprised, but I was wrong in my initial assumption. I figured a guy who found himself on that trajectory would be I don't know, as sovereign citizen or a guy who'd done real violence at the Capitol, a guy who had violent plans for the future. Surely those two facts about his life being at the Capitol that day and dying the way that he did. Surely those two facts would be directly related. But I'm not sure they are. It's unwise to speculate about the altercation that may have occurred in the minutes before Huddle was shot and killed by a Jasper County Sheriff's deputy. I don't know what happened there on the side of Indiana State Road fourteen. We don't know what was said, or why things escalated, or where exactly the deputy saw the gun, but I do know that Matthew Huddle was due back in court next week for a status conference on a stack of still unresolved felony cases for driving without a license, just days after getting his federal pardon. He was probably happy for his uncle Dale, but he'd already done his federal time, and now he was looking down the barrel at another stay in the county jail, and when those blue lights came on behind him, he probably knew that this would be yet another felony charge. He had a long list of state charges. A federal pardon did nothing for him. In the end. It didn't matter who the president was. But I guess it never really did matter to Matthew. Weird Little Guys is a production of Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio. It's research, written, and recorded by me Willy Conger. Our executive producers are Sophie Littterman and Robert Evans. The show is edited by the wildly talented Rory Gagan. The theme music was composed by Brad Dickert. You can email me at Rubuguy's podcast at gmail dot com. I will definitely read it, but I'm not going to answer it. It's nothing personal. You can exchange conspiracy theories about the show. We have the listeners on the Weird Little Guy subreddit. Just don't post anything that's going to make you one of my weird Little Guys.