Speaker 1: Col Zone Media on January twenty sixth, twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: Matthew Huddle died. That much we know for certain. Usually
Speaker 1: I tell you a story that's old enough that the
Speaker 1: ink is not only dry, but it's begun to fade
Speaker 1: a little. The reports are in, the motions have been filed,
Speaker 1: argued and ruled on. The official story is set in stone.
Speaker 1: That's not the case today. As I'm writing this. There
Speaker 1: are still questions left unanswered. There is a state police
Speaker 1: investigation into an officer involved shooting still underway. But Matthew
Speaker 1: Huddle is dead. That much we know. Just days before
Speaker 1: he died, he'd gotten some long awaited good news. His
Speaker 1: uncle Dale was coming home. Both men were among the
Speaker 1: nearly sixteen hundred people pardoned by Donald Trump in one
Speaker 1: of his first actions after being sworn in his president.
Speaker 1: Matthew had already served his six month sentence, but when
Speaker 1: the pardons came through, Dale Huddle was just a few
Speaker 1: months in to a two and a half year term
Speaker 1: at a prison in Illinois. On the afternoon that he died,
Speaker 1: Matthew Huddle was driving somewhere in Jasper County, Indiana. I
Speaker 1: don't know where he was going, but I do know
Speaker 1: he wasn't supposed to be driving, and according to the
Speaker 1: Jasper County Sheriff, he was speeding. I can only assume
Speaker 1: that the altercation that allegedly ensued began after the sheriff's
Speaker 1: deputy discovered that Huddle did not have a valid driver's license.
Speaker 1: The deputy claims Huddle resisted when he tried to place
Speaker 1: him under arrest, and it was during this altercation that
Speaker 1: the sheriff says the deputy discovered that Huddle was in
Speaker 1: possession of a firearm, which he was not legally allowed
Speaker 1: to have, the final moments of Matthew Huddle's life will
Speaker 1: eventually be settled in some sort of official report. Maybe
Speaker 1: they'll release the deputy's body worn camera footage. Maybe his
Speaker 1: family will file a lawsuit. The final page hasn't been
Speaker 1: written yet. I don't have the answers. All I have
Speaker 1: is a sad story, but a man who believed in
Speaker 1: nothing and died on the side of Indiana State Road fourteenth.
Speaker 1: I'm Molly Conger in This is Weird, Little Guys. At
Speaker 1: noon on January sixth, twenty twenty one, President Donald Trump
Speaker 1: took the stage at the Ellipse, a generally unremarkable patch
Speaker 1: of grass between the White House and the Washington Monument.
Speaker 1: More than fifty thousand of his supporters had been standing
Speaker 1: out in the cold all morning waiting to hear from him.
Speaker 1: For months, he'd stoked the fires of a growing conspiracy
Speaker 1: the election had been stolen. He gave speeches, held rallies,
Speaker 1: fired off late night tweets, and filed lawsuits for those
Speaker 1: who wanted to believe. There seemed to be mountains of
Speaker 1: evidence of a deep and systemic rot. But the lawsuits
Speaker 1: were failing, the votes were counted, and time was running out.
Speaker 1: Today was the day that Congress would have the final
Speaker 1: say in the twenty twenty election, and less than two
Speaker 1: miles away, legislators were taking their seats in the Capitol
Speaker 1: Building to certify the election. The crowd at the Ellipse
Speaker 1: had come from all over the country to be a
Speaker 1: part of history, and as their president spoke, many of
Speaker 1: them heard the permission they'd been waiting for.
Speaker 2: And we fight, We fight like hell.
Speaker 3: And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going
Speaker 3: to have country anymore.
Speaker 1: This profound corruption would have to be excised by force
Speaker 1: before this grave injustice could be done. He'd all but
Speaker 1: confirm that for them, And then, in the final seconds
Speaker 1: of his speech, before he was played off the stage
Speaker 1: by his favorite song, The Village People's Gay Anthem YMCA,
Speaker 1: he gave the crowd their marching orders.
Speaker 3: So let's walk down Pennsylvania Avenue.
Speaker 2: I want to thank you all.
Speaker 3: God bless you, and God bless America.
Speaker 2: Thank you all for being here. This is incredible. Thank
Speaker 2: you very much.
Speaker 1: Some in that crowd, perhaps anticipating the instructions he would
Speaker 1: give at the end of his hour long speech, never
Speaker 1: even heard him say that line. They'd already started walking
Speaker 1: the mile and a half to their final destination that day,
Speaker 1: the Capitol Building. Most certainly already know how that day ended.
Speaker 1: Even if you live in a cave in the woods
Speaker 1: without access to the internet, you can't possibly have escaped
Speaker 1: this news. Thousands of Trump supporters descended on the United
Speaker 1: States Capitol Building. They tore down police barricades, They engaged
Speaker 1: in a pitched battle with the Capitol Police on the
Speaker 1: steps outside, and some of them forced their way into
Speaker 1: the building. People died. United States Capitol Police officer Brian
Speaker 1: Sicknick passed away on January seventh after suffering a series
Speaker 1: of strokes. His cause of death was eventually ruled to
Speaker 1: be natural causes, though several neurologists have argued that the
Speaker 1: events of the prior day almost certainly contributed to his death.
Speaker 1: Qute On believer Ashley Babbitt was shot as she forced
Speaker 1: her way into the building through a broken window. Roseanne
Speaker 1: Boylen was trampled by the stampeding crowd, though her official
Speaker 1: cause of death was ruled to be an amfetamine overdose.
Speaker 1: And Kevin Greeson had a heart attack on the Capitol
Speaker 1: grounds this week. As I was combing back through my
Speaker 1: own videos of that afternoon, I discovered that I had
Speaker 1: captured the moment that I realized I was watching a
Speaker 1: man die.
Speaker 3: Over the roar of the crowd.
Speaker 1: You can hear someone next to me say they've been
Speaker 1: giving him chest compressions for way too long. And then
Speaker 1: there's my own voice. I know it's my voice, but
Speaker 1: I don't remember saying it from years in the past.
Speaker 1: I heard myself say he's going to die, and a
Speaker 1: few minutes after that, I saw his dead body being
Speaker 1: carried away. Surely other people saw him too, but no
Speaker 1: one seemed to react at all to the sight of
Speaker 1: a corpse making its way through the crowd. Over the
Speaker 1: last four years, federal charges were filed against nearly sixteen
Speaker 1: hundred members of that crowd. Nearly thirteen hundred had been convicted,
Speaker 1: with another three hundred cases still open as of the
Speaker 1: four year anniversary of the riot. Those cases will never
Speaker 1: go to trial, though, because last month, hours after being
Speaker 1: sworn in as president for the second time, Donald Trump
Speaker 1: issued a blanket pardon, pardoning almost every single one of them,
Speaker 1: with the small exception of a handful of rioters who
Speaker 1: only had their sentences commuted. There are those who would
Speaker 1: rewrite the story of that day, people who would tell
Speaker 1: you that it was a peaceful protest, that they were
Speaker 1: patriots and tourists, that they couldn't have known that their
Speaker 1: conduct was unlawful. I'm not sure there's anything I can
Speaker 1: do to change anyone's mind. The evidence to the contrary
Speaker 1: is readily available, but it's never seemed to matter. I
Speaker 1: could tell you that I saw a man, eyes red
Speaker 1: with pepper spray and wide with wild determination, pry a
Speaker 1: metal drain grate out of the ground with the end
Speaker 1: of an American flagpole, before pressing back into the fray
Speaker 1: with his newly acquired weapon. I could tell you I
Speaker 1: saw a man with a literal pitchfork sprinting down the
Speaker 1: Capitol lawn. I could spend the next year covering a
Speaker 1: different January sixth rider every week, painstakingly tracking their affiliations
Speaker 1: with militias and white supremacist street gangs. But I don't
Speaker 1: really want to. There's plenty of media about the men
Speaker 1: who were there that day. Whole books have been written
Speaker 1: about them, Whole podcasts have dedicated themselves to that work.
Speaker 1: There are some weird little guys who ended up there
Speaker 1: that day, but I'll get to But I can't bear
Speaker 1: the thought of returning to that well for too many stories,
Speaker 1: because one of those stories are kind of the same.
Speaker 1: While the seditious conspiracy at the heart of the violence
Speaker 1: was cooked up by oathkeepers and proud boys, men with
Speaker 1: an ideological commitment to violence and ties to organized groups
Speaker 1: dedicated to carrying it out, most of the crowd was
Speaker 1: made up of men far too ordinary to be considered
Speaker 1: a weird little guy. And maybe that in itself is
Speaker 1: a subject worth exploring. How could an ordinary man end
Speaker 1: up crawling over broken glass on his way to break
Speaker 1: into a Senator's office. How could a reeltor from the
Speaker 1: suburbs step over a woman's dead body in his haste
Speaker 1: to physically confront a member of Congress. How did men
Speaker 1: with back the blue bumper stickers on their brand new
Speaker 1: forward pickup trucks end up fistfighting cops on the steps
Speaker 1: of the Capitol. I don't think I'm equipped to answer
Speaker 1: the but I can try to tell you the sad
Speaker 1: story of how one of them ended up dead. Matthew
Speaker 1: Huddle did not vote for Donald Trump in the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty election. Perhaps he would have, It's impossible to say,
Speaker 1: but he'd lost his right to vote years ago after
Speaker 1: his first felony conviction. He struggled with alcohol addiction for
Speaker 1: his entire adult life, racking up charges for driving while
Speaker 1: intoxicated at a pretty alarming rate, and he was back
Speaker 1: in jail for yet another dui in November of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty when the election took place. He was fresh off
Speaker 1: this stint in the county jail when his uncle Dale
Speaker 1: asked him for a favor. He needed a ride to Washington,
Speaker 1: d c. The reason given in the court documents is
Speaker 1: that Dale, at sixty nine years old, had poor eyesight
Speaker 1: and quote should not drive, especially at night. But I'm
Speaker 1: not sure how to square that with the knowledge that
Speaker 1: Dale was at that time employed as a delivery driver
Speaker 1: at an auto parts store. Nor has any explanation offered
Speaker 1: as to why Matthew agreed to drive his uncle seven
Speaker 1: hundred miles from Indiana to DC without a valid driver's license.
Speaker 1: In Matthew's own words, though he had nothing better to
Speaker 1: do at the time, so he agreed. According to his defense.
Speaker 3: Attorney, matt is not a true believer in any political movement.
Speaker 3: He cannot legally vote, and he knows very little about
Speaker 3: politics and does not follow it. He is somewhat distrustful
Speaker 3: of the government in general, but he did not know
Speaker 3: if the twenty twenty election was stolen or.
Speaker 1: Not, so he claims he was only there that day
Speaker 1: as something to do a favor for his uncle, and
Speaker 1: he thought maybe he would be a historic event that
Speaker 1: he could document through photos and video, and he did.
Speaker 1: He took quite a bit of video that day, recording
Speaker 1: himself as he and his uncle made their way down
Speaker 1: the National Mall after listening to Trump's speech at the
Speaker 1: Ellipse as the Capitol came into view, Matthew Huddle says,
Speaker 1: allowed to no one in particular. We're going to see
Speaker 1: if we can get inside. But moments later he turns
Speaker 1: to his uncle Dale and says he's not sure they're
Speaker 1: going to be able to get close because of the
Speaker 1: police presence. His uncle replies, quote, I think we ought
Speaker 1: to bum rush the Capitol building arrest them all. We've
Speaker 1: got enough people to do that, and Matthew agrees they
Speaker 1: could try to get close. By two pm, they were
Speaker 1: deep within the mass of rioters at the base of
Speaker 1: the steps at the west entrance of the Capitol. Police
Speaker 1: on the steps firing flash bangs and tear gas canisters,
Speaker 1: trying to keep the crowd at bay. In his video,
Speaker 1: as described in the court filings, Matthew was surprised by
Speaker 1: the flashbangs and asks if the cops are shooting a cannon.
Speaker 1: I didn't manage to dig up the video evidence filed
Speaker 1: in his case, but based on the description of flashbangs
Speaker 1: and scattered chants of you say, you say, and it
Speaker 1: being shortly after two pm, here's my best guess at
Speaker 1: that exact moment being described, Oh yes, that is my
Speaker 1: little squeal of surprise at the sound of the flash bangs.
Speaker 1: I was having a weird afternoon and it was chaotic.
Speaker 1: At this point, the crowd was starting to press forward
Speaker 1: and engage with the officers. No longer a mere observer
Speaker 1: of history, Matthew Huddle joined them. He and his uncle
Speaker 1: Dale fought their way to the front of the crowd,
Speaker 1: where rioters were tearing down the bike racks that had
Speaker 1: been set out in a feeble attempt to keep people
Speaker 1: off the stairs. As officers struggled to keep the metal
Speaker 1: bike racks out of the hands of the men who
Speaker 1: were trying to seize them as weapons, Dale Huddle lunged forward,
Speaker 1: jabbing his wooden flagpole into an officer's stomach, knocking him
Speaker 1: off his feet. During the battle on the stairs, Dale
Speaker 1: is seen in an officer's body worn camera footage screaming
Speaker 1: at them, saying things like, look back there, there's a
Speaker 1: million of us. You think you can stop us, and
Speaker 1: it's going to get real ugly if you don't let
Speaker 1: us in. Man, it's going to get real U We're
Speaker 1: coming in. And at some point he turns to his
Speaker 1: nephew and points up at the Capitol building and he says,
Speaker 1: we're going in the front door. But Dale Huddle never
Speaker 1: did make it inside. The men got separated on the steps.
Speaker 1: The officers who'd been trying to hold them at bay
Speaker 1: retreated under attack, giving Matthew Huddle an opening to run
Speaker 1: up the stairs, but Dale stayed behind and kept fighting.
Speaker 1: Instead of taking his chance to climb the steps and
Speaker 1: actually go inside, he followed the retreating officers, continuing the attack.
Speaker 1: Another video shows the old man, red faced with tears
Speaker 1: streaming from his eyes from pepper spray unloaded by a
Speaker 1: rioter behind him, and he's charging toward an officer trying
Speaker 1: to rip his gas mask off, and then he tries
Speaker 1: to wrench the baton out of another officer's hands. With
Speaker 1: his uncle preferring to stay behind and fight, Matthew followed
Speaker 1: the crowd through the now open doors on the upper
Speaker 1: West Terrace. In his own video, he says we're going
Speaker 1: in as he crosses the threshold. And for sixteen minutes
Speaker 1: he just wandered around in there. He didn't hurt anyone,
Speaker 1: he didn't steal anything, he didn't break anything. He really
Speaker 1: was just kind of wandering around. It's hard to square
Speaker 1: the reality of the situation with his behavior. On one hand,
Speaker 1: you have to assume he knew what he was doing
Speaker 1: was wrong. He hadn't actually engaged in any of the
Speaker 1: violence outside, but he knew full well he was only
Speaker 1: standing inside that building because men like his uncle had
Speaker 1: fought their way through a police line to clear the
Speaker 1: path to the stairs. But once he's inside, he's trying
Speaker 1: to chat up the cops. He sidles up to one
Speaker 1: officer and casually asks him, has this ever happened to
Speaker 1: you guys before he briefly joined in with a group
Speaker 1: of guys just marching around chanting us say, us say.
Speaker 1: Another rioter asked him if he knew what floor the
Speaker 1: legislators were on, and, oddly, considering he claimed to know
Speaker 1: nothing about the situation he'd found himself in that day,
Speaker 1: he answered confidently the third floor. And then he thought
Speaker 1: for a moment and turned to a nearby police officer
Speaker 1: and asked the cop if the legislators had already gone
Speaker 1: down to the basement, and by that point the Senate
Speaker 1: chambers had indeed been evacuated through the underground tunnels. And
Speaker 1: as the group piles into the elevator, leaving Huddle behind,
Speaker 1: he turns back to his phone, which is still recording,
Speaker 1: and he narrates into his video, they went up third
Speaker 1: floor to the offices. He would later tell the FBI
Speaker 1: that when he told that group of rioters they should
Speaker 1: head up to the third floor, he was actually trying
Speaker 1: to divert them away from members of Congress, who he
Speaker 1: assumed were already being evacuated through the underground tunnels. Either way, though,
Speaker 1: that is a curious level of insight into the building's
Speaker 1: floor plans for a man who said he was just
Speaker 1: somebody else's ride. After getting maced again, the novelty of
Speaker 1: being inside the building seemed to have been wearing off.
Speaker 1: Officers were relatively futilely trying to convince people to leave,
Speaker 1: trying to direct them down a hallway and towards an exit,
Speaker 1: and Huddle says into his video that he has a
Speaker 1: bad feeling about that that might be a trap, so
Speaker 1: he found his way to a different exit. Outside, he
Speaker 1: found his uncle Dale again, and the two men just
Speaker 1: hung around outside on the Capitol grounds for a few hours.
Speaker 2: Went home.
Speaker 1: In the days after the Huddles returned home to Indiana,
Speaker 1: the FBI set to work identifying the rioters. Those who
Speaker 1: assaulted federal officers were understandably a high priority, and the
Speaker 1: bureau released images of those suspects, each identified by the
Speaker 1: letters AFO for assault on a Federal Officer and given
Speaker 1: a unique number. Just three months after the riot, photos
Speaker 1: of AFO two nine to nine went up on the
Speaker 1: FBI's website. Over the next few months, more than a
Speaker 1: dozen tips came in about AFO two nine nine, but
Speaker 1: none of them were right. It sounds like it was
Speaker 1: facial recognition that Gotdale Huddle. The charging documents just say
Speaker 1: that law enforcement databases were used to match the images
Speaker 1: to his passport photos, and by August, FBI agents were
Speaker 1: watching Dale Huddle. They surveilled him at his home and
Speaker 1: his workplace several times in late twenty twenty one. In
Speaker 1: March of twenty twenty two, they approached his boss, who
Speaker 1: identified Dale in several photos from the riot and provided
Speaker 1: records showing he'd taken off work the week of January sixth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one. Both Matthew and Dale Huddle were eventually
Speaker 1: charged and arrested. In November of twenty twenty two. Dale
Speaker 1: was picked up in the parking lot on his way
Speaker 1: into work one morning, and Matthew was for reasons not
Speaker 1: entirely clear to me arrested in Boise, Idaho, and both
Speaker 1: men would eventually take plea agreements, just like over one
Speaker 1: thousand others of the approximately thirteen hundred January sixth defendants
Speaker 1: who'd been convicted before those blanket pardons. Matthew pled guilty
Speaker 1: to a scene misdemeanor count of entering and remaining in
Speaker 1: a restricted building and was sentenced to six months. He
Speaker 1: finished serving that sentence in July of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: Dale bled guilty to a single felony account of assaulting
Speaker 1: an officer with a dangerous weapon, specifically for jabbing that
Speaker 1: officer with his flagpole during the struggle on the stairs.
Speaker 1: He was sentenced to thirty months in July of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four, meaning he was one of about two hundred
Speaker 1: January sixth defendants who were actually still in federal custody
Speaker 1: at the time of the pardons. And like I said,
Speaker 1: almost everyone who is convicted led guilty, actually going to
Speaker 1: trial in a federal criminal case is pretty rare, a
Speaker 1: fact we've talked about before in other episodes. It's not
Speaker 1: really a good system. There is a lot of pressure
Speaker 1: to take a plea deal, and that may not always
Speaker 1: be fair. In Dale's case, though, I think the plea
Speaker 1: was absolutely the right call. A few days after his arrest,
Speaker 1: after he'd been released on bond, a CBS News reporter
Speaker 1: from Chicago, knocked on his door in a conversation that
Speaker 1: lasted more than seven minutes, much to his attorney's dismay.
Speaker 1: I'm sure the reporter pulled out a printed copy of
Speaker 1: the criminal complaint. You know, they're saying that this is that,
Speaker 1: this is you, that you know you have a flag
Speaker 1: pole and that you're assaulting an officer.
Speaker 2: Well, you know they were trying to take the pole
Speaker 2: from me, the flag from me. As you can see,
Speaker 2: they're bent over backwards trying to get the pole away.
Speaker 2: That's what looks like an attack. It was not that thought. Okay.
Speaker 2: So you're saying in court you'd like to see video. Absolutely,
Speaker 2: I will see testimony and body camps as well. But
Speaker 2: you you agree this is you? Absolutely, Okay. I'm not
Speaker 2: ashamed of being there. It was our duty as patriots.
Speaker 1: First of all, never admit to a crime on camera,
Speaker 1: even if you don't think you're guilty of it. Don't
Speaker 1: say you did it, don't talk to the reporter. And
Speaker 1: second of all, I'm not sure they were trying to
Speaker 1: take my flag is a great defense given the context here.
Speaker 1: Even if this picture did show an officer trying to
Speaker 1: take Dale's flagpole away from him, it's not like he
Speaker 1: was taking candy from a baby. Dale Huddle was not
Speaker 1: the only man out there that day using his American
Speaker 1: flag as a deeply ironic weapon. A link the criminal
Speaker 1: complaint in the show notes, and you can see the
Speaker 1: picture they're talking about on the second page. The officer
Speaker 1: is leaning back, almost as if he could be engaging
Speaker 1: in a sort of tug of war over the flagpole.
Speaker 1: But Dale's right about one thing. Pictures can be deceiving.
Speaker 1: The officer isn't leaning back, he's falling down because an
Speaker 1: old man poked him hard on the torso with a
Speaker 1: big stick. And while Matthew's lawyers had argued that their
Speaker 1: client had no real opinion on the twenty twenty election
Speaker 1: one way or the other, that he simply found himself there,
Speaker 1: Dale's lawyers did have to concede that he was a
Speaker 1: true believer in that on camera interview right after his arrest,
Speaker 1: he told the reporter that he still believed the election
Speaker 1: had been stolen, and he believed he'd been following a
Speaker 1: lawful order from his president.
Speaker 2: And do you believe that Trump invited you there and
Speaker 2: that he wanted you to overthrow, invite us to go
Speaker 2: down there? Issues seen out film, let your voices be heard? Okay,
Speaker 2: But do you think he encouraged violence? Well, I just
Speaker 2: sat there or stood there with half a million people
Speaker 2: listening to a speech. And in that speech, both Juliani
Speaker 2: and hisself said we were going to have to fight
Speaker 2: like hell to save our country. Okay. Now, rather it
Speaker 2: was a figure of speech or not, it wasn't taken
Speaker 2: that way, right, You didn't take it as a figure
Speaker 2: of speech.
Speaker 1: No, So they couldn't really say that he didn't mean it,
Speaker 1: and instead they argued that he'd been tricked. He was
Speaker 1: seventy years old in twenty twenty one. He was a
Speaker 1: blue collar worker who didn't even own a computer. From
Speaker 1: the defense sentencing memo, he is.
Speaker 3: Not knowledgeable about the Internet. He was not aware that
Speaker 3: Facebook and other social media platforms use machine learning algorithms
Speaker 3: to individualize ads and to dictate content based on previous cliques.
Speaker 3: Mister Huddle believed that the news he was reading was
Speaker 3: covering the general scope of mainstream media, and that it
Speaker 3: was a representation of current events from his viewpoint. The
Speaker 3: vast majority of the media agreed that the democratic process
Speaker 3: had been undermined by fraud.
Speaker 1: And I don't doubt that he and many men just
Speaker 1: like him have absolutely rotted their brains on Facebook, clickbait
Speaker 1: right wing news. I have no trouble believing that he
Speaker 1: was trapped in a cycle of seeing nothing but memes
Speaker 1: where a minion in a maga hat is spreading election
Speaker 1: misinformation or links to stories on sites called patriot windnews
Speaker 1: dot biz with headlines like deep state destroyed, new election lawsuit,
Speaker 1: bombshell rocks DC swamp. I have a separate email account
Speaker 1: where I get one hundred emails that look like that
Speaker 1: every single day. I know exactly what his Facebook feed
Speaker 1: looked like, so that part's probably true. But I wish
Speaker 1: that the government, with their vast investigative resources, had dug
Speaker 1: into a curious incident in Dale's past, because I don't
Speaker 1: think this was the first time that dale Huddle got
Speaker 1: worked up about the need to go to war with
Speaker 1: the government. Now, to be clear, dale Huddle had no
Speaker 1: criminal history. That's true. The government didn't miss something that
Speaker 1: egregious and I'm even willing to believe the Defense memo
Speaker 1: is being truthful when they say that at seventy years old,
Speaker 1: Dale wasn't a member of any extremist groups. But I
Speaker 1: found a picture, a single photograph taken on November fourteenth,
Speaker 1: two thousand, and if I had the kinds of resources
Speaker 1: that the government has, I would have tried to find
Speaker 1: out more about this picture. It's just one picture in
Speaker 1: the newspaper, snapped by an Associated Press photographer, and it's
Speaker 1: a picture of Dale Huddle with a flag. Unlike the
Speaker 1: photo of Dale using an American flag as a that
Speaker 1: on January sixth, this photo shows a slightly younger Dale
Speaker 1: Huddle and he's trying to figure out how to affix
Speaker 1: his Gadsden flag, you know, the one with the snake
Speaker 1: that doesn't want to be stepped on, and he's trying
Speaker 1: to affix it to the window of a church. November fourteenth,
Speaker 1: two thousand, was the first day of a ninety two
Speaker 1: day standoff with US marshals at the Indianapolis Baptist Temple.
Speaker 1: After years of litigation, a federal judge had finally given
Speaker 1: the order for the church to vacate the premises for
Speaker 1: seventeen years, the Indianapolis Baptist Temple under Pastor Greg Dixon,
Speaker 1: had not been paying its taxes. You're probably saying, wait,
Speaker 1: I thought churches were tax exempt, and they are. That's true.
Speaker 1: Churches are generally speaking automatically exempt from federal income tax,
Speaker 1: but if they have paid employees, they still have to
Speaker 1: withhold and remit employment tax. And the Indianapolis Baptist Temple
Speaker 1: had been refusing to do that since nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 1: and so by the year two thousand they owed the
Speaker 1: irs over six million dollars. And this was an intentional,
Speaker 1: deliberate act. They didn't forget that they had to do
Speaker 1: payroll tax. They didn't make a mistake. The church had
Speaker 1: originally been incorporated in nineteen fifty and for almost thirty
Speaker 1: four years the church had a valid employer identification number.
Speaker 1: They filed paperwork with the state to keep their corporate
Speaker 1: entity in good standing. They paid employment taxes to the
Speaker 1: federal government. And then in nineteen eighty three, Greg Dixon,
Speaker 1: who'd been the pastor at the church since nineteen fifty five,
Speaker 1: changed his mind. He transferred all of the church's assets
Speaker 1: into an unincorporated religious society and then he changed the
Speaker 1: corporation's name, which had previous been Indianapolis Baptist Temple. He
Speaker 1: changed it to Not a Church Incorporated, and so the
Speaker 1: church itself no longer exists on paper at all. And
Speaker 1: Dixon is using this not a Church corporate entity to
Speaker 1: run a group called the American Coalition for Unregistered Churches.
Speaker 1: It would later be known as the Unregistered Baptist Fellowship.
Speaker 1: Greg Dixon believed that doing business with the federal government
Speaker 1: was against his religion. Having to do things like tell
Speaker 1: the irs that your church would like to be recognized
Speaker 1: as a five oh one C three tax exempt entity
Speaker 1: or filing paperwork with the state actually contravenes the authority
Speaker 1: of Christ and if you make him do it, you're
Speaker 1: violating his religious liberty. The unregistered Church movement wasn't just
Speaker 1: refusing to pay their taxes. They wanted to avoid almost
Speaker 1: any contact with the government. Churches shouldn't have to abide
Speaker 1: by bill codes or zoning laws, or get fire inspections.
Speaker 1: Babies shouldn't have birth certificates. A wedding shouldn't involve a
Speaker 1: marriage license. In fact, no one should have any kind
Speaker 1: of license. Many of the articles I found about this
Speaker 1: movement make sure to add that they do believe that
Speaker 1: they can use the United States Postal Service, but it
Speaker 1: is a sin to use zip codes. The almost complete
Speaker 1: overlap of guys who don't want to pay their taxes
Speaker 1: and guys who are willing to take up arms against
Speaker 1: the government is something I'll surely explore in depth in
Speaker 1: an episode dedicated to some character in the tax protest
Speaker 1: or movement, But the reason for it is probably pretty obvious,
Speaker 1: and Pastor Greg Dixon wasn't just refusing to pay his taxes.
Speaker 1: He wanted war. In nineteen ninety two, Greg Dixon gave
Speaker 1: a speech at an event nicknamed the Rocky Mountain Rendezvous
Speaker 1: after the siege at Ruby Ridge. A Christian identity preacher
Speaker 1: in Colorado put out the call the disparate elements of
Speaker 1: the radical right needed to put their heads together and
Speaker 1: come up with a strategy. Klansmen, Neo Nazis, anti Semitic pastors,
Speaker 1: militia leaders, Neo Confederates, tax protesters, bigots, and anti government
Speaker 1: extremists of all stripes convened in Colorado, and all the
Speaker 1: big names were there. Willie Muther Peers from National Alliance,
Speaker 1: Richard Butler from Arian Nations, Louis Beam, Kirk Lyons, James Wickstrom.
Speaker 1: As Kathleen Blue wrote in her book Bring the War Home,
Speaker 1: the militia movement as we know it today emerged from
Speaker 1: the leaders, organizations, and tactics of white power organization. And
Speaker 1: this meeting is widely regarded as the birthplace of the
Speaker 1: modern American militia movement. And so at the Rocky Mountain Rendezvous,
Speaker 1: just before Louis Beam's beach about leaderless resistance, pastor Greg
Speaker 1: Dixon took the stage to call for the establishment of
Speaker 1: Christian militias, declaring we are at war. And Greg Dixon
Speaker 1: was hardly new to organized racism. In the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: his church had hosted meetings of a group called Americans
Speaker 1: for America, a KKK affiliated organization that opposed school integration.
Speaker 1: Indiana's Grand Dragon Bill Cheney was a member of the congregation,
Speaker 1: but in the early nineties he was at the bleeding
Speaker 1: edge of a new frontier in white power. All that
Speaker 1: to say, this old picture of Dale Huddle outside of
Speaker 1: a church might sound terribly innocuous. Maybe that's his church,
Speaker 1: and maybe he didn't know why his pastor wasn't paying
Speaker 1: his taxes. But it was not. Dale Huddle isn't even Baptist.
Speaker 1: He grew up Lutheran, but has been a member of
Speaker 1: a non denominational megachurch called the Family Christian Center since
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight, ever since his mother died.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 1: Dale Huddle had no direct connection to this church that
Speaker 1: I can find, but a call had been put out.
Speaker 1: In September of two thousand. After years in court, a
Speaker 1: judge gave the order they had until noon on November
Speaker 1: fourteenth to get out of the building. The government was
Speaker 1: taking possession of the property, and US Marshals were authorized
Speaker 1: to use force if necessary. Michigan Militia leader Norman Olsen
Speaker 1: ordered militias around the country to do their duty and
Speaker 1: defend the church, telling his followers that this was going
Speaker 1: to be Waco Part two. Charlie Puckett of the Kentucky
Speaker 1: Militia was there on November fourteenth. As congregants waited for
Speaker 1: the US marshals to arrive and with news crews rolling
Speaker 1: in the parking lot, Pastor Dixon asked the contingent of
Speaker 1: klansmen who showed up to s for him to maybe
Speaker 1: stay outside the church, but he didn't ask them to
Speaker 1: leave or disavow their support. And that's when this photo
Speaker 1: was taken on November fourteenth, two thousand, parking lot full
Speaker 1: of klansmen militia men standing by, and Dale Huddle is
Speaker 1: outside the Indianapolis Baptist Temple trying to figure out how
Speaker 1: to hang a Gadsden flag on the windows. He'd driven
Speaker 1: two hours from his home in Crown Point and there
Speaker 1: was no Facebook in two thousand. He didn't see a
Speaker 1: meme that convinced him to go to Indianapolis. There's no
Speaker 1: indication that he was a member of any of the
Speaker 1: militia or clan groups that were there that day, but
Speaker 1: it does seem quite possible that he got the same
Speaker 1: message they did about showing up for Waco Part two,
Speaker 1: and just so this threat isn't left hanging, the big
Speaker 1: crowd that showed up on day one of the standoff
Speaker 1: got board and went home. US marshals obviously did not
Speaker 1: want Waco Part two, so they just kept their distance
Speaker 1: and waited them out. It took three months, but in
Speaker 1: February of two thousand and one they did seize the building.
Speaker 1: No one was injured, but Greg Dixon was carried out
Speaker 1: on a stretcher because he refused to walk. So that's
Speaker 1: a rather lengthy aside just to contextualize a single twenty
Speaker 1: five year old photograph that doesn't prove anything at all,
Speaker 1: But it left me wondering if the US Marshals had
Speaker 1: taken a heavier handed approach at the Indianapolis Baptist Temple,
Speaker 1: would I be looking at two photos twenty years apart
Speaker 1: of Dale Huddle trying to skewer a cop with a flagpole.
Speaker 1: His lawyers argued that he was just a confused old
Speaker 1: man who didn't know how to use the internet, and
Speaker 1: he got tricked into believing he needed to go to
Speaker 1: DC to stop the steal. But the possibility that twenty
Speaker 1: years earlier, some militia newsletter tricked him into thinking he
Speaker 1: needed to stop a different theft, that of church property
Speaker 1: by the irs, really changes the story for me. Back
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one, though, after the riote of the Capitol,
Speaker 1: Matthew Huddle was just living his life as usual. Matthew
Speaker 1: Huddle's life as usual involved getting charged three separate times
Speaker 1: between July and November for driving with a suspended license
Speaker 1: as a habitual offender whose driving privileges had been revoked
Speaker 1: after repeated to UIs each new offense of this kind
Speaker 1: was a felony. In August of that year, his son's
Speaker 1: mother died of a drug overdose. He filed for bankruptcy
Speaker 1: that same week, and filing show he owed more than
Speaker 1: thirteen thousand dollars in child support to a different woman,
Speaker 1: the mother of his daughter. Neither of those children were
Speaker 1: in Matthew's custody after his conviction. In his January sixth case,
Speaker 1: his lawyers wrote that he had a quote great relationship
Speaker 1: with his son. I hope that's true, and even if
Speaker 1: it's not, my heart breaks for a teenage boy who
Speaker 1: lost his mother to an overdose in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: he saw his father go to prison in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: and then he lost his father entirely just last month.
Speaker 1: But great is the only word used there to describe
Speaker 1: a relationship that I suspect may have been more complicated
Speaker 1: than that. In two thousand and nine, Matthew Huddle flew
Speaker 1: into a rage after his son, who was just three
Speaker 1: years old at the time, had what court records describe
Speaker 1: as a bathroom accident. It's a very normal thing for
Speaker 1: a three year old to do at that age. You're
Speaker 1: still sending a change of pants with them to school
Speaker 1: just in case. What's not normal, though, is beating a
Speaker 1: toddler so severely that he can't sit down for a week,
Speaker 1: and the court records call it a spanking. But nothing
Speaker 1: I could find offered me any kind of explanation for
Speaker 1: how a spanking could leave bruises on a child's neck.
Speaker 1: After Huddle died last week, several of the articles I
Speaker 1: read about his death quoted an attorney who had been
Speaker 1: representing him in his dui cases for nearly twenty years,
Speaker 1: and his lawyer says that the man he'd known was
Speaker 1: not violent. I don't know what else you call this,
Speaker 1: I guess in that lawyer's defense, it does look like
Speaker 1: he'd hired a different attorney when he was charged with
Speaker 1: beating his son and his son's mother. After Matthew Huddle
Speaker 1: blood guilty in twenty twenty three to that single misdemeanor
Speaker 1: charge of entering and remaining in a restricted building on
Speaker 1: January sixth, his lawyers asked for a sentence of probation
Speaker 1: with no jail time. They cited his lack of ideological
Speaker 1: motivation for being there, his need to be there for
Speaker 1: his children and his tragic backstory and struggle with alcoholism.
Speaker 1: And there is a strange and tragic backstory here, but
Speaker 1: they don't actually get into it in this court filing.
Speaker 1: This part I pieced together from state court records, old newspapers,
Speaker 1: and Facebook posts. After serving his sentence for beating his son,
Speaker 1: he was released from jail in twenty thirteen, and he
Speaker 1: very quickly took up with a new girlfriend. Based on
Speaker 1: the apparent age of a photo of their daughter that
Speaker 1: he posted online in twenty fifteen, she had to have
Speaker 1: been pregnant with Huddle's child before she ended her marriage
Speaker 1: to another man. I have said this before, comes up
Speaker 1: often oddly, but I don't care about that. Her infidelity
Speaker 1: is between her, her husband, and her boyfriend. I only
Speaker 1: mention it because of a curious coincidence of dates. The
Speaker 1: same week her divorce was finalized, someone shot Matthew Huddle.
Speaker 1: There's a single mention in the local newspaper in February
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, just a few days after his daughter's mother
Speaker 1: finalized her divorce, that Huddle had been shot in what
Speaker 1: was only described as quote an incident between family members,
Speaker 1: and The article quotes an officer who says that no
Speaker 1: one was taken into custody at this time, and he
Speaker 1: wouldn't say how the shooter was related to the victim.
Speaker 1: I couldn't find any court records that indicated the charges
Speaker 1: were ever filed against anyone, but I could only check
Speaker 1: the names I thought of his suspects. So it's a
Speaker 1: bit of a needle in a haystack whoever it was.
Speaker 1: Though someone close to him shot Matthew in the back
Speaker 1: of the knee and left him with a lifelong injury,
Speaker 1: and three years later, in twenty eighteen, he was asleep
Speaker 1: in his bed when he woke up to two men
Speaker 1: beating him with baseball bats and hammers. The local newspaper
Speaker 1: reported the attack was motivated by a child custody dispute.
Speaker 1: One of the assailants, Kurt Falkenberg, was in a relationship
Speaker 1: with the mother of Huddle's son. The other man was
Speaker 1: Falkenberg's uncle, Jeffrey Martin, though the two men were only
Speaker 1: a few years apart in age, and the men focused
Speaker 1: their blows on Huddle's left leg because they knew he
Speaker 1: had a metal rod in there from the surgeries he'd
Speaker 1: gotten after getting shot in the leg in his last
Speaker 1: domestic dispute. Much like the story of Matthew and Dale Huddle,
Speaker 1: this story of a very stupid crime committed by an
Speaker 1: uncle and a nephew ends tragically. As Falkenberg and Martin
Speaker 1: fled the scene, they crashed. Falkenberg, who had been driving,
Speaker 1: was pronounced dead at the scene. Officers responding to the
Speaker 1: car accident, which put another driver in the hospital with
Speaker 1: two broken legs, found an open bottle of whiskey in
Speaker 1: Falkenburg's car, and they eventually found Jeffrey Martin passed out
Speaker 1: drunk in a creek bed on the side of the road.
Speaker 1: The following year, in twenty nineteen, Matthew Huddle was diagnosed
Speaker 1: with cirrhosis of the liver. Twenty years of alcoholism had
Speaker 1: finally caught up to him. The dui he got that
Speaker 1: summer was the one that put him back in jail
Speaker 1: until shortly before he drove to Washington, d c. In
Speaker 1: January of twenty twenty one. Now I've read a lot
Speaker 1: of sentencing memos. That's the document filed at the end
Speaker 1: of a case after a guilty plea or a guilty verdict,
Speaker 1: where each side makes their case one last time. Not
Speaker 1: about guilt or innocence. Now that's settled, but about what
Speaker 1: they think the punishment should be. And we have an
Speaker 1: adversarial court system. Everyone is technically ethically bound to be honest,
Speaker 1: and the purpose of the courts is supposed to be
Speaker 1: to seek the truth, but really everyone is there to win,
Speaker 1: to have their version of the truth ruled to be
Speaker 1: the most true. So I'm really used to seeing a
Speaker 1: defense attorney's sob story and a prosecutor's exaggeration. But I
Speaker 1: wonder maybe if Matthew Huddle's lawyers really were telling a
Speaker 1: mostly true story. He didn't vote, he couldn't. His family
Speaker 1: doesn't seem very political. No one in his family has
Speaker 1: ever donated so much as a dollar to any federal election.
Speaker 1: And he did have a long history of making spectacularly
Speaker 1: bad decisions and finding himself in some really outlandishly bad situation.
Speaker 1: I mean, he got his legs broken in two unrelated
Speaker 1: domestic disputes. That doesn't even sound possible. So maybe Matthew
Speaker 1: Huddle is the only January sixth defendant who really did
Speaker 1: end up there by accident with no ideological motivation or
Speaker 1: violent intent. Plenty of them claimed that in court, and
Speaker 1: it never really rings true. But maybe for Matthew Huddle,
Speaker 1: wandering into the Capitol that day was just the same
Speaker 1: kind of criminal accident he was often finding himself in,
Speaker 1: like driving away without paying for a tank of gas
Speaker 1: because he was too drunk to figure out how to
Speaker 1: operate the payment system, but somehow not too drunk to drive.
Speaker 1: When I first saw the news that had recently pardoned
Speaker 1: January sixth defendant had been shot and killed while resisting
Speaker 1: arrest during a traffic stop, I can't say that I
Speaker 1: was surprised, but I was wrong in my initial assumption.
Speaker 1: I figured a guy who found himself on that trajectory
Speaker 1: would be I don't know, as sovereign citizen or a
Speaker 1: guy who'd done real violence at the Capitol, a guy
Speaker 1: who had violent plans for the future. Surely those two
Speaker 1: facts about his life being at the Capitol that day
Speaker 1: and dying the way that he did. Surely those two
Speaker 1: facts would be directly related. But I'm not sure they are.
Speaker 1: It's unwise to speculate about the altercation that may have
Speaker 1: occurred in the minutes before Huddle was shot and killed
Speaker 1: by a Jasper County Sheriff's deputy. I don't know what
Speaker 1: happened there on the side of Indiana State Road fourteen.
Speaker 1: We don't know what was said, or why things escalated,
Speaker 1: or where exactly the deputy saw the gun, but I
Speaker 1: do know that Matthew Huddle was due back in court
Speaker 1: next week for a status conference on a stack of
Speaker 1: still unresolved felony cases for driving without a license, just
Speaker 1: days after getting his federal pardon. He was probably happy
Speaker 1: for his uncle Dale, but he'd already done his federal time,
Speaker 1: and now he was looking down the barrel at another
Speaker 1: stay in the county jail, and when those blue lights
Speaker 1: came on behind him, he probably knew that this would
Speaker 1: be yet another felony charge. He had a long list
Speaker 1: of state charges. A federal pardon did nothing for him.
Speaker 1: In the end. It didn't matter who the president was.
Speaker 1: But I guess it never really did matter to Matthew.
Speaker 1: Weird Little Guys is a production of Cool Zone Media
Speaker 1: and iHeartRadio. It's research, written, and recorded by me Willy Conger.
Speaker 1: Our executive producers are Sophie Littterman and Robert Evans. The
Speaker 1: show is edited by the wildly talented Rory Gagan. The
Speaker 1: theme music was composed by Brad Dickert. You can email
Speaker 1: me at Rubuguy's podcast at gmail dot com. I will
Speaker 1: definitely read it, but I'm not going to answer it.
Speaker 1: It's nothing personal. You can exchange conspiracy theories about the show.
Speaker 1: We have the listeners on the Weird Little Guy subreddit.
Speaker 1: Just don't post anything that's going to make you one
Speaker 1: of my weird Little Guys.