Speaker 1: Colzone Media.
Speaker 2: Last week, a jury in Alpamarole County, Virginia found Augustus
Speaker 2: Sole Invictus, guilty on the felony charge of burning an
Speaker 2: object with the intent to intimidate for his participation in
Speaker 2: the Nazi torch march at the University of Virginia on
Speaker 2: August eleventh, twenty seventeen. This was not only the first
Speaker 2: trial conviction for this charge, it was the first ever
Speaker 2: jury verdict reached on a charge under Section eighteen point
Speaker 2: two dashed four twenty three point zh one of the
Speaker 2: Virginia Code. That law passed in two thousand two in
Speaker 2: response to the legal challenge to Virginia's cross burning statute
Speaker 2: by Pennsylvania klansman Barry Black.
Speaker 1: I spent the last.
Speaker 2: Two episodes talking about the history of cross burning in
Speaker 2: Virginia and the life and legal battles of the man
Speaker 2: who brought about this change the law. And I told
Speaker 2: you that until last year, that law had been sitting
Speaker 2: on the books, all but untouched for two decades. I
Speaker 2: left you last week with a terrifying image a small
Speaker 2: group of students surrounded by a sea of flames one
Speaker 2: summer night seven years ago. I told you a few
Speaker 2: weeks ago that this is a story I've been writing
Speaker 2: and rewriting for years. I could fill six months worth
Speaker 2: of episodes with just the stories of the men who
Speaker 2: carried those torches. The years I've spent watching the same
Speaker 2: few minutes of history, frame by frame from different angles,
Speaker 2: placing individual men within that seething mass of violent intent
Speaker 2: taught me a lot about the kinds of weird little
Speaker 2: guys that make up a crowd like this. There are
Speaker 2: cops and criminals, soldiers and soldiers of fortune, students and fathers,
Speaker 2: domestic abusers, realtors and lawyers and small business owners, social
Speaker 2: media personalities, and wanted fugitives. They're your neighbors, your weird cousin,
Speaker 2: that guy at work you don't want to talk about
Speaker 2: politics with. They're all just some guy. There were hundreds
Speaker 2: of them there that night in August of twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: but we'll just start with one today. I'm Molly Conger.
Speaker 1: This is weird little guys.
Speaker 2: You might think this episode is going to be about
Speaker 2: Augustus and Victus. It isn't. Where will one day probably
Speaker 2: be a multi episode arc about the man who calls
Speaker 2: himself the attorney for the damned. A man whose name
Speaker 2: literally appears in the Miriam Webster Dictionary in the example
Speaker 2: sentence for the term white nationalist. A man who has
Speaker 2: been both a proud boy and a presidential candidate, both
Speaker 2: a goat's slaughtering, blood drinking wizard and a traditionalist Catholic.
Speaker 2: A father of seven with two ex wives and a
Speaker 2: string of police reports filed by wives, girlfriends, and mistresses.
Speaker 2: An attorney whose client list includes white supremacist paramilitaries, Nazi
Speaker 2: street gangs, and anti Semitic trolls. A man who once
Speaker 2: renounced all of his worldly possessions and wandered off into
Speaker 2: the desert, proclaiming himself to be a god and a prophet,
Speaker 2: before quietly returning to Orlando to work at his father's
Speaker 2: law office. But that day isn't today. His conviction last
Speaker 2: week won't be the end of his story. I'm sure
Speaker 2: of that. So I'll bide my time. Because while Augustus
Speaker 2: Invictus was the first person ever found guilty by a
Speaker 2: jury of the crime of burning an object with the
Speaker 2: intent to intimidate, he wasn't the first to be convicted.
Speaker 2: Before his trial last week, there had already been five
Speaker 2: guilty pleas by other members of that march. You see,
Speaker 2: there is no statute of limitations on a felony in
Speaker 2: the Commonwealth of Virginia. Whether or not that's wise or
Speaker 2: really in the overall best interests of justice more generally
Speaker 2: is a discussion for another day and maybe for another person.
Speaker 2: But it is the current state of affairs, and Virginia
Speaker 2: is a southern state, the one time capital of the Confederacy.
Speaker 2: Few states without a bloody history of clan violence even
Speaker 2: have a life on the books that makes it a
Speaker 2: crime to use a burning object as a tool of intimidation.
Speaker 2: But we did have such a history, and we do
Speaker 2: have the resulting law. So even though that march in
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen feels like it was almost a lifetime ago,
Speaker 2: it's not too late under Virginia law to hold those
Speaker 2: men accountable. To date, twelve men who marched that night
Speaker 2: have been charged under a Virginia law that makes it
Speaker 2: a felony to burn an object with the intent to intimidate.
Speaker 2: Five have pleaded guilty to it, three have entered into
Speaker 2: plea agreements to the lesser charge of disorderly conduct, one
Speaker 2: went to trial and got a hung jury, and two
Speaker 2: cases remained pending. The first sentence handed down in one
Speaker 2: of these cases was for Tyler Bradley Dikes. His story
Speaker 2: touches on quite a few of the recurring themes this show.
Speaker 2: He was a US Marine who was discharged for his
Speaker 2: involvement in extremist groups. He attended this Nazi rally where
Speaker 2: he's on video throwing punches and Hitler salutes, and when
Speaker 2: he wasn't held accountable for his actions, he went on
Speaker 2: to engage an even more serious conduct, and now he's
Speaker 2: in federal prison. The entire arc of his story can
Speaker 2: be summed up in a single pair of images, I
Speaker 2: think like a pair of Nazi bookends. First there's Tyler
Speaker 2: Diykes on August eleventh, twenty seventeen, standing at the base
Speaker 2: of the statue of Thomas Jefferson, holding a torch in
Speaker 2: his left hand, with his right arm extended in a
Speaker 2: Nazi salute. And then there's Tyler Dikes again on January sixth,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, on the steps of the Capitol Building,
Speaker 2: turning to face the mob below after fighting his way
Speaker 2: up to the doors, giving the same salute. A few
Speaker 2: months ago, Tyler Dykes was handed a fifty seven month
Speaker 2: federal sentence for assaulting police officers during the January sixth
Speaker 2: riot at the Capitol in twenty twenty one. If you're
Speaker 2: trying to do some math in your head right now,
Speaker 2: I'll tell you fifty seven months is just shy of
Speaker 2: five years. But a federal prison sentence is kind of
Speaker 2: like a baby in that you always measure it in months,
Speaker 2: not years, and only the people who have to deal
Speaker 2: with the time in question feel like that makes any
Speaker 2: sense at all. In the sentencing memorandum written by his
Speaker 2: defense attorney, he's described as an impressionable young man. He
Speaker 2: was just twenty one years old when he traveled to Washington,
Speaker 2: d C. With his friends from church. They said he'd
Speaker 2: been influenced by the NonStop media coverage and President Trump's
Speaker 2: social media posts into believing that the election had been stolen.
Speaker 2: He made incredibly poor decisions, his attorney conceded, but he
Speaker 2: never planned to engage in any violence. He was just
Speaker 2: young and impetuous, and he got caught up in the crowd.
Speaker 2: He was a United States Marine. He was a boy
Speaker 2: scout quite literally. The defense sentencing memo cites his accomplishments
Speaker 2: as an Eagle Scout He was just a nice young
Speaker 2: man who goes to church every Sunday and runs a
Speaker 2: small IT services company and takes care of his elderly parents.
Speaker 2: How could he possibly be the kind of person who
Speaker 2: deserves to go to federal prison for making a little mistake.
Speaker 2: But that wasn't quite the whole picture. Not that those
Speaker 2: things aren't mostly true. They are, but it's a spit
Speaker 2: shined image of a much darker situation. Tyler Diykes was
Speaker 2: indeed a member of the United States Marine Corps. On
Speaker 2: January sixth, twenty twenty one, he was a US Marine
Speaker 2: when he wrenched the riot shield from the hands of
Speaker 2: a US Capitol Police officer and then used that shield
Speaker 2: to force his way through the police line and into
Speaker 2: the Capitol building, and he remained a United States Marine
Speaker 2: until he was given an other than honorable discharge in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty two. The revelations that unraveled his life came
Speaker 2: out of order. He wasn't identified as a Unite the
Speaker 2: Right attendee until twenty twenty two, after he'd already participated
Speaker 2: in the January sixth riot. In twenty twenty one, he
Speaker 2: wasn't identified as the man putting swastika stickers around town
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty until he was discharged from the Marines
Speaker 2: for it in twenty twenty two, and he wasn't identified
Speaker 2: as a participant in the January sixth riot until July
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty three, after he'd been convicted for his
Speaker 2: conduct at Unite the Right. The consequences of his actions
Speaker 2: always seemed to come a little too late, after he'd
Speaker 2: already been emboldened by an apparent lack thereof. At his
Speaker 2: federal sentencing hearing a few months ago, he told the
Speaker 2: judge that he was high on adrenaline during the Capitol
Speaker 2: riot and said, I falsely believed that I would be
Speaker 2: free of consequences, But maybe we should start at the
Speaker 2: beginning rather than the end. In August of twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: Tyler Dykes was nineteen years old. He'd taken a year
Speaker 2: off after high school and was living at home with
Speaker 2: his parents in North Carolina that summer after spending his
Speaker 2: gap year abroad in Romania. He'd been accepted to Cornell
Speaker 2: University and would be moving into his dorm at the
Speaker 2: end of the month. Just a week before new student
Speaker 2: orientation at Cornell, he took one last trip before starting college,
Speaker 2: he to Charlottesville. On the evening of August eleventh, twenty seventeen,
Speaker 2: Tyler Dyke stood among the hundreds of men who gathered
Speaker 2: at Nameless Field. It's a confusing name, Nameless Field. It
Speaker 2: isn't nameless, it has a name. The name is nameless Field.
Speaker 2: I wonder what kind of who's on first type conversations
Speaker 2: happened over text message that night as the crowd assembled.
Speaker 2: But there he was in the field down by the
Speaker 2: tennis courts behind the library, and he was handed a torch,
Speaker 2: and he found a place in line, and he marched.
Speaker 2: He chanted with the crowd as this river of flames
Speaker 2: wound its way through the university grounds. Blood and soil,
Speaker 2: blood and soil. You will not run place us, Jews
Speaker 2: will not replace us. Fuck off, commis this is our
Speaker 2: town now, They shouted on the empty streets as they
Speaker 2: passed empty buildings. Blood and soil, Blood and soil, blood
Speaker 2: and soil. They chanted until they could taste the blood
Speaker 2: in their own mouths from shouting themselves hoarse, blood and soil,
Speaker 2: until they saw blood red. When the small group of
Speaker 2: students at the base of the Thomas Jefferson statue came
Speaker 2: into view. The streets had been empty until the march
Speaker 2: filled them. The libraries were empty, the dorms were empty,
Speaker 2: the academic and administrative buildings were empty. But as the
Speaker 2: march reached the top of the rotunda step, looking down
Speaker 2: into the brick plaza below, they knew they weren't alone anymore.
Speaker 2: They knew what they were doing. As they came down
Speaker 2: those steps, each man, torch in hand, had a moment.
Speaker 1: At the top of those.
Speaker 2: Stairs, each marcher could see from that vantage point the
Speaker 2: tiny group in the plaza below, students, many of them
Speaker 2: still just teenagers, holding a homemade banner that read UVA
Speaker 2: Students against White Supremacy, And in that moment on those steps,
Speaker 2: each of them made the choice to follow the man
Speaker 2: in front of him. As the march wound its way
Speaker 2: around the statue around the students, circling around, arcing wide,
Speaker 2: and then tightening up, encircling them and.
Speaker 1: Closing them in.
Speaker 2: As the ring of fire closed around the statue around
Speaker 2: those students, the violence began almost immediately. Verbal altercations gave
Speaker 2: way to fists shouted epithets were chased through the air
Speaker 2: by streams of pepper spray, a lit torch was swung,
Speaker 2: making contact with a counter protester trying to shield those
Speaker 2: terrified young people. I've watched this video a hundred times,
Speaker 2: a thousand, maybe, and I still flinch as the flame
Speaker 2: arcs towards someone that I count among my closest friends.
Speaker 1: I tell you that not.
Speaker 2: To pull at your heart strings. You don't need to
Speaker 2: know that that video still makes my chest feel tight.
Speaker 2: I'm telling you because I want you to know. I'm
Speaker 2: not objective about this. I don't pretend to be, I
Speaker 2: don't want to be. I don't believe in this myth
Speaker 2: of journalistic objectivity. Everybody has a thumb on the scale somewhere.
Speaker 2: Most people just lie about it to you or even
Speaker 2: to themselves. Of course, I have a bias here. I
Speaker 2: live here. I've sat in courtrooms and in coffee shops,
Speaker 2: and on long car rides and on living room couches
Speaker 2: with people who are hurt that night. But even if
Speaker 2: I had no connection to these people or to this place,
Speaker 2: it's no secret that as a researcher of white supremacist
Speaker 2: violence in America, my starting position is always against fascism,
Speaker 2: against Nazism, against violence done in the name of white supremacy,
Speaker 2: and I don't think that's anything to be ashamed of.
Speaker 2: As sociologist and expert on political violence, doctor Peter Seemi
Speaker 2: once said on the stand, no one is ever surprised
Speaker 2: to find out that a cancer researcher is interested in
Speaker 2: preventing cancer. So yes, I have a stake in.
Speaker 1: This, but you do too.
Speaker 2: Maybe you don't know it yet, You don't know these people.
Speaker 2: But I choose to betray my own lack of objectivity
Speaker 2: here to get you to think about yours, because I
Speaker 2: don't think you should be objective about this. There is
Speaker 2: no special prize to be won by being the most
Speaker 2: diligently neutral observer of fascist violence. You and I, listener,
Speaker 2: we are not jurors. We are not ruling on the law.
Speaker 2: We are people who have to live in this world.
Speaker 2: You should feel something you can't shove down when you
Speaker 2: see a man who proudly calls himself a Nazi swing
Speaker 2: a flaming torch at someone who is trapped, someone whose
Speaker 2: only crime is not wanting hate to go unchallenged in
Speaker 2: a public square. And that's where Tyler Diykes was that night,
Speaker 2: right at the center of this melee. As the air
Speaker 2: filled with screams and the burning scent of pepper spray.
Speaker 2: Tyler Diykes was fist fighting anyone he could reach. Videos
Speaker 2: showed Dikes was the last one still fighting. He threw
Speaker 2: the last punch of the night, even as everyone else
Speaker 2: seemed to be coming to their senses. When the counter
Speaker 2: protesters were finally able to escape from the mob, the
Speaker 2: torch marchers took the statue. Several of them climbed the
Speaker 2: plinth and cheered for the victory they'd won. Seeg kile
Speaker 2: Hail victory they shouted. Video shows Tyler Dikes pacing back
Speaker 2: and forth in front of the statue, right arm extended
Speaker 2: in a Nazi salute. After the deadly rally, the next morning,
Speaker 2: Tyler Diykes went home. He started at Cornell a few
Speaker 2: weeks later, but they didn't go well. He dropped out
Speaker 2: after a few months and enlisted in the Marines instead,
Speaker 2: and it seems like that may not have gone well either,
Speaker 2: because after a few months of training he was discharged
Speaker 2: to the Reserves and returned home, which was now South Carolina.
Speaker 1: He started an.
Speaker 2: IT company, calling himself the Technology King of the Low Country,
Speaker 2: and made house calls to help suburban grandparents set up
Speaker 2: their WiFi routers, and when he wasn't troubleshooting a customer
Speaker 2: computer or going to church, he was hanging Swastika banners
Speaker 2: from highway overpasses with his friends in the Southern Suns
Speaker 2: Active Club, a white supremacist organization operating in Georgia and
Speaker 2: the Carolinas, a regional cell of the larger international network
Speaker 2: of Active Clubs. These active clubs are, to put it succinctly,
Speaker 2: Nazi fight clubs. They were inspired by Robert Rundo's Rise
Speaker 2: Above Movement, the Southern California based Nazi street fighting outfit
Speaker 2: that brawled their way across the country at right wing
Speaker 2: political rallies throughout twenty seventeen. There is no centralized leadership
Speaker 2: or organizational structure. Active clubs operate regionally and are operationally
Speaker 2: independent from one another. They share a love of mixed
Speaker 2: martial arts, both as a hobby and as training for
Speaker 2: a coming race war, and engage in the kind of
Speaker 2: propaganda campaigns common among groups like Patriot so hanging banners
Speaker 2: with racist slogans from bridges and plastering stickers on street
Speaker 2: signs in mailboxes around town. There are active clubs all
Speaker 2: over the United States, Canada and Europe, as well as
Speaker 2: a faltering effort led by Thomas Seol to get them
Speaker 2: going in Australia. Each club operates independently, but they network
Speaker 2: and meet up even across national borders, and there is
Speaker 2: quite a bit of cross pollination between the Active Clubs
Speaker 2: and other violent white supremacist organizations. They tend to be
Speaker 2: on good terms with groups like Patriot Front, and several
Speaker 2: notable Active club members have ties to Adam Waffen and Terogram.
Speaker 2: Andrew Tekstov, the New Jersey teenager and Terogram collective chat
Speaker 2: member arrested this summer, was a member of an Active
Speaker 2: Club cell in New Jersey. Active Clubs in Finland are
Speaker 2: involved in paramilitary training of Karelians reparatist groups that fight
Speaker 2: alongside the Russian Volunteer Corps, the same Nazi paramilitary group
Speaker 2: in Ukraine that Andrew Takestov was on his way to
Speaker 2: join when he was arrested. All that to say this
Speaker 2: isn't just guys lifting weights together and talking about their
Speaker 2: love of the white race. Active club members on multiple
Speaker 2: continents have been arrested for acts of violence and for
Speaker 2: planning acts of terrorism, and the reason I can tell
Speaker 2: you with an unusually high degree of certainty that Tyler
Speaker 2: Diykes was a member of the Southern Suns Active Club
Speaker 2: is because of one particular, no good, very bad day
Speaker 2: that he had on March seventeenth, twenty twenty three. You see,
Speaker 2: Tyler Dykes was indicted by a grand jury in Virginia
Speaker 2: in February of twenty twenty three, but he didn't know
Speaker 2: that nobody did. Grand juries are secret things, and his
Speaker 2: indictment stayed sealed until he was taken into custody. And
Speaker 2: with an out of state warrant, you don't just send
Speaker 2: a local cop down to get him. You could, I suppose,
Speaker 2: but they didn't. The local prosecutor where the charge is
Speaker 2: filed can ask cops in the city where they think
Speaker 2: he lives to go look for him, but they aren't
Speaker 2: always super interested in doing. Some out of town courts
Speaker 2: work for them, so oftentimes an out of state warrant
Speaker 2: just sort of sits open waiting for you to step
Speaker 2: on it, like a rake on the ground. If you've
Speaker 2: ever been pulled over, you've seen a cop take your
Speaker 2: license and walk back to his car. He's putting your
Speaker 2: name into a computer, and if you have an open warrant,
Speaker 2: he's going to find it.
Speaker 1: If you cross a.
Speaker 2: Border or go through TSA, or get a speeding ticket,
Speaker 2: or have really almost any kind of interaction with a
Speaker 2: cop up, they're going to run your name. And in
Speaker 2: Tyler Dyke's case, he was sitting in an emergency room
Speaker 2: in South Carolina making a police report a bought a
Speaker 2: dog bite. Saint Patrick's Day is a big deal in Savannah, Georgia.
Speaker 2: I'm not entirely sure why, and that wasn't a rabbit
Speaker 2: hole i'd let myself pursue this week, but it is.
Speaker 2: I'm sure there's some particular moment in history where the
Speaker 2: city had an unusually high concentration of Irishmen, and the
Speaker 2: only lasting legacy is the nation's second most debaucherous green
Speaker 2: beer soaked parade. I was in Savannah for Saint Patrick's
Speaker 2: Day in two thousand and eight, but there was a
Speaker 2: tornado that weekend and the blackout closed most of the bar,
Speaker 2: so I don't think I got the full experience. And
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty three, the Southern Sun's Active Club had
Speaker 2: the brilliant idea that Saint Patrick's Day and Savannah would
Speaker 2: be the perfect time and the perfect place to hang
Speaker 2: a Nazi banner from a highway overpass, because all the
Speaker 2: extra traffic in town meant more people would see their message.
Speaker 2: Thanks to an Atlanta based anti fascist research collective, we
Speaker 2: have an inside look at the private conversations Dykes and
Speaker 2: his friends had that day as they were going about
Speaker 2: trying to get that banner up. The day didn't start
Speaker 2: off well. The group had some trouble locating a good
Speaker 2: spot for their banner. They weren't the only ones who
Speaker 2: anticipated heavy traffic from tourists heading into town for the holiday.
Speaker 2: There were cops nearby several of the locations they'd hope
Speaker 2: to hit. When they finally found a suitable spot, Tyler
Speaker 2: Diykes walked back to his car to get the tools
Speaker 2: they would need to hang the banner, but before he
Speaker 2: got back to his car, he encountered someone walking their dogs.
Speaker 2: Diykes claims that he was mauled by three pit bulls,
Speaker 2: but that seems like a bit of an over statement.
Speaker 2: In the infiltrated group chat, he posted a photo of
Speaker 2: a small, but unpleasant looking wound on his left pinky finger.
Speaker 2: I feel like you'd come away with more than a
Speaker 2: two inch cut on your little finger if you were
Speaker 2: truly attacked by even one dog, let alone three pit bulls.
Speaker 2: But we only have Tyler's word on this one. A
Speaker 2: little before six pm, he texted the Southern Son's Group
Speaker 2: Chat that he was headed to the hospital to have
Speaker 2: his hand looked at. While he was waiting to be
Speaker 2: seen at the hospital, he texted the group chat again
Speaker 2: to let them know that the plan had gone awry
Speaker 2: and unfortunately they hadn't been able to hang any of
Speaker 2: the banners that day, writing quite literally, everything that could
Speaker 2: possibly have gone wrong all happened at exactly the same time.
Speaker 2: Half an hour later, though, nothing else went very wrong
Speaker 2: for Tyler Dikes, and he texted the group again, I'm
Speaker 2: being arrested by Virginia nuke my account. Dog bites, like
Speaker 2: gunshot wounds are something that hospital staff are required to
Speaker 2: report to the authorities. While Tyler Diykes was waiting for
Speaker 2: a doctor to look at his hand, an officer arrived
Speaker 2: to take a police report. And when you talk to
Speaker 2: a cop in some official capacity, he's going to run
Speaker 2: your name. I can't even imagine his surprise when the
Speaker 2: officer informed him that he was a wanted fugitive in
Speaker 2: a state he hadn't visited in years. His hand was fine,
Speaker 2: it seems, and he was taken directly into custody from
Speaker 2: the emergency room that night. It took nearly a month
Speaker 2: to arrange for his extradition back to Virginia, during which
Speaker 2: time he remained in custody. When Tyler Diykes was finally
Speaker 2: transported up to Virginia, his attorney asked for a bond hearing.
Speaker 2: Makes sense he'd been in custody for a month, and
Speaker 2: it was at that April twenty twenty three bond hearing
Speaker 2: that I first saw Tyler Dikes. At that hearing, Tyler
Speaker 2: Diykes's father, Scott, took the stand to tell the judge
Speaker 2: that if his son was allowed to return home with him,
Speaker 2: he would ensure that his son stayed out of trouble
Speaker 2: and would return for all of his court hearings. And
Speaker 2: then the prosecutor handed Scott Diykes a few pieces of paper.
Speaker 2: Is that your son? He asked. Scott Dykes was still
Speaker 2: staring down at the paper in his hands when he said, softly, reluctantly,
Speaker 2: it looks like it could be. The pages in his
Speaker 2: hands were printed out stills from security camera footage showing
Speaker 2: a tall, dark haired young man putting up flyers with
Speaker 2: swastikas on them in Sumter, South Carolina. In November of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty, the prosecutor asked Scott Dikes if he knew
Speaker 2: why his son had been discharged from the Marines. He
Speaker 2: didn't know. Tyler had apparently not even told his parents
Speaker 2: that he'd been given an other than honorable discharge. He
Speaker 2: didn't tell his parents that he'd been interviewed by an
Speaker 2: FBI agent from the Joint Terrorism Task Force in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: or that he was a suspect in the case of
Speaker 2: the Sumter County swastika stickers in twenty twenty. The prosecutor
Speaker 2: didn't ask Scott Dikes where his son was on January sixth,
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one. Maybe he didn't know he should have.
Speaker 2: We know now that the FBI had been investigating Dyke's
Speaker 2: involvement in the insurrection since December of twenty twenty one,
Speaker 2: but they may not have shared that information with a
Speaker 2: county prosecutor. It was Diykes's own messages in the chat
Speaker 2: on the day of his arrest that left him in
Speaker 2: jail without bond after that hearing. Mere hours before his
Speaker 2: arrest on Saint Patrick's Day, he was demonstrating what they
Speaker 2: call consciousness of guilt. That is, behavior that shows you
Speaker 2: knew what you were doing was wrong. His messages show
Speaker 2: that he had attempted to evade police in order to
Speaker 2: find an overpass, which he planned to use tools to
Speaker 2: damage for the purpose of unfurling a racist banner. Then,
Speaker 2: upon learning of his arrest, he demonstrated a willingness to
Speaker 2: destroy evidence, asking other members of the white supremacist group
Speaker 2: to erase his participation, to nuke his account and delete
Speaker 2: the chat so police couldn't read it on his phone
Speaker 2: once it was checked into evidence. In his ruling denying bond,
Speaker 2: the judge told Dikes that day, this court can't believe
Speaker 2: you'll be on good behavior if released from custody. It
Speaker 2: was barely a month later that Tyler Dykes decided to
Speaker 2: plead guilty to the charge of burning an object with
Speaker 2: the intent to intimidate. The judge handed down a sentence
Speaker 2: of five years, the maximum under the statute, but suspended
Speaker 2: all but six months of it. I don't know if
Speaker 2: this is a common practice everywhere, but I see it
Speaker 2: almost all the time here in Virginia, the judge gives
Speaker 2: you a much longer sentence than he actually expects you
Speaker 2: to serve, and you just serve that little bit of
Speaker 2: your sentence, but that suspended portion hangs over you like
Speaker 2: a sort of damocles that will fall if you get
Speaker 2: into any trouble during some set period of good behavior.
Speaker 2: With the time he'd already served before his extradition and
Speaker 2: credit for good behavior, he was scheduled to be released
Speaker 2: in July of twenty twenty three, just four months after
Speaker 2: that terrible day in March. And here's where I wasted
Speaker 2: a whole day of my life. I was curious to
Speaker 2: see Tyler Dikes walk out of the album roll Charlettsville
Speaker 2: Regional Jail. I can't explain now why I felt like
Speaker 2: that might be an interesting or important thing to see,
Speaker 2: and in retrospect, it really wouldn't have been. But I
Speaker 2: knew his scheduled release date, and I lived nearby, and
Speaker 2: I wasn't busy that day, so I thought i'd try.
Speaker 2: I got up early and drove to the jail. I
Speaker 2: packed snacks and drinks, and I was prepared to wait
Speaker 2: around for a couple of hours. I talked to a
Speaker 2: few people who'd been booked into ACRJ, and typically you
Speaker 2: get released sometime before lunch. But the hours passed and
Speaker 2: they kept passing. I finished all the snacks I brought,
Speaker 2: got bored. It was hot as hell, and I didn't
Speaker 2: want to run my car all day just for the
Speaker 2: AC so I just sat there, sweating, waiting. I watched
Speaker 2: that damn door like a hawk as the hours passed,
Speaker 2: and then I got an email. I have all sorts
Speaker 2: of automated email alerts set up related to court cases
Speaker 2: and custody status of weird little guys all over the country,
Speaker 2: guys I just like to keep track of, or might
Speaker 2: write about one day, or I don't know, just nosy.
Speaker 2: So not a day goes by that I don't get
Speaker 2: some notification that somebody's filed emotion, or they're appealing something,
Speaker 2: or they've been transferred to another facility. It's always something,
Speaker 2: and there it was a custody status changed notification.
Speaker 1: I'd been sitting in.
Speaker 2: The jail parking lot for seven hours waiting for a
Speaker 2: man who never did walk out the front door. This
Speaker 2: email is to inform you that Tyler Diykes with a
Speaker 2: Fender number one zero six five one six three three
Speaker 2: was released from custody on July seventeen, twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2: The release reason is other law enforcement agency, other law
Speaker 2: enforcement agency. Usually the email says bonded out or sentence served,
Speaker 2: but this one said other law enforcement agency. That means
Speaker 2: he wasn't released at all. That means some kind of
Speaker 2: cop from somewhere else picked him up. He never walked
Speaker 2: out the front door because he'd been driven out the
Speaker 2: side entrance in a non script looking SUV with a U. S.
Speaker 2: Marshal at the wheel. I had to wait until the
Speaker 2: following morning for the federal charging documents to show up
Speaker 2: in the system, So it wasn't until July of twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three that I finally knew what the FBI had
Speaker 2: known for a year and a half. Tyler Dikes fought
Speaker 2: his way into the Capitol on January sixth, twenty twenty one.
Speaker 2: He was charged in a ten count indictment with robbery,
Speaker 2: civil disorder, two counts of assaulting, resisting or impeding an
Speaker 2: officer with a dangerous weapon, entering or remaining in a
Speaker 2: restricted building, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building,
Speaker 2: engaging in physical violence in a restricted building, disorderly conduct
Speaker 2: and a capitol building, engaging in physical violence in a
Speaker 2: capitol building, and picketing in a capitol building. He was
Speaker 2: released on bond shortly after being transferred into federal custody,
Speaker 2: and in addition to the standard rules of pre trial release,
Speaker 2: the judge specifically mandated that he have no contact with
Speaker 2: members of the Southern Sun's Active Club or any related
Speaker 2: group while out on bond, and he was ordered to
Speaker 2: live at his parents' home and keep to a strict curfew.
Speaker 2: In April of twenty twenty four, he accepted a plea
Speaker 2: agreement that dropped eight of the ten charges of the indictment,
Speaker 2: pleading guilty only to the two counts of assaulting, resisting,
Speaker 2: or impeding certain officers, and with the dangerous weapon element
Speaker 2: dropped with no trial, Some questions about this case will
Speaker 2: probably never get answered. In December of twenty twenty one,
Speaker 2: the FBI received an anonymous tip from someone who said
Speaker 2: Dikes told them he had entered the Capitol on January sixth.
Speaker 2: The full text of the tip is printed in a
Speaker 2: filing by the government. The suspect is Tyler Dikes lives
Speaker 2: in Bluffton, South Carolina. I was with Dikes and we
Speaker 2: started talking about the January sixth attack. We had differing
Speaker 2: opinions about it, but was respectful. He then told me
Speaker 2: about how he went into the capitol with a mask
Speaker 2: on with the other rioters and started beating up police officers.
Speaker 2: He states he was still in the military at the time.
Speaker 2: He said he has video evidence of him being there,
Speaker 2: but he did not show me since we were in
Speaker 2: a public setting. He was there for fund and wanting
Speaker 2: to make a statement. He was there with other group
Speaker 2: of people, but would not state who. I believe he
Speaker 2: was telling the truth about it, and I believe he
Speaker 2: needs to be investigated. The Asian assigned to investigate the
Speaker 2: tip confirmed the sources identification of Dikes through typical investigative
Speaker 2: means things like issuing a subpoena to his cell phone provider,
Speaker 2: comparing footage from the capital to the suspects, DMV photo,
Speaker 2: and so on. But he had an extra source this time,
Speaker 2: something an FBI agent doesn't usually have at his disposal
Speaker 2: when he investigates an anonymous tip like this. He already
Speaker 2: knew what Tyler Diykes looked like. He had met Tyler
Speaker 2: Dikes before The agent assigned to follow up on this
Speaker 2: tip was the one who had interviewed Dikes in January
Speaker 2: of twenty nineteen regarding his potential ties to domestic extremist groups.
Speaker 2: No additional information was offered in this affidavit about the
Speaker 2: circumstances that prompted their first meeting, whether any follow up
Speaker 2: investigation was done, or if that investigation was at the
Speaker 2: request of or reported to the Marine Corps, or even
Speaker 2: which extremist group the FBI believed he was involved in
Speaker 2: in twenty nineteen, because it couldn't have been the Southern
Speaker 2: Sun's Active Club. The active club network didn't really exist
Speaker 2: that early on, back in January of twenty nineteen, and
Speaker 2: the Southern Suns chapter certainly didn't. The agent doesn't give
Speaker 2: me even a crumb to work with here, so I
Speaker 2: don't know. And whatever it was about, that wasn't what
Speaker 2: led to Dikes's discharge from the Marines. The military records
Speaker 2: filed in this case are sealed, but references made to
Speaker 2: them specifically cite those November twenty twenties swastika flyers in
Speaker 2: Sumter County, South Carolina as the reason for his discharge,
Speaker 2: and that's as much concrete information as we're likely ever
Speaker 2: going to get about the reason for his removal from
Speaker 2: the military. In a text found on his phone after
Speaker 2: his arrest, Dikes had sent a photo of his discharged
Speaker 2: letter to someone. He claimed he was being discharged quote
Speaker 2: for being incredibly political with my fellow Beaux Marines after
Speaker 2: the twenty twenty election, incredibly political. When he was interviewed
Speaker 2: by the probation office for the pre sentenced investigation report
Speaker 2: in his federal criminal case, he lied. He told the
Speaker 2: probation office that he was asked to leave the military
Speaker 2: after not reporting for drill, and that wasn't the only
Speaker 2: time he lied. The government sentencing memorandum also indicates that
Speaker 2: despite his willingness to plead guilty to the charges to
Speaker 2: be honest about his conduct on that day, he was
Speaker 2: not truthful in his final interview with federal agents. The
Speaker 2: terms of his plea agreement required his cooperation with the
Speaker 2: ongoing investigation into the events of January sixth. Part of
Speaker 2: that agreement was a final debrief interview with federal agents,
Speaker 2: which was conducted on June twenty eighth, twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: In that interview, Bigs again told agents that he left
Speaker 2: his home in South Carolina mid morning on January fifth,
Speaker 2: and arrived in DC that evening, sometime after dark, but
Speaker 2: early enough to have dinner with his friends before checking
Speaker 2: into his hotel for the night. And that's not true
Speaker 2: because his cell phone tells a very different story. Records
Speaker 2: obtained from Verizon show that his phone was in Marathon, Florida,
Speaker 2: at three twenty pm on January fifth. A little before
Speaker 2: eight pm, he took a photo with his cell phone
Speaker 2: of a slip printed by an American Airlines kiosk at
Speaker 2: the Miami Airport, indicating that he would need to see
Speaker 2: a ticket agent for assistance. His phone pinged again an
Speaker 2: hour outside his home in South Carolina at twelve thirty
Speaker 2: a m. On January six. No clear conclusion is drawn
Speaker 2: in the memo. The prosecutor doesn't write out exactly what
Speaker 2: he thinks this means, but it appears that Dikes drove
Speaker 2: thirteen hundred miles from the Florida Keys to Washington, d C.
Speaker 2: Overnight after unsuccessfully trying to board a flight in Miami.
Speaker 2: It would be very hard to forget driving for twenty
Speaker 2: hours and then immediately fighting your way inside the United
Speaker 2: States Capitol. Even three years after the fact. That's not
Speaker 2: something you'd forget, is it. It seems far more likely
Speaker 2: that he chose to conceal his activities in the lead
Speaker 2: up to January sixth, But why it seems unlikely now
Speaker 2: that the DOJ would choose to pursue additional charges, although remember,
Speaker 2: it is a federal crime to lie to an FBI agent,
Speaker 2: and it obviously wasn't something they cared enough about to
Speaker 2: ask the judge to reject the plea agreement, which they
Speaker 2: could have Whenever he was hiding about his trip to
Speaker 2: Florida the day before the insurrection, he must have felt
Speaker 2: like it was worth the possibility of a lot of
Speaker 2: extra prison time to keep it to himself. The government
Speaker 2: sentencing memo also details some of what was found on
Speaker 2: Dike's phone. In the Southern Suns group chat, he used
Speaker 2: the name Nocturnal Wolf. The prosecutor who prepared the memo
Speaker 2: included several examples of materials found on the phone related
Speaker 2: to the pseudonym things about Wolves. One of those little
Speaker 2: odds and ends about wolves was the front cover of
Speaker 2: a Terogram collective publication called do It for the Gram,
Speaker 2: which bears the phrase faceless Lone Wolf. The prosecutor makes
Speaker 2: no mention of the contents of the document or the
Speaker 2: fact that it is a three hundred page manual on
Speaker 2: how to commit varying acts of terrorism. It seems he
Speaker 2: was perhaps unaware that he'd stumbled across a piece of
Speaker 2: neo Nazi terrorist propaganda. There's no transcript of his sentencing
Speaker 2: filed in the case, but NBC's Ryan J. Riley reported
Speaker 2: that quote Dikes did not distance himself from extremist ideologies,
Speaker 2: nor did he say he no longer believes the former
Speaker 2: president's lies about the election. His biggest expression of regret
Speaker 2: seemed to be for his elderly parents, who adopted him
Speaker 2: as a child and who are still providing him with
Speaker 2: a monthly allowance. Diykes was given a few months to
Speaker 2: get his affairs in order after being sentenced to fifty
Speaker 2: seven months back in July. The day before he was
Speaker 2: scheduled to turn himself in to begin serving his sentence,
Speaker 2: he filed a last minute motion asking for.
Speaker 1: Just one month.
Speaker 2: The reasons he gave were a series of doctor's appointments
Speaker 2: that he needed to drive his eighty six year old
Speaker 2: father to The judge was unimpressed by Diys's desire to
Speaker 2: drive his dad to the gastroentrologist and denied the motion.
Speaker 2: He reported to prison last week on October ninth, twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four. If you don't have any disciplinary issues, you
Speaker 2: typically serve eighty five percent of federal time, so he
Speaker 2: could be released as early as October of twenty twenty eight,
Speaker 2: just in time for the next presidential election. Weird Little
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