Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media. Hey Molly Conger here. I know I
Speaker 1: left you with a bit of a cliffhanger last week,
Speaker 1: and I'm so sorry I don't have the second half
Speaker 1: of that story for you this week. I thought maybe
Speaker 1: it was the subject matter of giving me a stomach
Speaker 1: ache at first, but I spent half of this week
Speaker 1: lad up with a stomach virus and there was just
Speaker 1: no way to write that story the way I wanted
Speaker 1: to in the time that I had left after I
Speaker 1: finished puking. That'll have to wait until next week. So
Speaker 1: we've got to rerun this week. But don't switch it
Speaker 1: off just yet. I do have a little update to
Speaker 1: the episode for you here at the top. The episode
Speaker 1: originally ran a month ago, so it may still be
Speaker 1: fresh in your mind. It's the story of Matthew Huddle,
Speaker 1: the January sixth writer who was shot and killed during
Speaker 1: a traffic stock just days after he received his federal pardon.
Speaker 1: And when I wrote it was a lot of unanswered questions.
Speaker 1: We have some of those answers. Now Here's where I
Speaker 1: left things a month ago. It's unwise to speculate about
Speaker 1: the altercation that may have occurred in the minutes before
Speaker 1: Huddle was shot and killed by a Jasper County Sheriff's deputy.
Speaker 1: I don't know what happened there on the side of
Speaker 1: Indiana State Road fourteen. We don't know what was said,
Speaker 1: or why things escalated, or where exactly the deputy saw
Speaker 1: the gun. But I do know that Matthew Huddle was
Speaker 1: due back in court next week for a status conference
Speaker 1: on a stack of still unresolved felony cases for driving
Speaker 1: without a license, just days after getting his federal pardon.
Speaker 1: He was probably happy for his uncle Dale, but he'd
Speaker 1: already done his federal time, and now he was looking
Speaker 1: down the barrel at another stay in the county jail,
Speaker 1: and when those blue lights came on behind him, he
Speaker 1: probably knew that this would be yet another felony charge.
Speaker 1: After the episode originally aired, I saw some listeners expressing displeasure,
Speaker 1: discussed even that I'd framed his story as a tragic one.
Speaker 1: I'm not here how to tell you how you should feel.
Speaker 1: That's your business, But for me, his story is sad.
Speaker 1: He wasn't an evil man. I wouldn't go as far
Speaker 1: as to say he was a good man. He had
Speaker 1: a slew of dyse. He had some history of domestic
Speaker 1: violence allegations and a stint in jail for child abuse.
Speaker 1: He stormed the capitol. He owed a lot of child support.
Speaker 1: I don't think he's a person I would have liked,
Speaker 1: but he was also a man who struggled with alcohol addiction,
Speaker 1: and regardless of what he'd done, his death left two
Speaker 1: children without any chance of ever reconciling with their father.
Speaker 1: And for me least, there's never any peace in knowing
Speaker 1: a person's life ended violently, particularly when the cause of
Speaker 1: death was a bullet from a police officer's gun. I
Speaker 1: have to believe that people can change that. Redemption and
Speaker 1: atonement are always possible for those who sincerely strive to
Speaker 1: earn that. But a dead man cannot make amends. That
Speaker 1: possibility is gone now, and that makes it a tragedy
Speaker 1: in my mind. But however you feel about the way
Speaker 1: things ended for Matthew Huddle, we do at least have
Speaker 1: some answers now that the Jasper County Sheriff's Office has
Speaker 1: released the body camera footage of the traffic stop that
Speaker 1: led to the fatal shooting, and it is, for the
Speaker 1: most part, exactly what I thought it would be. The
Speaker 1: deputy stopped Huddle for speeding, both his pending felony cases
Speaker 1: for driving without a license. Getting caught doing it again
Speaker 1: would lead to even more felony charges and even more
Speaker 1: jail time, and he couldn't bear the thought of it.
Speaker 1: The footage of the traffic stop shows it was all
Speaker 1: things considered, going fairly well in the beginning.
Speaker 2: Hello, hang on, good, how are you today? Pretty well?
Speaker 2: The reason I'm pulling yours for seventy and fifty five?
Speaker 1: Any reason we're going.
Speaker 3: That fast today?
Speaker 1: I'll just keeping on the traffic okay, okay, fair enough,
Speaker 1: You got your license and registration on you?
Speaker 2: How can I put in par Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Huddle had been pulled over for speeding. The deputy
Speaker 1: was in good spirits and he wasn't approaching the car confrontationally.
Speaker 2: I just want to let you know that I'm a
Speaker 2: January sixth defendant.
Speaker 4: What do you mean I stormed the cap.
Speaker 2: I'm winning on my pardon really.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I can't really afford to getting in each
Speaker 4: trouble right now.
Speaker 3: Okay, I understand, Okay, I understand.
Speaker 2: I am driving a lot of license right now. Okay,
Speaker 2: So why are you doing that?
Speaker 1: Then? And early in the interaction, as he's producing his
Speaker 1: identification for the officer, Huddle raises the issue of his
Speaker 1: ongoing legal problems. He told the deputy he was still
Speaker 1: working on getting his license back, but I'm actually not
Speaker 1: entirely sure that's true. He had filed a case back
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two seeking the reinstatement of his license,
Speaker 1: but court records show he'd withdrawn that petition voluntarily in
Speaker 1: early twenty twenty three, probably because he was preoccupied during
Speaker 1: that time with his federal criminal case. I can't find
Speaker 1: any indication he'd filed a renewed petition to have his
Speaker 1: license reinstated after he wrapped up his federal case. But
Speaker 1: the officer's demeanor doesn't really change. He's keeping things light,
Speaker 1: chatting with Huddle about the dog in the backseat of
Speaker 1: the van, and then he returned to the cruiser with
Speaker 1: Huddle's documents, and at this point he knows he's going
Speaker 1: to be making an arrest. Whatever comes back from dispatch.
Speaker 1: Huddle has already told the officer that he's driving without
Speaker 1: a license, so he radios for animal Control to meet
Speaker 1: him on the scene to take Huddle's dog, and he
Speaker 1: walks back to the minivan and he asks Huddle to
Speaker 1: step out of the car, and as the two men
Speaker 1: stand behind Huddles van, the deputy explains that he is
Speaker 1: going to have to place him under arrest. Okay, so
Speaker 1: today you're getting off with the verbal warning for the speed.
Speaker 2: However, your habitual traffic violator I know, which means.
Speaker 1: That you are at a felony status for driving while suspended.
Speaker 2: So today you are going to come with me. Well
Speaker 2: I can't, I can't.
Speaker 1: You're gonna have to. Okay, you're gonna go with me today?
Speaker 2: All right, I can't go to jail for this. You're
Speaker 2: going to have to come, can I get it right? No?
Speaker 1: And at this point Huddle looks visibly distressed. He looks
Speaker 1: very anxious. He's picking at his cuticles, and he's trying
Speaker 1: to find some way out of this situation. And the
Speaker 1: officer explains that there's really nothing he can do. Maybe
Speaker 1: if this were a misdemeanor, they could find some other resolution,
Speaker 1: but there's no wiggle room here because it's a felony.
Speaker 1: And as the officer starts to ask him to turn
Speaker 1: around and put his hands behind his back, Huddle makes
Speaker 1: a break for it back to the driver's door of
Speaker 1: his van. As Huddle crawls into the vehicle. The deputy
Speaker 1: is inches behind him, saying, don't you do it, buddy.
Speaker 1: He's reaching for him and grabbing at his jacket, and
Speaker 1: the officer begins to shout no, no, no, and the
Speaker 1: video at this point is obscured by a large pixelated rectangle.
Speaker 1: You don't see Huddle reach for the gun, but it
Speaker 1: seems like it may have been in the glove compartment
Speaker 1: or somewhere on the passenger side, maybe on the floor,
Speaker 1: and you hear Huddle say I'm shooting myself, and the
Speaker 1: deputy cries out again, no, no, no. It's just ten
Speaker 1: seconds from the time Huddle is scrambling back into the
Speaker 1: front seat of the van to the sound of the
Speaker 1: five shots from the deputy's gun as he's retreating backwards
Speaker 1: away from the door. It's just ten seconds, and you
Speaker 1: can't see most of what's actually happening. You can't see
Speaker 1: where Huddle pulled the gun from or where he was
Speaker 1: pointing it once it was in his hand, and that's
Speaker 1: all that was said. Huddle says he's going to shoot himself,
Speaker 1: and the deputy shouts no over and over again, and
Speaker 1: then it's over. The State Police investigation into the incident
Speaker 1: has concluded, and it was presented to the Clinton County
Speaker 1: Prosecutor's Office for independent review. They found the deputy's actions
Speaker 1: were legally justifiable under Indiana state law, and no charges
Speaker 1: will be filed. Matthew Huddle is dead. We can't know
Speaker 1: if he would have shot himself or the officer. We
Speaker 1: can't know if he would have appeared in court two
Speaker 1: weeks after that traffic stop for his still pending felony cases.
Speaker 1: We can't know if he would have made amends, paid
Speaker 1: his child support, tried to be a better father, or
Speaker 1: tried to find a place in the right wing media
Speaker 1: ecosystem that has now made him a martyr. We'll never know,
Speaker 1: because he died there on the side of State Road fourteen.
Speaker 1: That's the end of his story. And here's the episode
Speaker 1: where I tried to tell the beginning of it. I'll
Speaker 1: be back next week with a new episode of Weird
Speaker 1: Little Guys. On January twenty sixth, twenty twenty five. Matthew
Speaker 1: Huddle died. That much we know for certain. Usually I
Speaker 1: tell you a story that's old enough that the ink
Speaker 1: is not only dry, but it's begun to fade. A little.
Speaker 1: The reports are in, the motions have been filed, argued,
Speaker 1: 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 under way. But
Speaker 1: Matthew Huddle is dead.
Speaker 3: That much we know.
Speaker 1: Just days before he died, he'd gotten some long awaited
Speaker 1: good news. His uncle Dale was coming home. Both men
Speaker 1: were among the nearly sixteen hundred people pardoned by Donald
Speaker 1: Trump in one of his first actions after being sworn
Speaker 1: in his president. Matthew had already served his six month sentence,
Speaker 1: but when the pardons came through, Dale Huddle was just
Speaker 1: a few months in to a two and a half
Speaker 1: year term at a prison in Illinois.
Speaker 3: On the afternoon that he.
Speaker 1: Died, Matthew Huddle was driving somewhere in Jasper County, Indiana.
Speaker 1: I don't know where he was going, but I do
Speaker 1: know he wasn't supposed to be driving, and according to
Speaker 1: the Jasper County Sheriff, he was speeding. I can only
Speaker 1: assume that the altercation that allegedly ensued began after the
Speaker 1: sheriff's deputy discovered that Huddle did not have a valid
Speaker 1: driver's license. The deputy claims Huddle resisted when he tried
Speaker 1: to place him under arrest, and it was during this
Speaker 1: altercation that the sheriff says the deputy discovered that Huddle
Speaker 1: was in possession of a firearm, which she was not
Speaker 1: legally allowed to have, the final moments of Matthew Huddle's
Speaker 1: life will eventually be settled in some sort of official report.
Speaker 1: Maybe they'll release the deputy's body worn camera footage. Maybe
Speaker 1: his family will file a lawsuit. The final page hasn't
Speaker 1: been written yet. I don't have the answers. All I
Speaker 1: have is a sad story, but a man who believed
Speaker 1: in nothing and died on the side of Indiana State
Speaker 1: Road fourteen. I'm Molly Conger, his 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 4: And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going
Speaker 4: to have a 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: confirmed 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 5: So let's walk down Pennsylvania avenue.
Speaker 2: I want to thank you all.
Speaker 5: God bless you, and God bless America.
Speaker 2: Thank you all for being here.
Speaker 4: This is incredible.
Speaker 2: Thank 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. You almost certainly already know how that
Speaker 1: day ended. Even if you live in a cave in
Speaker 1: the woods without access to the internet, you can't possibly
Speaker 1: have escaped this news. Thousands of Trump supporters descended on
Speaker 1: the United States Capitol Building. They tore down police barricades.
Speaker 1: They engaged in a pitched battle with the Capitol police
Speaker 1: on the steps outside, them forced their way into the building.
Speaker 1: People died. United States Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick passed
Speaker 1: away on January seventh after suffering a series of strokes.
Speaker 1: His cause of death was eventually ruled to be natural causes,
Speaker 1: though several neurologists have argued that the events of the
Speaker 1: prior day almost certainly contributed to his death. Cute On
Speaker 1: believer Ashley Babbitt was shot as she forced her way
Speaker 1: into the building through a broken window. Roseanne Boylen was
Speaker 1: trampled by the stampeding crowd, though her official cause of
Speaker 1: death was ruled to be an amphetamine overdose, and Kevin
Speaker 1: Greeson had a heart attack on the Capitol grounds. This week,
Speaker 1: as I was combing back through my own videos of
Speaker 1: that afternoon, I discovered that I had captured the moment
Speaker 1: that I realized I was watching a man die.
Speaker 3: Over the roar of the crowd.
Speaker 1: You can hear someone next to me, I say, they've
Speaker 1: been giving him chess compressions for way too long.
Speaker 3: And then there's my own voice.
Speaker 1: I know it's my voice, but I don't remember saying
Speaker 1: it from years in the past. I heard myself say
Speaker 1: he's going to die, and a few minutes after that,
Speaker 1: I saw his dead body being carried away. Surely other
Speaker 1: people saw him too, but no one seemed to react
Speaker 1: at all to the sight of a corpse making its
Speaker 1: way through the crowd. Over the last four years, federal
Speaker 1: charges were filed against nearly sixteen hundred members of that crowd.
Speaker 1: Nearly thirteen hundred had been convicted, with another three hundred
Speaker 1: cases still open as of the four year anniversary of
Speaker 1: the riot. Those cases will never go to trial, though,
Speaker 1: because last month, hours after being sworn in as president
Speaker 1: for the second time, Donald Trump issued a blanket pardon,
Speaker 1: pardoning almost every single one of them, with the small
Speaker 1: exception of a handful of rioters who only had their
Speaker 1: sentences commuted. There are those who would rewrite the story
Speaker 1: of that day, people who would tell you that it
Speaker 1: was a peaceful protest, that they were patriots and tourists,
Speaker 1: that they couldn't have known that their conduct was unlawful.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure there's anything I can do to change
Speaker 1: anyone's mind. The evidence to the contrary is readily available,
Speaker 1: but it's never seemed to matter.
Speaker 3: I could tell you that I.
Speaker 1: Saw a man, eyes red with pepper spray and wide
Speaker 1: with wild determination, pry a metal drain grate out of
Speaker 1: the ground with the end of an American flagpole, before
Speaker 1: pressing back into the fray with his newly acquired weapon.
Speaker 1: I could tell you I saw a man with a
Speaker 1: literal pitchfork sprinting down the Capitol lawn. I could spend
Speaker 1: the next year covering a different January sixth rioterer every week,
Speaker 1: painstakingly tracking their affiliations with militias and white supremacist street gangs.
Speaker 3: But I don't really want to.
Speaker 1: There's plenty of media about the men who were there
Speaker 1: that day. Old books have been written about them, Whole
Speaker 1: podcasts have dedicated themselves to that work. There are some
Speaker 1: weird little guys who ended up there that day, But
Speaker 1: I'll get to But I can't bear the thought of
Speaker 1: returning to that well for too many stories, because a
Speaker 1: lot of those stories are kind of the same. While
Speaker 1: the seditious conspiracy at the heart of the violence was
Speaker 1: cooked up by oathkeepers and proud boys, men with an
Speaker 1: ideological commitment to violence and ties to organized groups dedicated
Speaker 1: to carrying it out, most of the crowd was made
Speaker 1: up of men far too ordinary to be concidered a
Speaker 1: weird little guy. And maybe that in itself is a
Speaker 1: subject worth exploring. How could an ordinary man end up
Speaker 1: crawling over broken glass on his way to break into
Speaker 1: a senator's office. How could a reeltor from the suburbs
Speaker 1: step over a woman's dead body in his haste to
Speaker 1: physically confront a member of Congress. How did men with
Speaker 1: back the blue bumper stickers on their brand new Ford
Speaker 1: pickup trucks end up fistfighting cops on the steps of
Speaker 1: the Capitol. I don't think I'm equipped to answer that,
Speaker 1: but I can try to tell you the sad story
Speaker 1: of how one of them ended up dead. Matthew Huddle
Speaker 1: did not vote for Donald Trump in the twenty twenty election.
Speaker 1: Perhaps he would have, It's impossible to say, but he'd
Speaker 1: lost his right to vote years ago first felony conviction.
Speaker 1: He struggled with alcohol addiction for his entire adult life,
Speaker 1: racking up charges for driving while intoxicated at a pretty
Speaker 1: alarming rate, and he was back in jail for yet
Speaker 1: another duy in November of twenty twenty when the election
Speaker 1: took place. He was fresh off this stint in the
Speaker 1: county jail when his uncle Dale asked him for a favor.
Speaker 1: He needed a ride to.
Speaker 3: Washington, d c.
Speaker 1: The reason given in the court documents is that Dale,
Speaker 1: at sixty nine years old, had poor eyesight and quote
Speaker 1: should not drive, especially at night.
Speaker 3: But I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: How to square that with the knowledge that Dale was
Speaker 1: at that time employed as a delivery driver at her
Speaker 1: auto parts store. Nor has any explanation offered as to
Speaker 1: why Matthew agreed to drive his uncle seven hundred miles
Speaker 1: from Indiana to d C 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
Speaker 1: defense attorney.
Speaker 5: Matt is not a true believer in any political movement.
Speaker 5: He cannot legally vote, and he knows very little about
Speaker 5: politics and does not follow it. He is somewhat distrustful
Speaker 5: of the government in general, but he did not know
Speaker 5: 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 Ellipse.
Speaker 1: As the capital came into view, Matthew Huddle says, allowed
Speaker 1: to know, and in particular, we're going to see if
Speaker 1: we can get inside. But moments later he turns to
Speaker 1: his uncle Dale and says he's not sure they're going
Speaker 1: to be able to get close because of the police presence.
Speaker 1: His uncle replies quote, I think we ought to bum
Speaker 1: rush the Capitol building arrest them all. We've got enough
Speaker 1: people to do that, and Matthew agrees they could try
Speaker 1: to get close. By two pm, they were deep within
Speaker 1: the mass of rioters at the base of the steps
Speaker 1: at the west entrance of the Capitol. Police on the
Speaker 1: steps were firing flash bangs and tear gas canisters, trying
Speaker 1: to keep the crowd at bay. In his video, as
Speaker 1: described in the court filings, Matthew was surprised by the
Speaker 1: 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 flash
Speaker 1: bangs and scattered chance of you say, you say, and
Speaker 1: it being shortly after two pm, here's my best guess
Speaker 1: at that exact moment being described. Oh yes, that is
Speaker 1: my little squeal of surprise at the sound of the flashbangs.
Speaker 3: 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 up 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.
Speaker 3: Screaming at them.
Speaker 1: Saying things like, look back there, there's a million of us.
Speaker 3: You think you can stop.
Speaker 1: Us, and it's going to get real ugly if you
Speaker 1: don't let us in. Man, it's going to get real ugly.
Speaker 1: We're coming in. And at some point he turns to
Speaker 1: his nephew and points up at the Capitol building and
Speaker 1: he says, we're going in the front door. But Dale
Speaker 1: Huddle never did make it inside. The men got separated
Speaker 1: on the steps. The officers who'd been trying to hold
Speaker 1: them at bay retreated under attack, giving Matthew a Huddle
Speaker 1: an opening to run up the stairs, but Dale stayed
Speaker 1: behind and kept fighting Instead of taking his chance to
Speaker 1: climb the steps and actually go inside. He followed the
Speaker 1: retreating officers, continuing the attack. Another video shows the old
Speaker 1: man red faced with tears streaming from his eyes from
Speaker 1: pepper spray unloaded by a rioter behind him, and he's
Speaker 1: charging toward an officer trying to rip his gas mask off,
Speaker 1: and then he tries to wrench the baton out of
Speaker 1: another officer's hands. With his uncle preferring to stay behind
Speaker 1: and fight, Matthew followed the crowd through the now open
Speaker 1: doors on the Upper West Terrace. In his own video,
Speaker 1: he says, we're going in as he crosses the threshold.
Speaker 1: And for sixteen minutes he just wandered around in there.
Speaker 3: He didn't hurt.
Speaker 1: Anyone, he didn't steal anything, he didn't break anything, was
Speaker 1: just kind of wandering around. It's hard to square the
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 3: Ever happened to you guys before.
Speaker 1: He briefly joined in with a group of guys just
Speaker 1: marching around chanting, you say.
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 3: 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 1: and then they went home. In the days after the
Speaker 1: Huddles returned home to Indiana, the FBI set to work
Speaker 1: identifying the rioters. Those who assaulted federal officers were understandably
Speaker 1: a high priority, and the bureau released images of those suspects,
Speaker 1: each identified by the letters AFO for assault on a
Speaker 1: Federal Officer and given a unique number. Just three months
Speaker 1: after the riot, photos of AFO two nine to nine
Speaker 1: went up on the FBI's website. Over the next few months,
Speaker 1: more than a dozen tips came in about AFO two
Speaker 1: nine nine, but none of.
Speaker 3: Them were right.
Speaker 1: It sounds like it was facial recognition that got Dale Huddle.
Speaker 1: The charging documents just say that law enforcement databases were
Speaker 1: used to match the images to his passport photos, and
Speaker 1: by August, FBI agents were watching dale Huddle. They surveilled
Speaker 1: him at his home and his workplace several times in
Speaker 1: late twenty twenty one. In March of twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: they approached his boss, who identified Dale in several photos
Speaker 1: from the riot and provided record showing he'd taken off
Speaker 1: work the week of January sixth, twenty twenty one. Both
Speaker 1: Matthew and Dale Huddle were eventually charged and arrested. In
Speaker 1: November of twenty twenty two. Dale was picked up in
Speaker 1: the parking lot on his way into work one morning,
Speaker 1: and Matthew was, for reasons not entirely clear to me,
Speaker 1: arrested in Boise, Idaho, and both men would eventually take
Speaker 1: plea agreements. Just like over a thousand others of the
Speaker 1: approximately thirteen hundred January sixth defendants who'd been convicted before
Speaker 1: those blanket pardons, Matthew pled guilty to a single misdemeanor
Speaker 1: count of entering and remaining in a restricted building and
Speaker 1: was sentenced to six months. He finished serving that sentence
Speaker 1: in July of twenty twenty four. Dale bled guilty to
Speaker 1: a single felony account of assaulting an officer with a
Speaker 1: dangerous weapon, specifically for jabbing that officer with his flagpole
Speaker 1: during the struggle on the stairs. He was sentenced to
Speaker 1: thirty months in July twenty twenty four, meaning he was
Speaker 1: one of about two hundred January sixth defendants who were
Speaker 1: actually still in federal custody at the time of the pardons.
Speaker 1: And like I said, almost everyone who was convicted led guilty.
Speaker 1: Actually going to trial in a federal criminal case is
Speaker 1: pretty rare, a fact we've talked about before in other episodes.
Speaker 1: It's not really a good system. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: pressure to take a plea deal, and that may not
Speaker 1: always be fair. In Dale's case, though, I think the
Speaker 1: plea was absolutely the right call. A few days after
Speaker 1: his arrest, after he'd been released on bond, a CBS
Speaker 1: News reporter from Chicago knocked on his door in a
Speaker 1: conversation that lasted more than seven minutes, Much to his
Speaker 1: attorney's dismay. I'm sure the reporter pulled out a printed
Speaker 1: copy of the criminal complaint.
Speaker 4: They're saying that that this is you, that you know
Speaker 4: you have a flag 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 4: So you're saying in court you'd like to see video.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I will see testimony and body camps as well.
Speaker 4: But you you agree this is you.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, Okay. I'm not ashamed of being there. It was
Speaker 2: 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 off 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 an 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 4: And do you believe that Trump invited you there and
Speaker 4: that he wanted you to overthrow He.
Speaker 2: Invited us to go down there. Issue seen out film,
Speaker 2: Let your voices be heard, Okay, but do you think
Speaker 2: he encouraged violence? Well, I just sat there or stood
Speaker 2: there with half a million people listening to his speech,
Speaker 2: and in that speech, both Giuliani and hisself said, we
Speaker 2: were going to have to fight like hell to save
Speaker 2: our country. Okay, Now, rather it was a figure of
Speaker 2: speech or not, It wasn't taken.
Speaker 4: That way, right, You didn't take it as a figure
Speaker 4: 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 5: Not knowledgeable about the Internet. He was not aware that
Speaker 5: Facebook and other social media platforms use machine learning algorithms
Speaker 5: to individualize ads and to dictate content based on previous cliques.
Speaker 5: Mister Huddle believed that the news he was reading was
Speaker 5: covering the general scope of mainstream media and that it
Speaker 5: was a representation of current events. From his viewpoint, the
Speaker 5: vast majority of the media agreed that the democratic process
Speaker 5: 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, right,
Speaker 1: wing news. I have no trouble believing that he was
Speaker 1: trapped in a cycle of seeing nothing but memes where
Speaker 1: a minion in a maga hat is spreading election misinformation
Speaker 1: or links to stories on sites called patriot windnews dot
Speaker 1: 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.
Speaker 3: But I wish that.
Speaker 1: The government, with their vast investigative resources, had dug into
Speaker 1: a curious incident in Dale's past, because I don't think
Speaker 1: this was the first time that Dale Huddle got worked
Speaker 1: up about the need to go to war with the government. Now,
Speaker 1: to be clear, dale Huddle had no criminal history.
Speaker 3: That's true.
Speaker 1: The government didn't miss something that egregious. And I'm even
Speaker 1: willing to believe the defense memo is being truthful when
Speaker 1: they say that at seventy years old, Dale wasn't a
Speaker 1: member of any extremist groups.
Speaker 3: But I found a.
Speaker 1: Picture, a single photograph taken on November fourteenth, two thousand
Speaker 1: and if I had the kinds of resources that the
Speaker 1: government has. I would have tried to find out more
Speaker 1: about this picture. It's just one picture in the newspaper
Speaker 1: snap by an Associated Press photographer, and it's a picture
Speaker 1: of Dale Huddle with a flag. Unlike the photo of
Speaker 1: Dale using an American flag as a weapon on January sixth,
Speaker 1: this photo shows a slightly younger Dale Huddle and he's
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to affix his Gadsden flag,
Speaker 1: you know, the one with the snake that doesn't want
Speaker 1: to be stepped on, and he's trying to affix it
Speaker 1: to the window of a church. November fourteenth, two thousand,
Speaker 1: was the first day of a ninety two day standoff
Speaker 1: with US Marshalls at the Indianapolis Baptist Temple. After years
Speaker 1: of litigation, a federal judge had finally given the order
Speaker 1: for the church to vacate the premises. For seventeen years,
Speaker 1: the Indianapolis Baptist Temple, under Pastor Greg Dixon, had not
Speaker 1: been paying its taxes. You're probably saying, wait, I thought
Speaker 1: churches were tax exempt, and they are. That's true. Churches
Speaker 1: aren't generally speaking automatically exempt from federal income tax, but
Speaker 1: if they have paid employees.
Speaker 3: They still have to withhold.
Speaker 1: And remit employment tax, and the Indianapolis Baptist Temple had
Speaker 1: been refusing to do that since nineteen eighty four, and
Speaker 1: so by the year two thousand they owed the irs
Speaker 1: over six million dollars.
Speaker 3: And this was an intentional, deliberate act.
Speaker 1: They didn't forget that they had to do payroll tax.
Speaker 1: They didn't make a mistake. The church had originally been
Speaker 1: incorporated in nineteen fifty and for almost thirty four years
Speaker 1: the church had a valid employer identification number. They filed
Speaker 1: paperwork with the state to keep their corporate entity in
Speaker 1: good standing. They paid employment taxes to the federal government.
Speaker 3: And then in.
Speaker 1: Nineteen eighty three, Greg Dixon, who'd been the pastor at
Speaker 1: the church since nineteen fifty five, changed his mind. He
Speaker 1: transferred all of the church's assets into an unincorporated religious society,
Speaker 1: and then he changed the corporation's name, which had previously
Speaker 1: been Indianapolis Baptist Temple, he changed it to Not a
Speaker 1: Church Incorporated, and so the church itself no longer exists
Speaker 1: on paper at all, and Dixon is using this not
Speaker 1: a Church corporate entity to run a group called the
Speaker 1: American Coalition for Unregistered Churches. It would later be known
Speaker 1: as the Unregistered Baptist Fellowship.
Speaker 3: Greg Dixon believed that doing.
Speaker 1: Business with the federal government was against his religion. Having
Speaker 1: to do things like tell the irs that your church
Speaker 1: would like to be recognized as a five to one
Speaker 1: C three tax exempt entity or filing paperwork with the
Speaker 1: state actually contravenes the authority of Christ, and if you
Speaker 1: make him do it, you're violating his religious liberty. The
Speaker 1: unregistered Church movement wasn't just refusing to pay their taxes.
Speaker 1: They wanted to avoid almost any contact with the government.
Speaker 1: Churches shouldn't have to abide by building codes or zoning laws,
Speaker 1: or get fire inspections. Babies shouldn't have birth certificates. A
Speaker 1: wedding shouldn't involve a marriage license. In fact, no one
Speaker 1: should have any kind of license. Many of the articles
Speaker 1: I found about this movement make sure to add that
Speaker 1: they do believe that they can use the United States
Speaker 1: Postal Service, but it is a sin to use zip codes.
Speaker 1: The almost complete overlap of guys who don't want to
Speaker 1: pay their taxes and guys who are willing to take
Speaker 1: up arms against the government is something else surely explore
Speaker 1: in depth in an episode dedicated to some character in
Speaker 1: the tax protester movement, but the reason for it is
Speaker 1: probably pretty obvious, and Pastor Greg Dixon wasn't just refusing.
Speaker 3: To pay his taxes. He wanted war.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety two, Greg Dixon gave a speech at
Speaker 1: an event nicknamed the Rocky Mountain Rendezvous after the siege
Speaker 1: at Ruby Ridge, a Christian identity preacher in Colorado put
Speaker 1: out the call the disparate elements of the radical right
Speaker 1: needed to put their heads together and come up with
Speaker 1: a strategy. Klansmen, Neo Nazis, anti Semitic pastors, militia leaders,
Speaker 1: Neo Confederates, tax protesters, bigots, and anti government extremists of
Speaker 1: all stripes in Colorado, and all the big names were there.
Speaker 1: Willie Muther, Peers from National Alliance, Richard Butler from Arian Nations,
Speaker 1: Louis Beam, Kirk Lyons, James Wickstrom. As Kathleen Blue wrote
Speaker 1: in her book Bring the War Home, the militia movement
Speaker 1: as we know it today emerged from the leaders, organizations,
Speaker 1: and tactics of white power organization, and this meeting is
Speaker 1: widely regarded as the birthplace of the modern American militia movement,
Speaker 1: and so at the Rocky Mountain Rendezvous, just before Louis
Speaker 1: Beam's speech about leaderless resistance, Pastor Greg Dixon took the
Speaker 1: stage to call for the establishment of Christian militias, declaring
Speaker 1: we are at war. And Greg Dixon was hardly new
Speaker 1: to organized racism. In the nineteen seventies, his church had
Speaker 1: hosted meetings of a group called Americans for America, a
Speaker 1: KKK affiliated organization that opposed school integration. Indiana's Grand Dragon
Speaker 1: Bill Cheney was a member of the congregation, but in
Speaker 1: the early nineties he was at the bleeding edge of
Speaker 1: a new frontier in white power. All that to say,
Speaker 1: this old picture of dale Huddle outside of a church
Speaker 1: might sound terribly innocuous. Maybe that's his church, and maybe
Speaker 1: he didn't know why his pastor wasn't paying his taxes,
Speaker 1: but it was not. Dale Huddle isn't even Baptist. He
Speaker 1: grew up Lutheran but has been a member of a
Speaker 1: non denominational megachurch called the Family Christian Center since nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty eight. Ever since his mother died. No, dale Huddle
Speaker 1: had no direct connection to this church that I can find.
Speaker 1: But a call had been put out. In September of
Speaker 1: two thousand. After years in court, a judge gave the
Speaker 1: order they had until noon on November fourteenth to get
Speaker 1: out of the building. The government was taking possession of
Speaker 1: the property, and US Marshals were authorized to use force
Speaker 1: if necessary. Michigan Militia leader Norman Olsen ordered militias around
Speaker 1: the country to do their duty and defend the church,
Speaker 1: telling his followers that this was going to be Waco
Speaker 1: Part two. Charlie Puckett of the Kentucky Militia was there
Speaker 1: on November fourteenth. As congregants waited for the US marshals
Speaker 1: to arrive and with news crews rolling in the parking lot,
Speaker 1: Pastor Dixon asked the contingent of Klansmen who showed up
Speaker 1: to support him to maybe stay outside the church, but
Speaker 1: he didn't ask them to leave or disavow their support,
Speaker 1: and that's when this photo was taken. On November fourteenth,
Speaker 1: two thousand, parking lot full of Klansmen, Militia men standing by,
Speaker 1: and Dale huddles outside the Indianapolis Baptist Temple trying to
Speaker 1: figure out how to hang a Gadsden flag on the windows.
Speaker 1: He'd driven two hours from his home in Crown Point,
Speaker 1: and there was no Facebook in two thousand. He didn't
Speaker 1: see a meme that convinced him to go to Indianapolis.
Speaker 1: There's no indication that he was a member of any
Speaker 1: of the militia or clan groups that were there that day,
Speaker 1: but it does seem quite possible that he got the
Speaker 1: same 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 IR, 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 d uise. 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 the articles I read
Speaker 1: about his death quoted an attorney who'd been representing him
Speaker 1: in his dui cases for nearly twenty years, and his
Speaker 1: lawyer says that the man he'd known was not violent.
Speaker 1: I don't know what else you call this, I guess
Speaker 1: in that lawyer's defense, it does look like he'd hired
Speaker 1: a different attorney when he was charged with beating his
Speaker 1: son and his son's mother. After Matthew Huddle blood guilty
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty three to that single misdemeanor charge of
Speaker 1: entering and remaining in a restricted building on January sixth,
Speaker 1: his lawyers asked for a sentence of probation with no
Speaker 1: jail time. They cited his lack of ideological motivation for
Speaker 1: being there, his need to be there for his children,
Speaker 1: and his tragic backstory and struggle with alcoholism. And there
Speaker 1: is a strange and tragic backstory here, but they don't
Speaker 1: actually get into it in this court filing. This part
Speaker 1: I pieced together from state court records, old newspapers.
Speaker 3: And Facebook posts.
Speaker 1: After serving his sentence for meeting his son, he was
Speaker 1: released from jail in twenty thirteen, and he very quickly
Speaker 1: took up with a new girlfriend. Based on the apparent
Speaker 1: age of a photo of their daughter that he posted
Speaker 1: online in twenty fifteen, she had to have been pregnant
Speaker 1: with Huddle's child before she ended her marriage to another man.
Speaker 1: I have said this before, comes up often oddly, but
Speaker 1: I don't care about that. Her infidelity is between her,
Speaker 1: her husband, and her boyfriend. I only mention it because
Speaker 1: of a curious coincidence of dates. The same week her
Speaker 1: divorce was finalized, someone shot Matthew Huddle. There's a single
Speaker 1: mention in the local newspaper in Febuary twenty fifteen, just
Speaker 1: a few days after his daughter's mother finalized her divorce,
Speaker 1: that Huddle had been shot in what was only described
Speaker 1: as quote an incident between family members, and the article
Speaker 1: quotes an officer who says that no one was taken
Speaker 1: into custody at this time, and he wouldn't say how
Speaker 1: the shooter was related to the victim. I couldn't find
Speaker 1: any court records that indicated the charges were ever filed
Speaker 1: against anyone, but I could only check the names I
Speaker 1: thought of his suspects. So it's a bit of a
Speaker 1: needle in a haystack, whoever it was, though someone close
Speaker 1: to him shot Matthew in the back of the knee
Speaker 1: and left him with a lifelong injury, and three years later,
Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen, he was asleep in his bed when
Speaker 1: he woke up to two men beating him with baseball
Speaker 1: bats and hammers. The local newspaper reported the attack was
Speaker 1: motivated by a child custody dispute. One of the assailants,
Speaker 1: Kurt Falkenberg, was in a relationship with the mother of
Speaker 1: Huddle's son. The other man was Falkenberg's uncle, Jeffrey Martin,
Speaker 1: though the two men were only a few years apart
Speaker 1: in age, and the men focused their blows on Huddle's
Speaker 1: left leg because they knew he had a metal rod
Speaker 1: in there from the surgeries he'd gotten after getting shot
Speaker 1: in the leg in his last domestic dispute. Much like
Speaker 1: the story of Matthew and Dale Huddle, this story of
Speaker 1: a very stupid crime committed by an uncle and a
Speaker 1: nephew ends tragically. As Falkenberg and Martin fled the scene,
Speaker 1: they crashed. Falkenberg, who had been driving, was pronounced dead
Speaker 1: at the scene. Officers responding to the car accident which
Speaker 1: put another driver in the hospital with two broken legs,
Speaker 1: found an open bottle of whiskey in Falkenburg's car, and
Speaker 1: they eventually found Jeffrey Martin passed out drunk in a
Speaker 1: creek bed on the side of the road. The following year,
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen, Matthew Huddle was diagnosed with cirrhosis of
Speaker 1: the liver. Twenty years of alcoholism had finally caught up
Speaker 1: to him. The dui he got that summer was the
Speaker 1: one that put him back in jail until shortly before
Speaker 1: he drove to Washington, d C. In January of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one. Now I've read a lot of sentencing memos.
Speaker 1: That's the document filed at the end of a case,
Speaker 1: after a guilty plea or a guilty verdict, where each
Speaker 1: side makes their case one last time, not about guilt
Speaker 1: or innocence now that's settled, but about what they think
Speaker 1: the punishment should be. And we have an adversarial court system.
Speaker 1: Everyone is technically ethically bound to be honest, and the
Speaker 1: purpose of the courts is supposed to be to seek
Speaker 1: the truth, but really everyone is there to win, to
Speaker 1: have their version of the truth ruled to be the
Speaker 1: most true. So I'm really used to seeing a defense
Speaker 1: attorney's sob story and a prosecutor's exaggeration. But I wonder
Speaker 1: maybe if Matthew Huddle's lawyers really were telling a mostly
Speaker 1: true story.
Speaker 3: He didn't vote, he couldn't.
Speaker 1: His family doesn't seem very political. No one in his
Speaker 1: family has ever donated so much as a dollar to
Speaker 1: any federal election. And he did have a long history
Speaker 1: of making spectacularly bad decisions and finding himself in some
Speaker 1: really outlandishly bad situations. I mean, he got his legs
Speaker 1: broken in two unrelated domestic disputes. That doesn't even sound possible.
Speaker 1: So maybe Matthew Huddle is the only January sixth defendant
Speaker 1: who really did end up there by accident, with no
Speaker 1: ideological motivation or violent intent. Plenty of them claimed that
Speaker 1: in court and it never really rings true. But maybe
Speaker 1: for Matthew Huddle, wandering into the Capitol that day was
Speaker 1: just the same kind of criminal accident he was often
Speaker 1: finding himself in, like driving away without paying for a
Speaker 1: tank of gas because he was too drunk to figure
Speaker 1: out how to operate the payment system, but somehow not
Speaker 1: too drunk to drive when I first saw the news
Speaker 1: that had recently pardoned January sixth, the defendant had been
Speaker 1: shot and killed while resisting arrest during a traffic stop.
Speaker 1: I can't say that I was surprised, but.
Speaker 3: 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, a 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.
Speaker 3: 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.
Speaker 3: He had a long list of state charges.
Speaker 1: A federal pardon did nothing for him. In the end,
Speaker 1: it didn't matter who president was. But I guess it
Speaker 1: never really did matter to Matthew. Weird Little Guys is
Speaker 1: a production of Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio. It's research, written,
Speaker 1: and recorded by me Willie Conger. Our executive producers are
Speaker 1: Sophie Littterman and Robert Evans. The show is edited by
Speaker 1: the wildly talented Rory Gagan. The theme music was composed
Speaker 1: by Brad Dickert. You can email me at Rudlue Guys
Speaker 1: Podcast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 3: I will definitely read it, but I'm not going to
Speaker 3: answer it. It's nothing personal.
Speaker 1: You can exchange conspiracy theories about the show with other
Speaker 1: listeners on the Weird Little Guy subreddit. Just don't post
Speaker 1: anything that's going to make you one of my weird
Speaker 1: little guys,