Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media. On October twenty second, twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: two men suddenly found themselves almost entirely unemployable. They didn't
Speaker 1: have the same job, they weren't even in the same state.
Speaker 1: But the bad day they were both having on October
Speaker 1: twenty second was a consequence of a long and complicated
Speaker 1: series of events that started at the same time and
Speaker 1: at the same place for both of them, the evening
Speaker 1: of August eleventh, twenty seventeen, in an empty field behind
Speaker 1: the tennis courts at the University of Virginia, eight years
Speaker 1: after they marched with tiki torches on the eve of
Speaker 1: that deadly Nazi rally in Charlottesville. Men are now convicted felons.
Speaker 1: One of them just had his law license suspended. The
Speaker 1: other is running for Congress. I'm Molly Conger and this
Speaker 1: is where little guys. This is an update to an
Speaker 1: old story, an episode that originally ran on October seventeenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, more than a year ago. That episode
Speaker 1: is back at the top of your feed today in
Speaker 1: case you missed it the first time, or if you
Speaker 1: just want to revisit it alongside this one. That's an
Speaker 1: unusual choice, especially considering Every episode of this show is
Speaker 1: kind of part of the same long story told out
Speaker 1: of order. Every episode connects back to some other storyline,
Speaker 1: and they almost always feature some names I've mentioned before.
Speaker 1: It's a small world, and theirs is even smaller. You
Speaker 1: really can't talk about the lives of these weird little
Speaker 1: guys without seeing all the places where their lives intersect.
Speaker 2: So if I re.
Speaker 1: Ran every old episode that helps add context to the
Speaker 1: current one, I'd end up putting half the show's catalog
Speaker 1: up as reruns every month, and I think that would
Speaker 1: get overwhelming. In this case, though, it felt necessary because
Speaker 1: the man at the center of this story is trying
Speaker 1: to erase that chapter of his life, and he's trying
Speaker 1: to rebrand himself for a big second act. I don't
Speaker 1: think we should let him forget that part of his
Speaker 1: own story. But I didn't want to retell it all here.
Speaker 1: I wanted to leave plenty of roomin this episode to
Speaker 1: talk about this new venture of his, and I didn't
Speaker 1: want to rehash the entirety of the old episode, but
Speaker 1: I wanted to make it easy for you to revisit
Speaker 1: that part of his story because the context is everything here. Obviously,
Speaker 1: I write a new episode of this show every week,
Speaker 1: but I'm never done thinking about the subjects I've written
Speaker 1: about in the past. There are court cases. I keep
Speaker 1: docket alerts on for guys whose custody status. I monitor groups,
Speaker 1: I keep tabs on. I try to stay up to
Speaker 1: date on these weird little guys even after their episodes
Speaker 1: are done. And it's not usually a positive thing when
Speaker 1: there's something in the news that's relevant to the show.
Speaker 1: When I sat down to start writing this script, it
Speaker 1: was Friday morning, and I had just seen on Blue
Speaker 1: Sky that one of you posted a news story about
Speaker 1: AT and T. The company had announced the end of
Speaker 1: their diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and that listener connected
Speaker 1: that news story back to an episode of this show.
Speaker 1: It was an episode that had come out exactly a
Speaker 1: year ago, the Ku Kluks Cable Access TV episode on
Speaker 1: December fifth, twenty twenty four. In that episode, I was
Speaker 1: talking about what happened to the millions of dollars that
Speaker 1: Nazi stole from a Brinks truck in nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 1: and that money ended up all over the place, but
Speaker 1: some of it wound up in the hands of William
Speaker 1: Luther Pearce and his Nazi group National Alliance. They used
Speaker 1: the money to buy land in West Virginia where they
Speaker 1: built their Nazi compound, but they also bought ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollars worth of stock in AT and T. And they
Speaker 1: bought that stock for the express purpose of owning enough
Speaker 1: shares to introduce shareholder resolutions three years in a row.
Speaker 1: Starting in nineteen eighty eight, a neo Nazi showed up
Speaker 1: at the AT and T shareholders meeting and introduced a
Speaker 1: resolution to end the company's affirmative action policies. If you're
Speaker 1: too young to remember that term, it was basically just
Speaker 1: the eighties version of what we call DEI today. In
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight, nineteen eighty nine, and nineteen ninety, shareholders
Speaker 1: at AT and T rejected a racist idea proposed to
Speaker 1: them by a literal neo Nazi. In twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: it's the president attacking those diversity initiatives, and this time
Speaker 1: the company isn't fighting back.
Speaker 2: None of these.
Speaker 1: Stories that I tell on this show are ever really over,
Speaker 1: because history doesn't work like that, So we're sort of
Speaker 1: perpetually revisiting the events of the past and examining how
Speaker 1: they got us into the current political predicament. But today
Speaker 1: we're talking about a very specific update. Tyler Dikes is
Speaker 1: running for Congress and Augustus and Victus has finally been
Speaker 1: suspended from the Florida bar. On a surface level, these
Speaker 1: events are unrelated. I would argue, though, that they are
Speaker 1: in fact developments in the same story. Tyler Diykes was
Speaker 1: the subject of that October twenty twenty four episode The
Speaker 1: one Then's back at the top of your feed today.
Speaker 2: He attended the.
Speaker 1: Unite the Right rally here in Charlottesville back in twenty
Speaker 1: seventeen and participated in the January sixth insurrection in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one. He was arrested and convicted for participating in
Speaker 1: the twenty seventeen torch March in twenty twenty three, and
Speaker 1: on the day that.
Speaker 2: He was supposed to be released from.
Speaker 1: Jail here, the doj unsealed a federal criminal complaint against
Speaker 1: him for January sixth. He was sentenced to fifty seven
Speaker 1: months in prison at the end of twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: only to be released three months later after he received
Speaker 1: a presidential pardon alongside more than fifteen hundred other people
Speaker 1: who'd been charged with crimes related to the events of
Speaker 1: January sixth. As for Augustus and Victus, he hasn't actually
Speaker 1: been covered in an episode of his own, but he
Speaker 1: has come up a fair number of times on the show.
Speaker 1: He's mentioned in that episode about Tyler Dikes because both
Speaker 1: men were convicted on the felony charge of burning an
Speaker 1: object with the intent to intimate for their participation in
Speaker 1: that Nazi torch march on August eleventh, twenty seventeen, at
Speaker 1: the University of Virginia, and that isn't the only time.
Speaker 2: We've talked about him.
Speaker 1: In the episode called an Accidental Nazi Rally from February
Speaker 1: of this year, he was one of the local organizers
Speaker 1: who stepped up to help an Islamophobic group put on
Speaker 1: a nationwide series of rallies against the boogeyman of Sharia
Speaker 1: law in the episode State Created Danger in May, he
Speaker 1: was the attorney who ghost wrote the lawsuit filed against
Speaker 1: the City of Charlottesville by two Nazis who thought the
Speaker 1: police should have proactively assisted them in putting on their rally.
Speaker 1: In the episode stand Back and Stand By that aired
Speaker 1: in June, he was the attorney hired by Enrique Tario
Speaker 1: to represent several members of the Proud Boys who are
Speaker 1: currently suing the government for one hundred million dollars in
Speaker 1: damages for what they feel was an unfair prosecutor against
Speaker 1: them for orchestrating the events of January sixth. So it's
Speaker 1: a name you've probably heard before on this show, even
Speaker 1: if he hasn't officially been the subject of an episode.
Speaker 1: Most of the times you've heard his name it had
Speaker 1: something to do with the fact that he's a practicing attorney.
Speaker 1: As of a few weeks ago, that's no longer the case.
Speaker 1: On October twenty second, twenty twenty five, a clerk at
Speaker 1: the Florida Supreme Court filed an order suspending Augustus Solenvictus
Speaker 1: from the Florida bar. The suspension came just over a
Speaker 1: year after his felony conviction, but they generously held off
Speaker 1: until the State Court of Appeals dismissed his appeal. He
Speaker 1: was given just thirty days to wind down his practice
Speaker 1: in the best interests of his current clients. That same day,
Speaker 1: October twenty second, twenty twenty five, Tyler Diykes lost his
Speaker 1: job too. That afternoon, he tweeted, my name is Tyler
Speaker 1: Dikes I was pardoned by President Trump from my actions
Speaker 1: on January sixth, and I was just fired again. The
Speaker 1: mass media relentlessly posts photos of my Nazi salute on
Speaker 1: the Capitol steps about how I was a violent neo
Speaker 1: Nazi terrorist. What makes me a Nazi? Loving my country,
Speaker 1: loving my family. This is probably the third job I've
Speaker 1: lost this year alone from this. Please, I need your help.
Speaker 1: Thanks to the lies in the media, I'm almost completely
Speaker 1: unable to make a living in anything that isn't politics,
Speaker 1: and that is their biggest mistake.
Speaker 2: Do you know why?
Speaker 1: It's a mistake that they attacked me so because now
Speaker 1: I have no choice but to enter politics and fight
Speaker 1: to make America great again. I don't have a choice.
Speaker 1: But like I said, these two events are unrelated. They
Speaker 1: don't have anything to do with each other except that
Speaker 1: they share the same root cause. Augustus and Victus was
Speaker 1: suspended from the Florida Bar because suspension from the Florida
Speaker 1: Bar is automatic after a felony conviction, and Tyler Dykes
Speaker 1: was fired from a series of jobs in South Carolina
Speaker 1: after his release from prison because, despite that federal pardon,
Speaker 1: he had quite infamously been convicted of felonies related to
Speaker 1: his participation in two of the most infamous violent right
Speaker 1: wing extremist events in America in the current century, the
Speaker 1: Unite the Right rally and the Insurrection. Now, I can't
Speaker 1: tell you for certain exactly why he lost his job
Speaker 1: this time around, but I don't think it would be
Speaker 1: a bad bed to put ten bucks on it, having
Speaker 1: something to do with his weird behavior at the No
Speaker 1: King's rally in Hilton Head a few days earlier. The
Speaker 1: details are different, sure, but if you connect all the dots,
Speaker 1: if you work backwards in each man's story, you'll end
Speaker 1: up at the same place. They became unemployable on October
Speaker 1: twenty second, twenty twenty five, because they both lit that
Speaker 1: tiki torch in twenty seventeen, and then they never.
Speaker 2: Stopped doubling down on it.
Speaker 1: Where that doubling down is leading them, though, is where
Speaker 1: these stories split back off again. And neither of those
Speaker 1: stories are anywhere near over yet, so we'll just have
Speaker 1: to be satisfied with the middle of one of those
Speaker 1: stories today. How to catching a felony at a Nazi
Speaker 1: rally lost one man his licensed to practice law and
Speaker 1: set another down the path to electoral politics. When Tyler
Speaker 1: Diykes made that post on October twenty second about losing
Speaker 1: his job, he included a link to a now deleted
Speaker 1: online fundraiser on the right leaning crowdfunding platform gives and Go.
Speaker 2: Based on some of.
Speaker 1: The other texts in that post, it sounds like the
Speaker 1: fundraiser was geared more towards soliciting money for his personal
Speaker 1: living expenses so he could devote himself full time to
Speaker 1: the nebulous work of politics. Generally, he's not actually announcing
Speaker 1: anything specific here, just that he's going to get into politics.
Speaker 1: And the portion of the post I quoted here doesn't
Speaker 1: include the strange way it began. The body of the
Speaker 1: message is in the first person, right. My name is
Speaker 1: Tyler Dykes was pardoned. I was fired. But before that,
Speaker 1: the message is introduced as quote a message from our leader.
Speaker 1: The account that currently functions as his official Tyler Dykes
Speaker 1: for Congress campaign account didn't start.
Speaker 2: Off that way.
Speaker 1: He'd created the account a few weeks earlier, but it
Speaker 1: was originally called b C. Pat's Assembly, which is short
Speaker 1: for Beaufort County Patriots Assembly, and it is Beaufort in
Speaker 1: South Carolina, which was a surprise to me. There's a
Speaker 1: county with the same name in North Carolina, but in
Speaker 1: North Carolina it's Beaufort. But this is Beaufort. Don't email
Speaker 1: me about it. I looked it up. The domain for
Speaker 1: Patriots Assembly dot com was purchased on October fifth. An
Speaker 1: early post on the Patriots Assembly Twitter account refer to
Speaker 1: Tyler Dikes as quote our leader or our chairman, or
Speaker 1: a prominent leader in our new organization. But after that
Speaker 1: October twenty second post, the account switches to first person language.
Speaker 1: He's no longer pretending to be an entire organization, He's
Speaker 1: just posting as himself now. And the very next day,
Speaker 1: on October twenty third, he posted a now deleted video
Speaker 1: to the right leaning YouTube Knockoff Rumble. According to posts
Speaker 1: he made on other platforms announcing this video, it was
Speaker 1: an hour long and.
Speaker 2: It was called the J six Marine.
Speaker 1: They tried to silence Colan my story of persecution and
Speaker 1: why I'm fighting for christ and America. Honestly, whatever it was,
Speaker 1: it shouldn't have been an hour long, and it needed
Speaker 1: a more concise title. I mean, I'm not workshopping with
Speaker 1: the guy, but come on, but the video is gone,
Speaker 1: so I didn't have to watch it. His entire Rumble
Speaker 1: channel is actually gone now and I was only able
Speaker 1: to find a short clip of this video. Based on
Speaker 1: the clip, though he seemed to be workshopping a campaign message.
Speaker 3: Here's the thing.
Speaker 4: The reason that all of our.
Speaker 3: Republicans sit in congressmen are sick. That we're sick and tired, right.
Speaker 4: The reason they're not doing anything is because they are
Speaker 4: afraid of getting the same treatment that guy. They're afraid
Speaker 4: of doing deportations because they're afraid of the last They're
Speaker 4: afraid of the different attacks, the different phone calls, everything
Speaker 4: they'll get.
Speaker 3: And that's why they're not doing anything.
Speaker 4: And so let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen who
Speaker 4: are watching this, I'm not afraid.
Speaker 1: He was entering politics, all right. He was working up
Speaker 1: to announcing that he's running for Congress. Like I said,
Speaker 1: I only have this brief clip of that hour long video,
Speaker 1: so I don't know what else might have been in there.
Speaker 1: I don't know what he said that made him want
Speaker 1: to delete it afterwards. But if this clip is representative
Speaker 1: of the whole video, it pretty much lines up with
Speaker 1: other things that he's left online, like how he's really
Speaker 1: fixated on making sure you know that it's unfair and
Speaker 1: wrong to call him a Nazi.
Speaker 3: And here's the thing.
Speaker 4: They still call me a Nazi to this thick they
Speaker 4: still randomy is all these evil, horrific things. But let
Speaker 4: me tell you this, what makes me a Nazi? I
Speaker 4: love Christ, I love God, I love my country. I
Speaker 4: love my state, my family, in my community, and the
Speaker 4: entirety of the Low Country area. And that's why I
Speaker 4: live here because I.
Speaker 1: Love you so much.
Speaker 4: So does that make me a Nazi? Does love in
Speaker 4: your family? Does loving God? Does love in your country?
Speaker 4: Does that make you a Nazi? That makes you a Nazi?
Speaker 1: Sophiets, this is the messaging he seems to have settled on.
Speaker 1: He's bravely standing up to people who call him a
Speaker 1: Nazi just because he's a good Christian man who loves
Speaker 1: his country. I guess he knows he's going to have
Speaker 1: to address the fact that people are calling him a Nazi,
Speaker 1: and he's chosen to do that in the most disingenuous
Speaker 1: way possible. On November fifth, he registered a domain for
Speaker 1: his campaign website and filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission.
Speaker 1: He was officially throwing his hat into the ring for
Speaker 1: the Republican primary in South Carolina's first congressional district. That
Speaker 1: primary will be in June of twenty twenty six, and
Speaker 1: it's a crowded field, with nearly a dozen Republicans vying
Speaker 1: for the nomination, and there's no incumbent in the mix.
Speaker 1: The current representative in South Carolina's first district announced in
Speaker 1: August that she won't be seeking reelection. Nancy Mase is
Speaker 1: running for governor instead. The first order of business for
Speaker 1: a new candidate, after filing the paperwork and making the website,
Speaker 1: is making the big announcement a launch party, right, You
Speaker 1: have to create excitement around the campaign. You want to
Speaker 1: recruit volunteers and get people to open their wallets. You
Speaker 1: can't run a campaign without money and volunteers, and this
Speaker 1: is your first shot at both of those. You're setting
Speaker 1: a tone for the campaign. You don't want your launch
Speaker 1: party to flop. So the newly ed Dykes for Congress campaign,
Speaker 1: which is a name that sounds very cool but unfortunately
Speaker 1: doesn't mean what it sounds like at all, set about
Speaker 1: trying to generate buzz by mailing weird letters to people's
Speaker 1: homes all over the first district. Someone who listens to
Speaker 1: this show got one in their mailbox and sent me
Speaker 1: a picture of it.
Speaker 2: Thank you for that.
Speaker 1: It is a single sheet of regular white printer paper.
Speaker 1: It's not a slick, professionally printed campaign mailer, and it
Speaker 1: actually doesn't announce that he's running for office. It starts
Speaker 1: off with a big bold header that says our civilization
Speaker 1: is being destroyed, and it goes downhill fast from there.
Speaker 1: Civilization is being destroyed by communism, George Soros, christ Haters.
Speaker 2: Et cetera. The usual further down the page.
Speaker 1: In this wall of text, which again is on a
Speaker 1: sheet of plain printer paper, civilization is in bold again,
Speaker 1: and this time it's spelled wrong. The letter also addresses
Speaker 1: the quote slander on the leftist news that has falsely
Speaker 1: labeled him a Nazi just because there's an out of
Speaker 1: context photograph of him waving to a friend from the
Speaker 1: steps of the Capitol Building. He closes the letter by
Speaker 1: inviting the recipient to attend a rally on November ninth
Speaker 1: to find out who Tyler Dykes really is. I guess
Speaker 1: it's possible that there was more included in the envelope,
Speaker 1: but there's nothing I can see in any of the
Speaker 1: multiple photos I've seen of this letter that mentions this
Speaker 1: is a political campaign, there's no mention of him running
Speaker 1: for office, there's no mention of a particular group that
Speaker 1: funded the letter. It just says, hey, come to this
Speaker 1: event to hear this guy tell you about how much
Speaker 1: he loves God and hates Communism and how he's not
Speaker 1: really a Nazi like they said in the newspaper. And
Speaker 1: each letter was signed by hand I assume by Tyler personally,
Speaker 1: in oddly childlike handwriting. Under the signature it reads US
Speaker 1: Marine Corps veteran business owner Pardoned J six Patriot. He
Speaker 1: also went door to door with a slightly nicer looking
Speaker 1: flier advertising the same event, and these two failed to
Speaker 1: disclose that the event had anything to do with a
Speaker 1: political campaign. It was billed as a public assembly for
Speaker 1: upholding immigration law, affordable housing, safe streets, and American values.
Speaker 1: And again, based on the photographs I've seen of these flyers,
Speaker 1: they did not appear to even have his name on them.
Speaker 1: It seems like mainly weird letters to people's houses did
Speaker 1: not convince anybody it's a real my I am not
Speaker 1: a Nazi. Flyers are raising a lot of questions already
Speaker 1: answered by my flyers.
Speaker 2: Type of situation.
Speaker 1: You know, because despite his claim that the leftist news
Speaker 1: had been falsely smearing him as a Nazi simply for
Speaker 1: peacefully attending a political rally in our nation's capital one
Speaker 1: day in January, if you google his name, you're gonna
Speaker 1: see a lot more than that. And one of the
Speaker 1: people who got this letter made it her personal mission
Speaker 1: to make sure people understood what they were looking at.
Speaker 1: A Beaufort resident who, according to her Facebook profile, is
Speaker 1: named Dawn, posted online a few days before the event
Speaker 1: that she'd found some troubling information about the man behind
Speaker 1: those letters. She posted screenshots of a few headlines about
Speaker 1: Dikes's legal troubles and suggested that the VFW hall where
Speaker 1: he planned to hold his event was not an appropriate
Speaker 1: venue for this well technically, she posted quote, He's being
Speaker 1: hosted by our local veterans of Foreign Wars. Tyler Diys
Speaker 1: is a well documented troubled young man with a long
Speaker 1: history of violence and Nazi ideations. Our VFW must not
Speaker 1: understand the vile, dangerous cop attacking Cretan this lipless little
Speaker 1: shit is. She followed up in the comments on her post,
Speaker 1: saying that she'd called the VFW hall, and the man
Speaker 1: she spoke to hadn't been aware of Diykes's history of
Speaker 1: Nazi salutes and assaulting cops. He was pretty concerned to
Speaker 1: hear about it. Not long after that phone call, the
Speaker 1: VFW canceled on Tyler Dikes. The campaign then scrambled to
Speaker 1: find a replacement venue and managed to book a conference
Speaker 1: room at the Hampton Inn in nearby Okty. But Dawn,
Speaker 1: this mysterious but determined woman on Facebook, caught wind of it,
Speaker 1: and she called them too. I didn't do a ton
Speaker 1: of digging on Dawn. I just scrolled through her Facebook
Speaker 1: and based on what I saw, I have to respect
Speaker 1: the level of civic engagement here. When the manager at
Speaker 1: the Hampton Inn brushed her off over the phone, she
Speaker 1: printed out a packet that included several news stories about
Speaker 1: Tyler Dikes and she drove over to Okty to hand
Speaker 1: deliver it. The hotel canceled the event a few hours later.
Speaker 1: Just twenty four hours before his big launch party, Tyler
Speaker 1: Diykes was once again without a venue. He posted a
Speaker 1: very weird video on his Instagram. He's infuming mad, but
Speaker 1: still determined to hold the event. At an undisclosed location
Speaker 1: that would only be revealed to his most loyal supporters
Speaker 1: by text message one hour before it was scheduled to begin,
Speaker 1: But Dawn already knew God bless her woman after my
Speaker 1: own heart. The morning of the ninth, she posted on
Speaker 1: Facebook that the event had been moved to a public
Speaker 1: park in the nearby town of Ridgeland. Not long after that,
Speaker 1: Tyler Dykes emailed her and said that he had reported
Speaker 1: her to the police for harassment and death threats. He
Speaker 1: also posted on telegram that most of the people at
Speaker 1: the event would be veterans and that they had concealed
Speaker 1: carry permits implication there being everyone at the park will
Speaker 1: have a gun. But it seems the launch party ended
Speaker 1: up going off without a hitch at that public park
Speaker 1: in Ridgeland. There's only one picture of the party. It's
Speaker 1: a tightly cropped photo showing Tyler Diykes at a dress
Speaker 1: shirt and khakis, standing in what looks like an empty field.
Speaker 1: I'm sure his throngs of armed supporters were just out
Speaker 1: of frame, and he's only respecting their privacy by showing
Speaker 1: absolutely no evidence that anyone was there. And I certainly
Speaker 1: wouldn't publicly speculate that his mom might have taken that picture.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: On the day of the campaign launch event November ninth,
Speaker 1: a new fundraising page went up. The original fundraising campaign,
Speaker 1: the one launched on October twenty second before any political
Speaker 1: campaign had been formally announced or any candidacy statement filed,
Speaker 1: raised at least three one hundred twenty five dollars before
Speaker 1: it was deleted on November sixth, the day after the
Speaker 1: FEC paperwork was filed. The new fundraiser was also on
Speaker 1: gives and Go, which was a little surprising to me.
Speaker 1: I mean, electoral politics is not exactly my wheelhouse, and
Speaker 1: compliance with federal campaign finance laws is not something I'm
Speaker 1: interested in. But I've donated to a campaign before I've
Speaker 1: looked at a campaign fundraiser. They tend to use more
Speaker 1: traditional platforms. Technically, you could just set up a PayPal account,
Speaker 1: but that's not a good idea. Platforms like act Blue
Speaker 1: and wind red are as the names imply the leaving
Speaker 1: choices were Democratic and Republican campaigns, respectively, but there are
Speaker 1: other options platforms like any dot and donor box. Most
Speaker 1: campaigns choose a fundraising platform specifically designed for election fundraising.
Speaker 1: It just makes compliance easier. The software automatically generates the
Speaker 1: reports you need. You know, every donor is being prompted
Speaker 1: to enter the information you're legally required to collect from them,
Speaker 1: and they're designed with federal election law in mind. They've
Speaker 1: built in things like the legally required language for disclosing
Speaker 1: and detesting to the things the candidate is supposed to
Speaker 1: disclose and the donor is supposed to attest.
Speaker 2: You know that paid.
Speaker 1: Ford by or authorized by whatever campaign or committee, and
Speaker 1: the contribution rules the donor promises they're abiding by. And
Speaker 1: those platforms are compliant with current FEC regulations around reporting
Speaker 1: credit card processing fees, which may not be the case
Speaker 1: if you're using a fundraising site geared more toward personal fundraising.
Speaker 1: But gives end go has a special place in the
Speaker 1: heart of many January sixth defendants and their supporters. The
Speaker 1: crowdfunding site was originally launched in twenty fourteen as an
Speaker 1: alternative to sites like gofund me because the founders felt
Speaker 1: that mainstream fundraising sites were biased against Christians. I mean,
Speaker 1: citation needed, but okay. When Tall Lavin spoke to the
Speaker 1: site's founders for a twenty twenty one article in the nation,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't give a firm answer to a question about
Speaker 1: whether they'd support the clan. In the last five years,
Speaker 1: gives end go has become a haven for right wing extremists, QAnon, weirdos,
Speaker 1: people who got fired after some viral video of them
Speaker 1: saying the N word, Kyle Rittenhouse, Proud Boys, the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two Canadian Trucker Convoy, guys, anti vax grifters, and
Speaker 1: of course January sixth defendants. People who got kicked off
Speaker 1: every other fundraising website found refuge on gibsend go. So
Speaker 1: maybe it shouldn't be summarizing to me that the site
Speaker 1: is now pivoting to be the demand where they find it.
Speaker 1: They've added an optional donation page template for political campaigns,
Speaker 1: one that collects the federally mandated donor information like occupation
Speaker 1: and employer. I took a quick look around the site,
Speaker 1: and I think Tyler Dykes is the only candidate for
Speaker 1: national office currently raising campaign funds on gibs end go,
Speaker 1: but there are a handful of state and local candidates
Speaker 1: fundraising there now. Like I said, I don't think you
Speaker 1: necessarily can't use a platform like gifts end go for
Speaker 1: federal election fundraising. It just seems like it opens you
Speaker 1: up to a world of possible problems. I am looking
Speaker 1: forward to the Dykes campaigns first campaign finance filings. Will
Speaker 1: they report that first thirty one hundred dollars from the
Speaker 1: deleted fundraiser? Will they remember to report processing fees as expenditures.
Speaker 1: Will the cost of the flyers for the launch party
Speaker 1: be properly recorded as disbursements or maybe as in kind donations.
Speaker 1: Will he hire someone to replace his mom and dad
Speaker 1: as the committee's treasurer and designated agent. I can't wait
Speaker 1: to find out the campaign's first month has not been strong.
Speaker 1: His first quarterly report isn't due to the FEC until
Speaker 1: the end of January. But because he's using a public
Speaker 1: fundraising page, I can tell you that as of end
Speaker 1: of day December eighth, the fundraiser shows three donations for
Speaker 1: a total of one hundred and seventy dollars and unrelated
Speaker 1: to the fundraising. I can also tell you that I
Speaker 1: accidentally discovered the list of bad words that gives end
Speaker 1: go hard codes into the page that will prevent you
Speaker 1: from submitting the form. I mean, it's got the classic
Speaker 1: squear words you know ass ass, but the s's are
Speaker 1: dollar signs ass, but the s's are five's ass.
Speaker 2: But there's an underscore between each letter.
Speaker 5: Boob boobs, boobies, boobs, but the o's are zero's boobs
Speaker 5: with three o's boobs, with four o's boobs, with five
Speaker 5: o's boobs.
Speaker 2: With seven o's.
Speaker 1: I think you can leave a comment if you spelled
Speaker 1: boobs with six o's.
Speaker 2: I didn't see that one on the list.
Speaker 1: There's also a dizzying array of different ways someone might
Speaker 1: choose to express the N word, and a surprising number
Speaker 1: of unique terms, including variations on the word cock. And
Speaker 1: there are some surprises on there, like some of these
Speaker 1: words must have ended up on the band list because
Speaker 1: of a particular incident, because if you just sat down
Speaker 1: to make a list of swears, I really don't think
Speaker 1: it would occur to you to preemptively prevent the use
Speaker 1: of the term fifty yard cunt punt. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is extremely funny to me, obviously, but the actual point
Speaker 1: here is this must be new because I've looked at
Speaker 1: a lot of gifts end go fundraisers and they did
Speaker 1: not use to prevent users from leaving comments that said
Speaker 1: Hyle Hitler, But now they do.
Speaker 2: It's coded right into the site.
Speaker 1: You can't type arian spelled right, or several varieties of wrong.
Speaker 1: You can't type KKK fourteen eighty eight, anti Semitic slurs,
Speaker 1: racial slurs, homophobic slurs. You can't type anything about.
Speaker 2: Hitler at all.
Speaker 1: They must have added this after all the news articles
Speaker 1: about Nazis leaving each other comments full of racial slurs
Speaker 1: when they're donating to each other's fundraisers for Nazi stuff.
Speaker 1: I means so much for free speech right, I guess
Speaker 1: even the free speech website doesn't need bad press. Aside
Speaker 1: from the lackluster fundraiser, the campaign's online presence sucks. I mean,
Speaker 1: aside from the messaging, which is obviously very bad. It
Speaker 1: is explicitly chrysto fascist. There's a lot of talk about deportation,
Speaker 1: very very focused on deportation. But aside from that, aside
Speaker 1: from the messaging being evil, there's a lack of direction here.
Speaker 1: On the events page of the campaign website, it's just
Speaker 1: a giant AI generated picture of breakfast food. It's announcing
Speaker 1: an event called Dialogue with Tyler Diyke's, but under date,
Speaker 1: time and location, it just says TBD and it's been
Speaker 1: like that for weeks. I get that it can be
Speaker 1: hard to get a location for an event, but it's
Speaker 1: not hard to use a real photograph of a pancake.
Speaker 1: Why am I looking at a hideous, swarped plate of
Speaker 1: partially fused fruits and oblong egg yolks.
Speaker 2: It's just sloppy.
Speaker 1: And I searched for more information about the campaign. I
Speaker 1: looked at the online presence he created, the website, the Instagram,
Speaker 1: the Twitter, the telegram, and I looked in the mainstream news.
Speaker 1: I looked at local news in his area. I searched
Speaker 1: on Facebook, Twitter, Telegram, rumble. I found one local newspaper article.
Speaker 1: You know, every time he's talking about his campaign, he says,
Speaker 1: I'm being attacked by the media. I'm being smeared by
Speaker 1: the media, you know, the leftist media.
Speaker 2: It has it out for me. I'm being targeted.
Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe I'm overlooking something, but I found
Speaker 1: a single local newspaper article. I also found a segment
Speaker 1: that was recorded by a local TV news outlet. It
Speaker 1: is a brief interview he gave back in October, but
Speaker 1: the segment never actually aired on TV. As he was
Speaker 1: talking to the reporter, someone else filmed it on their
Speaker 1: cell phone and he posted that video to Instagram. But
Speaker 1: other than that, I only found a couple of interviews
Speaker 1: he's given in the last two months, and all of
Speaker 1: them were with right wing conspiracy weirdos whose content is
Speaker 1: only available in some bizarre, impossible to access place like
Speaker 1: a Twitter live broadcast or downloadable only on Telegram. It
Speaker 1: was while I was searching for these videos that I
Speaker 1: found out people are still using Getter. It was a
Speaker 1: right wing Twitter knockoff that had a brief moment after
Speaker 1: the fall of Parlor in twenty twenty one, but before
Speaker 1: the rise of truth Social in twenty twenty two. I mean,
Speaker 1: if you asked me yesterday, I would have told you
Speaker 1: Getter isn't even on the Internet anymore. But apparently some
Speaker 1: people are still on get Her. Two of the four
Speaker 1: campaign interviews I found were with a confused sounding woman
Speaker 1: who calls herself Violent Vixen, one was with a daily
Speaker 1: prayer broadcast put out by a Telegram channel that supports
Speaker 1: January sixth defendants in their families, and the fourth was
Speaker 1: with a conspiracy theorist named Anne vander Steele. She used
Speaker 1: to be pretty big in the QAnon community, but that's
Speaker 1: not really the hot thing anymore. And I'll be honest,
Speaker 1: I did not watch enough and vander Steele to tell
Speaker 1: you what she's into these days.
Speaker 2: But in all of.
Speaker 1: These interviews, Tyler Diykes did not tell what I would
Speaker 1: consider to be the truth. He lied about the events
Speaker 1: leading up to him joining the Marines. He omitted any
Speaker 1: mention of why he is no longer a Marine. He
Speaker 1: pretends to address the Nazi allegations, but he's fighting a
Speaker 1: straw man. He's pretending everyone calling him a Nazi is
Speaker 1: just talking about January sixth, And he never mentions all
Speaker 1: the Nazi rallies he went to, or the Nazi groups
Speaker 1: he was a member of.
Speaker 3: I had previously been at Cornell University at Atica, New York.
Speaker 3: I spent one semester there as an engineer in biomedical engineering.
Speaker 3: But while I was there, I was actually driven out
Speaker 3: and I left, and I did not read up and
Speaker 3: go back for the second semester because of how openly
Speaker 3: Communists that this staff and the faculty were.
Speaker 1: Oh, Tyler, Tyler, that's not true. Come on, it is
Speaker 1: true that he enlisted in the Marines after one semester
Speaker 1: of college, but he wasn't driven out because of communism.
Speaker 1: He felt calculus and chemistry. His own lawyer put that
Speaker 1: in a memo and filed it in federal court. He
Speaker 1: started at Cornell in the fall of twenty seventeen, just
Speaker 1: a few weeks after he attended the Unit the Right
Speaker 1: rally in Charlottesville. He was a straight A student in
Speaker 1: high school, but he found the college coursework much more challenging,
Speaker 1: and he failed two classes in his first semester, and
Speaker 1: because of that, Cornell did not allow him back for
Speaker 1: the spring semester. He was placed on academic leave, and
Speaker 1: instead of just taking that semester off to regroup and
Speaker 1: come back, he opted to drop out for good instead,
Speaker 1: and that's when he enlisted the Marines. It was math,
Speaker 1: not communism, that drove him out of Cornell. As for
Speaker 1: his time in the Marines, well, he never actually says
Speaker 1: much about it. His campaign materials often feature a photo
Speaker 1: of him in his marine dress blues. He refers to
Speaker 1: him himself as a Marine Corps veteran, and he happily
Speaker 1: accepts the perfunctory thank you for your service he's often
Speaker 1: given in these interviews, but he doesn't say what that
Speaker 1: service was. He says he fought for this country and
Speaker 1: that his time in the Marines made him the man
Speaker 1: he is today, but he never says that he was
Speaker 1: discharged to the reserves immediately following basic training. He was
Speaker 1: in the reserves from twenty eighteen until twenty twenty two,
Speaker 1: when he was given an other than honorable discharge. During
Speaker 1: his time in the Marine Corps Reserves, he was actively
Speaker 1: involved in far right extremist activity. In January of twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: he was interviewed by an FBI agent from the Joint
Speaker 1: Terrorism Task Force regarding his ties to domestic extremist groups.
Speaker 1: The agent's affidavit doesn't say which groups. He hadn't joined
Speaker 1: the Marines yet when he attended the Unite the Right
Speaker 1: rally in twenty seventeen, but he was a Marine a
Speaker 1: year later when he was one of a tiny handful
Speaker 1: of attendees at the anniversary rally in Washington, d C.
Speaker 1: In twenty eighteen, and he was a Marine when he
Speaker 1: stormed the Capitol in January of twenty twenty one. The
Speaker 1: exact date of his discharge from the Marine Corps isn't clear.
Speaker 1: When he was arrested in Virginia in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: the prosecutor referred to his discharge as having been quote
Speaker 1: last year, so I assume it must have been sometime
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two. The records related to his discharge
Speaker 1: were filed under SEAL in his federal criminal case, but
Speaker 1: unredacted filings that refer to them specify that his discharge
Speaker 1: was because of something he did on November eighth, twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: and whatever that something was had to do with participating
Speaker 1: in prohibited extremist activity. Like I said, the paperwork itself
Speaker 1: is filed under SEAL, but I happen to know that
Speaker 1: on November eighth, twenty twenty, a security camera in Sumter County,
Speaker 1: South Carolina, captured footage of a man who looks exactly
Speaker 1: like Tyler Dikes taping up swastika flyers outside local businesses.
Speaker 1: He doesn't mention any of this when he's asked about
Speaker 1: his service in those campaign interviews, obviously, and when a
Speaker 1: federal probation officer asked him about it in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: he lied. He said that he was asked to leave
Speaker 1: the Marines because he failed to show up for drill,
Speaker 1: so he was at a Nazi rally. In twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: He was at another Nazi rally in twenty eighteen. He
Speaker 1: was interviewed by counter terrorism in twenty nineteen. He was
Speaker 1: caught on camera putting up Nazi flyers in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: and the Marine Corps ultimately discharged him for that in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two. By the time he was arrested in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty three for intimidating counter protesters with a lit torch.
Speaker 1: Back in twenty seventeen, he was a member of an
Speaker 1: extremist group called the Southern Sun's Active Club, And all
Speaker 1: of this was in that first episode.
Speaker 2: But I missed something.
Speaker 1: There was one filing in his federal court case with
Speaker 1: an important detail that I missed the first time around.
Speaker 1: In a follow up to the original sentencing memorandum, the
Speaker 1: government added a few more details to their list of
Speaker 1: things Dykes had done in the past that would seem
Speaker 1: to indicate his involvement in extremist activity. Most of them
Speaker 1: were the things we've already talked about, the things I
Speaker 1: already know, but this one was new. It reads November
Speaker 1: December twenty twenty Dyke's travels from South Carolina to bad Axe, Michigan,
Speaker 1: to participate in a field training exercise run by an
Speaker 1: organization called the Base. The Base is a United States
Speaker 1: based racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist group with cells
Speaker 1: in the United States and reported ties abroad. The Base
Speaker 1: encourages the hastening of a race war and aims to
Speaker 1: establish a white ethno state through violence against non white
Speaker 1: minority groups and the US government. Oh dear, we haven't
Speaker 1: had any reason to get into the Base yet. It
Speaker 1: hasn't really come up on the show.
Speaker 2: I think I did.
Speaker 1: Mention it in passing on an older episode, but I
Speaker 1: wasn't really telling you anything about the Base. I just
Speaker 1: mentioned that I was at a hearing once for one
Speaker 1: of the members of the group who'd been arrested before
Speaker 1: he could enact his plan to kickstart a race war
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: It was a whole thing.
Speaker 1: I don't remember why I was telling you about that hearing,
Speaker 1: but it was the day I walked out of the
Speaker 1: bathroom at the green Belt, Maryland Federal Court Building with
Speaker 1: my dress tucked into my tights. And it was the
Speaker 1: same day that I grabbed that FBI agent's phone out
Speaker 1: of his hand because he couldn't figure out how to
Speaker 1: turn it off, and he was just fumbling with it
Speaker 1: and fidgeting and pressing the buttons and doing it wrong.
Speaker 1: And I didn't want the judge to get mad at
Speaker 1: the gallery because someone's phone was on, so.
Speaker 2: I just did it for him.
Speaker 1: I told you about that, but I don't think I
Speaker 1: actually told you anything about the base, so that paragraph
Speaker 1: in that document is interesting. I hadn't had any reason
Speaker 1: up until this moment to think Tyler Dykes had been
Speaker 1: involved with the BASS, but I'm not sure the date
Speaker 1: is right. I know the government is never going to
Speaker 1: tell me anything juicy about a terrorist organization, and there's
Speaker 1: no point even asking. But I wish that someone could
Speaker 1: just confirm for me whether that's a typo, because I
Speaker 1: really think they had to have meant twenty nineteen not
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. I know that there was a paramilitary training
Speaker 1: exercise at the compound in bad Axe, Michigan, over the
Speaker 1: weekend of November thirtieth to December first, twenty nineteen. There
Speaker 1: was supposed to be another one in December of twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: but it didn't happen because the FBI raided the property
Speaker 1: in October of twenty twenty. If members of the base
Speaker 1: did get together in December of twenty twenty. Half the
Speaker 1: group wouldn't have made it because they were in federal
Speaker 1: custody and wherever the meetup happened, it couldn't have been
Speaker 1: the proper pretty in bad acts. So either as a
Speaker 1: TYPO and they met twenty nineteen, or there's something else
Speaker 1: going on here entirely that I have no other documentation about,
Speaker 1: and I have a lot more questions. I'm leaning towards TYPO.
Speaker 1: It happens more than you think. But also a lot
Speaker 1: of guys who were in the base during that time
Speaker 1: period got arrested. I mean, whether or not the government
Speaker 1: meant twenty nineteen or twenty twenty. If Tyler Diys was
Speaker 1: involved in the base during that time period either year,
Speaker 1: he was friends with at least one informant. There's no
Speaker 1: getting around that the FBI was in possession of a
Speaker 1: lot of cell phones and computers that belonged to members
Speaker 1: of the base got arrested during that time period, and
Speaker 1: several cells of that group were infiltrated or monitored. The
Speaker 1: cell arrested in Maryland for plotting to start the Civil
Speaker 1: War was wiretapped. The cell arrested in Georgia for plotting
Speaker 1: to murder and anti fascist activists, and his wife had
Speaker 1: an undercover agent in their crew. The guys living on
Speaker 1: the compound in Michigan got raided. So I feel like
Speaker 1: the government definitely knew Tyler Dykes was there. And I
Speaker 1: don't just mean they know it now in this document
Speaker 1: they wrote in twenty twenty four, I mean they knew
Speaker 1: it then. This isn't a recent discovery. So why is
Speaker 1: this single paragraph and a last minute addend him to
Speaker 1: a sentencing memorandum the only place this has ever come up?
Speaker 1: If the FBI knew then that he was a member
Speaker 1: of a domestic extremist organization actively plotting to kick off
Speaker 1: the Race War, a group that was explicitly seeking to
Speaker 1: recruit members of the United States military to carry out
Speaker 1: acts of terrorism, why did the Marine Corps wait two
Speaker 1: more year years to discharge him? Great question I wish
Speaker 1: I could tell you. As Ever, this new piece of
Speaker 1: information leaves me with more questions than it answers, but
Speaker 1: it does seem to go pretty far in rebutting Tyler
Speaker 1: Dykes's claim that the people calling him a Nazi are
Speaker 1: being unfair, So.
Speaker 3: Quite interesting you know, my experience is anily six For example,
Speaker 3: I brandeded the neo Nazi domestic terrorists because of a wave.
Speaker 1: Every time he tries to hit back on being called
Speaker 1: a Nazi, he says he was just waving. He's referring
Speaker 1: to a specific photograph, one that was used in the
Speaker 1: criminal complaint filed in his federal case. After fighting his
Speaker 1: way to the top of the steps of the Capitol
Speaker 1: Building on January sixth, he turned around and well, he says,
Speaker 1: he would It's just a still photo. But i know
Speaker 1: what it looks like to me, and I've seen a
Speaker 1: lot of photos of guys doing this. Here's the thing, though,
Speaker 1: that's not the only reason people are calling him a Nazi.
Speaker 1: As someone running for office hoping to capture the extreme
Speaker 1: right wing of the Republican Party, it's safe for him
Speaker 1: to be proud of being a January sixth defendant. There
Speaker 1: are large segments of the MAGA base that eat it
Speaker 1: up when you say that you're a brave MAGA patriot
Speaker 1: who stepped up to defend Donald Trump on January sixth,
Speaker 1: and the woke mob is just trying to cancel you
Speaker 1: because you love America right. So if he can blur
Speaker 1: the truth and convince people that, oh, yeah, I'm being
Speaker 1: called a Nazi, but only because of this cool thing
Speaker 1: I did that you like. That will work for him,
Speaker 1: That's good for him. There's a degree of martyrdom associated
Speaker 1: with being a January sixth defendant.
Speaker 2: He suffered for the cause.
Speaker 1: He believed in MAGA, and he was willing to put
Speaker 1: himself on the line. He rarely misses an opportunity to
Speaker 1: mention that he was a January sixth defendant. He also
Speaker 1: repeatedly implies that he was the victim of a violent
Speaker 1: police rate on his home when the FBI came to
Speaker 1: arrest him on the January sixth charges. This is a
Speaker 1: popular refrain in that community. It is part of the
Speaker 1: martyrdom narrative. But in one interview, he was asked to
Speaker 1: recount that harrowing tale, and he's forced to clarify that actually,
Speaker 1: he wasn't home when that happened. He doesn't mention that
Speaker 1: not only was he not home that day, he hadn't
Speaker 1: been home in months because he was in jail for
Speaker 1: a felon he committed at a Nazi rally. So he's
Speaker 1: trying to downplay the Nazi allegations by saying it's just
Speaker 1: a smear against him for his brave, patriotic behavior at
Speaker 1: the insurrection. The problem is, even if you believe he
Speaker 1: was just waving on January sixth, there's video of him
Speaker 1: throwing Hitler salutes at a Nazi rally in twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: I can show you photos and video from multiple angles.
Speaker 1: He wasn't waving on August eleventh, twenty seventeen, and there's
Speaker 1: no wiggling out of that one. And really we're not
Speaker 1: just talking about how many times he gave the old
Speaker 1: stiff arm salute during a riot. He wasn't just some
Speaker 1: regular Republican voter who got carried away on January sixth.
Speaker 1: He was a member of at least two different Nazi groups.
Speaker 1: And that's just what the government has been willing to
Speaker 1: corroborate on the record. He can post pictures of himself
Speaker 1: in his marine dress blues on Instagram if he wants,
Speaker 1: but he received an other than honorable discharge for doing
Speaker 1: Nazi stuff with his Nazi friends, and the Nazi conduct
Speaker 1: in question took place before January sixth, twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: He wants voters to think he's being unfairly labeled a
Speaker 1: Nazi for going to the Capitol in January sixth, but
Speaker 1: the United States Marine Corps seems to be saying that
Speaker 1: he was a Nazi before that. I don't have a
Speaker 1: huge amount of faith in the voters that elected Nancy Mace,
Speaker 1: but it's a crowded primary field and those people have
Speaker 1: other options. I'm not actually worried about Tyler Dyke's winning
Speaker 1: his primary. That's extremely unlikely. But I am really not
Speaker 1: looking forward to a political landscape littered with guys like this,
Speaker 1: Guys who are trying to kick in the Overton window
Speaker 1: like it's an actual window on the northwest side of
Speaker 1: the Capitol Building. I ended up having to cut a
Speaker 1: few thousand words about Augustus and Victus and his suspension
Speaker 1: from the Florida Bar. It looks like we'll have to
Speaker 1: wait until next week to talk about the ways the
Speaker 1: paths these two men have taken have diverged since they
Speaker 1: marched together in twenty seventeen. Weird Little Guys. It's a
Speaker 1: production of Cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio. It's research, written
Speaker 1: and recorded by me while I hunger. Our executive producers
Speaker 1: are Sophi Le Treman and Robert Evans. The show is
Speaker 1: edited by the wildly talented Bory Gagan. The theme music
Speaker 1: was composed by Brad Dickert. You can email me at
Speaker 1: weirdlu Guy's podcast at gmail dot com. I will definitely
Speaker 1: read it, but I probably won't 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 Guys subreddit. Just don't post
Speaker 1: anything that's going to make you one of my Weird
Speaker 1: Little Guys.