Update On: A Short-Lived Pardon

we've got to rerun this week. But don't switch it off just yet. I do have a little update to the episode for you here at the top. The episode originally ran a month ago, so it may still be fresh in your mind. It's the story of Matthew Huddle, the January sixth writer who was shot and killed during a traffic stock just days after he received his federal pardon. And when I wrote it was a lot of unanswered questions. We have some of those answers. Now Here's where I

left things a month ago. It's unwise to speculate about the altercation that may have occurred in the minutes before Huddle was shot and killed by a Jasper County Sheriff's deputy. I don't know what happened there on the side of Indiana State Road fourteen. We don't know what was said, or why things escalated, or where exactly the deputy saw

the gun. But I do know that Matthew Huddle was due back in court next week for a status conference on a stack of still unresolved felony cases for driving without a license, just days after getting his federal pardon. He was probably happy for his uncle Dale, but he'd already done his federal time, and now he was looking down the barrel at another stay in the county jail, and when those blue lights came on behind him, he probably knew that this would be yet another felony charge.

After the episode originally aired, I saw some listeners expressing displeasure, discussed even that I'd framed his story as a tragic one. I'm not here how to tell you how you should feel. That's your business, But for me, his story is sad. He wasn't an evil man. I wouldn't go as far as to say he was a good man. He had a slew of dyse. He had some history of domestic violence allegations and a stint in jail for child abuse. He stormed the capitol. He owed a lot of child support.

I don't think he's a person I would have liked, but he was also a man who struggled with alcohol addiction, and regardless of what he'd done, his death left two children without any chance of ever reconciling with their father. And for me least, there's never any peace in knowing a person's life ended violently, particularly when the cause of death was a bullet from a police officer's gun. I

have to believe that people can change that. Redemption and atonement are always possible for those who sincerely strive to earn that. But a dead man cannot make amends. That possibility is gone now, and that makes it a tragedy in my mind. But however you feel about the way things ended for Matthew Huddle, we do at least have some answers now that the Jasper County Sheriff's Office has released the body camera footage of the traffic stop that led to the fatal shooting, and it is, for the

most part, exactly what I thought it would be. The deputy stopped Huddle for speeding, both his pending felony cases for driving without a license. Getting caught doing it again would lead to even more felony charges and even more jail time, and he couldn't bear the thought of it. The footage of the traffic stop shows it was all things considered, going fairly well in the beginning.

that time with his federal criminal case. I can't find any indication he'd filed a renewed petition to have his license reinstated after he wrapped up his federal case. But the officer's demeanor doesn't really change. He's keeping things light, chatting with Huddle about the dog in the backseat of the van, and then he returned to the cruiser with Huddle's documents, and at this point he knows he's going to be making an arrest. Whatever comes back from dispatch.

Huddle has already told the officer that he's driving without a license, so he radios for animal Control to meet him on the scene to take Huddle's dog, and he walks back to the minivan and he asks Huddle to step out of the car, and as the two men stand behind Huddles van, the deputy explains that he is going to have to place him under arrest. Okay, so today you're getting off with the verbal warning for the speed.

his van. As Huddle crawls into the vehicle. The deputy is inches behind him, saying, don't you do it, buddy. He's reaching for him and grabbing at his jacket, and the officer begins to shout no, no, no, and the video at this point is obscured by a large pixelated rectangle.

You don't see Huddle reach for the gun, but it seems like it may have been in the glove compartment or somewhere on the passenger side, maybe on the floor, and you hear Huddle say I'm shooting myself, and the deputy cries out again, no, no, no. It's just ten seconds from the time Huddle is scrambling back into the front seat of the van to the sound of the five shots from the deputy's gun as he's retreating backwards away from the door. It's just ten seconds, and you

can't see most of what's actually happening. You can't see where Huddle pulled the gun from or where he was pointing it once it was in his hand, and that's all that was said. Huddle says he's going to shoot himself, and the deputy shouts no over and over again, and then it's over. The State Police investigation into the incident has concluded, and it was presented to the Clinton County

Prosecutor's Office for independent review. They found the deputy's actions were legally justifiable under Indiana state law, and no charges will be filed. Matthew Huddle is dead. We can't know if he would have shot himself or the officer. We can't know if he would have appeared in court two weeks after that traffic stop for his still pending felony cases.

We can't know if he would have made amends, paid his child support, tried to be a better father, or tried to find a place in the right wing media ecosystem that has now made him a martyr. We'll never know, because he died there on the side of State Road fourteen. That's the end of his story. And here's the episode where I tried to tell the beginning of it. I'll be back next week with a new episode of Weird Little Guys. On January twenty sixth, twenty twenty five. Matthew

Huddle died. That much we know for certain. Usually I tell you a story that's old enough that the ink is not only dry, but it's begun to fade. A little. The reports are in, the motions have been filed, argued, and ruled on. The official story is set in stone. That's not the case today. As I'm writing this. There are still questions left unanswered. There is a state police investigation into an officer involved shooting still under way. But Matthew Huddle is dead.

driver's license. The deputy claims Huddle resisted when he tried to place him under arrest, and it was during this altercation that the sheriff says the deputy discovered that Huddle was in possession of a firearm, which she was not legally allowed to have, the final moments of Matthew Huddle's life will eventually be settled in some sort of official report. Maybe they'll release the deputy's body worn camera footage. Maybe his family will file a lawsuit. The final page hasn't

been written yet. I don't have the answers. All I have is a sad story, but a man who believed in nothing and died on the side of Indiana State Road fourteen. I'm Molly Conger, his weird little guys. At noon on January sixth, twenty twenty one, President Donald Trump took the stage at the Ellipse, a generally unremarkable patch of grass between the White House and the Washington Monument.

More than fifty thousand of his supporters had been standing out in the cold all morning waiting to hear from him. For months, he'd stoked the fires of a growing conspiracy the election had been stolen. He gave speeches, held rallies, fired off late night tweets, and filed lawsuits for those who wanted to believe. There seemed to be mountains of evidence of a deep and systemic rot. But the lawsuits were failing, the votes were counted, and time was running out.

Today was the day that Congress would have the final say in the twenty twenty election, and less than two miles away, legislators were taking their seats in the Capitol Building to certify the election. The crowd at the Ellipse had come from all over the country to be a part of history, and as their president spoke, many of them heard the permission they'd been waiting for.

the United States Capitol Building. They tore down police barricades. They engaged in a pitched battle with the Capitol police on the steps outside, them forced their way into the building. People died. United States Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick passed away on January seventh after suffering a series of strokes. His cause of death was eventually ruled to be natural causes, though several neurologists have argued that the events of the

prior day almost certainly contributed to his death. Cute On believer Ashley Babbitt was shot as she forced her way into the building through a broken window. Roseanne Boylen was trampled by the stampeding crowd, though her official cause of death was ruled to be an amphetamine overdose, and Kevin

Greeson had a heart attack on the Capitol grounds. This week, as I was combing back through my own videos of that afternoon, I discovered that I had captured the moment that I realized I was watching a man die.

Nearly thirteen hundred had been convicted, with another three hundred cases still open as of the four year anniversary of the riot. Those cases will never go to trial, though, because last month, hours after being sworn in as president for the second time, Donald Trump issued a blanket pardon, pardoning almost every single one of them, with the small exception of a handful of rioters who only had their

sentences commuted. There are those who would rewrite the story of that day, people who would tell you that it was a peaceful protest, that they were patriots and tourists, that they couldn't have known that their conduct was unlawful. I'm not sure there's anything I can do to change anyone's mind. The evidence to the contrary is readily available, but it's never seemed to matter.

lot of those stories are kind of the same. While the seditious conspiracy at the heart of the violence was cooked up by oathkeepers and proud boys, men with an ideological commitment to violence and ties to organized groups dedicated to carrying it out, most of the crowd was made up of men far too ordinary to be concidered a weird little guy. And maybe that in itself is a subject worth exploring. How could an ordinary man end up crawling over broken glass on his way to break into

a senator's office. How could a reeltor from the suburbs step over a woman's dead body in his haste to physically confront a member of Congress. How did men with back the blue bumper stickers on their brand new Ford pickup trucks end up fistfighting cops on the steps of the Capitol. I don't think I'm equipped to answer that, but I can try to tell you the sad story of how one of them ended up dead. Matthew Huddle did not vote for Donald Trump in the twenty twenty election.

Perhaps he would have, It's impossible to say, but he'd lost his right to vote years ago first felony conviction. He struggled with alcohol addiction for his entire adult life, racking up charges for driving while intoxicated at a pretty alarming rate, and he was back in jail for yet another duy in November of twenty twenty when the election took place. He was fresh off this stint in the county jail when his uncle Dale asked him for a favor. He needed a ride to.

we can get inside. But moments later he turns to his uncle Dale and says he's not sure they're going to be able to get close because of the police presence. His uncle replies quote, I think we ought to bum rush the Capitol building arrest them all. We've got enough people to do that, and Matthew agrees they could try to get close. By two pm, they were deep within the mass of rioters at the base of the steps

at the west entrance of the Capitol. Police on the steps were firing flash bangs and tear gas canisters, trying to keep the crowd at bay. In his video, as described in the court filings, Matthew was surprised by the flashbangs and asks if the cops are shooting a cannon. I didn't manage to dig up the video evidence filed in his case, but based on the description of flash bangs and scattered chance of you say, you say, and it being shortly after two pm, here's my best guess

at that exact moment being described. Oh yes, that is my little squeal of surprise at the sound of the flashbangs.

off the stairs. As officers struggled to keep the metal bike racks out of the hands of the men who were trying to seize them as weapons, Dale Huddle lunged forward, jabbing his wooden flagpole into an officer's stomach, knocking him off his feet. During the battle on the stairs, Dale is seen in an officer's body worn camera footage.

on the steps. The officers who'd been trying to hold them at bay retreated under attack, giving Matthew a Huddle an opening to run up the stairs, but Dale stayed behind and kept fighting Instead of taking his chance to climb the steps and actually go inside. He followed the

retreating officers, continuing the attack. Another video shows the old man red faced with tears streaming from his eyes from pepper spray unloaded by a rioter behind him, and he's charging toward an officer trying to rip his gas mask off, and then he tries to wrench the baton out of another officer's hands. With his uncle preferring to stay behind and fight, Matthew followed the crowd through the now open

doors on the Upper West Terrace. In his own video, he says, we're going in as he crosses the threshold. And for sixteen minutes he just wandered around in there.

to chat up the cops. He sidles up to one officer and casually asks him, has this.

chambers had indeed been evacuated through the underground tunnels. And as the group piles into the elevator, leaving Huddle behind, he turns back to his phone, which is still recording, and he narrates into his video they went up third

floor to the offices. He would later tell the FBI that when he told that group of rioters they should head up to the third floor, he was actually trying to divert them away from members of Congress, who he assumed were already being evacuated through the underground tunnels either way, though, that is a curious level of insight into the building's floor plans for a man who said he was just somebody else's ride. After getting maced again, the novelty of being inside the building seemed to have.

identifying the rioters. Those who assaulted federal officers were understandably a high priority, and the bureau released images of those suspects, each identified by the letters AFO for assault on a Federal Officer and given a unique number. Just three months after the riot, photos of AFO two nine to nine went up on the FBI's website. Over the next few months, more than a dozen tips came in about AFO two nine nine, but none of.

work the week of January sixth, twenty twenty one. Both Matthew and Dale Huddle were eventually charged and arrested. In November of twenty twenty two. Dale was picked up in the parking lot on his way into work one morning, and Matthew was, for reasons not entirely clear to me, arrested in Boise, Idaho, and both men would eventually take

plea agreements. Just like over a thousand others of the approximately thirteen hundred January sixth defendants who'd been convicted before those blanket pardons, Matthew pled guilty to a single misdemeanor count of entering and remaining in a restricted building and was sentenced to six months. He finished serving that sentence

in July of twenty twenty four. Dale bled guilty to a single felony account of assaulting an officer with a dangerous weapon, specifically for jabbing that officer with his flagpole during the struggle on the stairs. He was sentenced to thirty months in July twenty twenty four, meaning he was one of about two hundred January sixth defendants who were actually still in federal custody at the time of the pardons. And like I said, almost everyone who was convicted led guilty.

Actually going to trial in a federal criminal case is pretty rare, a fact we've talked about before in other episodes. It's not really a good system. There's a lot of pressure to take a plea deal, and that may not always be fair. In Dale's case, though, I think the plea was absolutely the right call. A few days after his arrest, after he'd been released on bond, a CBS News reporter from Chicago knocked on his door in a conversation that lasted more than seven minutes, Much to his

attorney's dismay. I'm sure the reporter pulled out a printed copy of the criminal complaint.

flag as a deeply ironic weapon. A link the criminal complaint in the show notes, and you can see the picture they're talking about on the second page. The officer is leaning back, almost as if he could be engaging in a sort of tug of war over the flagpole. But Dale's right about one thing. Pictures can be deceiving. The officer isn't leaning back, He's falling down because an old man poked him hard on the torso with a

big stick. And while Matthew's lawyers had argued that their client had no real opinion on the twenty twenty election one way or the other, that he simply found himself there, Dale's lawyers did have to concede that he was a true believer. In an on camera interview right after his arrest, he told the reporter that he still believed the election had been stolen and he believed he'd been following a lawful order from his president.

bombshell rocks DC swamp. I have a separate email account where I get one hundred emails that look like that every single day. I know exactly what his Facebook feed looked like, so that part's probably true.

of Dale Huddle with a flag. Unlike the photo of Dale using an American flag as a weapon on January sixth, this photo shows a slightly younger Dale Huddle and he's trying to figure out how to affix his Gadsden flag, you know, the one with the snake that doesn't want to be stepped on, and he's trying to affix it to the window of a church. November fourteenth, two thousand, was the first day of a ninety two day standoff

with US Marshalls at the Indianapolis Baptist Temple. After years of litigation, a federal judge had finally given the order for the church to vacate the premises. For seventeen years, the Indianapolis Baptist Temple, under Pastor Greg Dixon, had not been paying its taxes. You're probably saying, wait, I thought churches were tax exempt, and they are. That's true. Churches aren't generally speaking automatically exempt from federal income tax, but if they have paid employees.

American Coalition for Unregistered Churches. It would later be known as the Unregistered Baptist Fellowship.

Churches shouldn't have to abide by building codes or zoning laws, or get fire inspections. Babies shouldn't have birth certificates. A wedding shouldn't involve a marriage license. In fact, no one should have any kind of license. Many of the articles I found about this movement make sure to add that they do believe that they can use the United States Postal Service, but it is a sin to use zip codes.

The almost complete overlap of guys who don't want to pay their taxes and guys who are willing to take up arms against the government is something else surely explore in depth in an episode dedicated to some character in the tax protester movement, but the reason for it is probably pretty obvious, and Pastor Greg Dixon wasn't just refusing.

Willie Muther, Peers from National Alliance, Richard Butler from Arian Nations,

Louis Beam, Kirk Lyons, James Wickstrom. As Kathleen Blue wrote in her book Bring the War Home, the militia movement as we know it today emerged from the leaders, organizations, and tactics of white power organization, and this meeting is widely regarded as the birthplace of the modern American militia movement, and so at the Rocky Mountain Rendezvous, just before Louis Beam's speech about leaderless resistance, Pastor Greg Dixon took the

stage to call for the establishment of Christian militias, declaring we are at war. And Greg Dixon was hardly new to organized racism. In the nineteen seventies, his church had hosted meetings of a group called Americans for America, a KKK affiliated organization that opposed school integration. Indiana's Grand Dragon Bill Cheney was a member of the congregation, but in the early nineties he was at the bleeding edge of

a new frontier in white power. All that to say, this old picture of dale Huddle outside of a church might sound terribly innocuous. Maybe that's his church, and maybe he didn't know why his pastor wasn't paying his taxes, but it was not. Dale Huddle isn't even Baptist. He grew up Lutheran but has been a member of a non denominational megachurch called the Family Christian Center since nineteen

eighty eight. Ever since his mother died. No, dale Huddle had no direct connection to this church that I can find. But a call had been put out. In September of two thousand. After years in court, a judge gave the order they had until noon on November fourteenth to get out of the building. The government was taking possession of the property, and US Marshals were authorized to use force

if necessary. Michigan Militia leader Norman Olsen ordered militias around the country to do their duty and defend the church, telling his followers that this was going to be Waco Part two. Charlie Puckett of the Kentucky Militia was there

on November fourteenth. As congregants waited for the US marshals to arrive and with news crews rolling in the parking lot, Pastor Dixon asked the contingent of Klansmen who showed up to support him to maybe stay outside the church, but he didn't ask them to leave or disavow their support,

and that's when this photo was taken. On November fourteenth, two thousand, parking lot full of Klansmen, Militia men standing by, and Dale huddles outside the Indianapolis Baptist Temple trying to figure out how to hang a Gadsden flag on the windows. He'd driven two hours from his home in Crown Point, and there was no Facebook in two thousand. He didn't see a meme that convinced him to go to Indianapolis.

There's no indication that he was a member of any of the militia or clan groups that were there that day, but it does seem quite possible that he got the same message they did about showing up for Waco Part two. And just so this threat isn't left hanging, the big crowd that showed up on day one of the standoff got board and went home. US marshals obviously did not want Waco Part two, so they just kept their distance

and waited them out. It took three months, but in February of two thousand and one they did seize the building. No one was injured, but Greg Dixon was carried out

on a stretcher because he refused to walk. So that's a rather lengthy aside just to contextualize a single twenty five year old photograph that doesn't prove anything at all, but it left me wondering if the US Marshals had taken a heavier handed approach at the Indianapolis Baptist Temple would I be looking at two photos twenty years apart of Dale Huddle trying to skewer a cop with a flagpole.

His lawyers argued that he was just a confused old man who didn't know how to use the internet, and he got tricked into believing he needed to go to DC to stop the steal. But the possibility that twenty years earlier, some militia newsletter tricked him into thinking he needed to stop a different theft, that of church property by the IR, really changes the story for me. Back in twenty twenty one, though, after the riote of the Capitol,

Matthew Huddle was just living his life as usual. Matthew Huddle's life as usual involved getting charged three separate times between July and November for driving with a suspended license as a habitual offender whose driving privileges had been revoked after repeated d uise. Each new offense of this kind was a felony. In August of that year, his son's

mother died of a drug overdose. He filed for bankruptcy that same week, and filing show he owed more than thirteen thousand dollars in child support to a different woman, the mother of his daughter. Neither of those children were in Matthew's custody after his conviction. In his January sixth case, his lawyers wrote that he had a quote great relationship

with his son. I hope that's true, and even if it's not, my heart breaks for a teenage boy who lost his mother to an overdose in twenty twenty one, he saw his father go to prison in twenty twenty three, and then he lost his father entirely just last month. But great is the only word used there to describe a relationship that I suspect may have been more complicated

than that. In two thousand and nine, Matthew Huddle flew into a rage after his son, who was just three years old at the time, had what court records describe as a bathroom accident. It's a very normal thing for a three year old to do at that age. You're still sending a change of pants with them to school just in case. What's not normal, though, is beating a toddler so severely that he can't sit down for a week.

And the court records call it a spanking. But nothing I could find offered me any kind of explanation for how a spanking could leave bruises on a child's neck. After Huddle died last week, several the articles I read about his death quoted an attorney who'd been representing him in his dui cases for nearly twenty years, and his lawyer says that the man he'd known was not violent.

I don't know what else you call this, I guess in that lawyer's defense, it does look like he'd hired a different attorney when he was charged with beating his son and his son's mother. After Matthew Huddle blood guilty in twenty twenty three to that single misdemeanor charge of entering and remaining in a restricted building on January sixth, his lawyers asked for a sentence of probation with no

jail time. They cited his lack of ideological motivation for being there, his need to be there for his children, and his tragic backstory and struggle with alcoholism. And there is a strange and tragic backstory here, but they don't actually get into it in this court filing. This part I pieced together from state court records, old newspapers.

her husband, and her boyfriend. I only mention it because of a curious coincidence of dates. The same week her

divorce was finalized, someone shot Matthew Huddle. There's a single mention in the local newspaper in Febuary twenty fifteen, just a few days after his daughter's mother finalized her divorce, that Huddle had been shot in what was only described as quote an incident between family members, and the article quotes an officer who says that no one was taken into custody at this time, and he wouldn't say how

the shooter was related to the victim. I couldn't find any court records that indicated the charges were ever filed against anyone, but I could only check the names I thought of his suspects. So it's a bit of a needle in a haystack, whoever it was, though someone close to him shot Matthew in the back of the knee and left him with a lifelong injury, and three years later, in twenty eighteen, he was asleep in his bed when he woke up to two men beating him with baseball

bats and hammers. The local newspaper reported the attack was motivated by a child custody dispute. One of the assailants, Kurt Falkenberg, was in a relationship with the mother of Huddle's son. The other man was Falkenberg's uncle, Jeffrey Martin, though the two men were only a few years apart in age, and the men focused their blows on Huddle's left leg because they knew he had a metal rod in there from the surgeries he'd gotten after getting shot

in the leg in his last domestic dispute. Much like the story of Matthew and Dale Huddle, this story of a very stupid crime committed by an uncle and a nephew ends tragically. As Falkenberg and Martin fled the scene, they crashed. Falkenberg, who had been driving, was pronounced dead

at the scene. Officers responding to the car accident which put another driver in the hospital with two broken legs, found an open bottle of whiskey in Falkenburg's car, and they eventually found Jeffrey Martin passed out drunk in a creek bed on the side of the road. The following year, in twenty nineteen, Matthew Huddle was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver. Twenty years of alcoholism had finally caught up

to him. The dui he got that summer was the one that put him back in jail until shortly before he drove to Washington, d C. In January of twenty twenty one. Now I've read a lot of sentencing memos. That's the document filed at the end of a case, after a guilty plea or a guilty verdict, where each side makes their case one last time, not about guilt or innocence now that's settled, but about what they think the punishment should be. And we have an adversarial court system.

Everyone is technically ethically bound to be honest, and the purpose of the courts is supposed to be to seek the truth, but really everyone is there to win, to have their version of the truth ruled to be the most true. So I'm really used to seeing a defense attorney's sob story and a prosecutor's exaggeration. But I wonder maybe if Matthew Huddle's lawyers really were telling a mostly true story.

ideological motivation or violent intent. Plenty of them claimed that

in court and it never really rings true. But maybe for Matthew Huddle, wandering into the Capitol that day was just the same kind of criminal accident he was often finding himself in, like driving away without paying for a tank of gas because he was too drunk to figure out how to operate the payment system, but somehow not too drunk to drive when I first saw the news that had recently pardoned January sixth, the defendant had been shot and killed while resisting arrest during a traffic stop.

I can't say that I was surprised, but.

days after getting his federal pardon. He was probably happy for his uncle Dale, but he'd already done his federal time, and now he was looking down the barrel at another stay in the county jail, and when those blue lights came on behind him, he probably knew that this would be yet another felony charge.