December 11, 2025 • 23 mins
Molly talks about the Gen Z candidate in the Republican primary to replace Nancy Mace as the representative in South Carolina's first congressional district. He's running on mass deportation and cutting taxes, but he can't stop complaining that people are calling him a nazi.
Sources:
https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/pr/south-carolina-man-sentenced-assaulting-law-enforcement-during-jan-6-capitol-breach-0
https://www.postandcourier.com/beaufort-county/politics/tyler-dykes-campaign-sc1-congress/article_c255115c-45cf-430e-b4a4-160a322631e1.html
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67681795/united-states-v-dykes/
https://atlantaantifa.org/2023/04/19/inside-southern-sons-active-club-part-i/
https://atlantaantifa.org/2023/04/19/inside-southern-sons-active-club-part-ii/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Hello, and welcome back to it could happen here. I
am your occasional host, Molly Conger, and today I have
exactly the kind of story you probably expect when you
hear my voice on this feed. A white nationalist has
gone and done something we all wish that he was
not doing. If you listen to my show Weird Little Guys,
(00:28):
you already know a little bit about this particular guy.
On that show, I talk about white nationalists, Neo Nazis,
right wing extremists, aspiring terrorists, things of that nature. My
domain is mostly guys you've never heard of because they
failed to live up to their goal of becoming the
next Hitler or whatever. It's funnier than it sounds, I swear,
(00:52):
But unfortunately for all of us, sometimes one of those
guys breaches containment talking about today, wants to be more
than just one of the weird little guys trying to
make a name for himself on the fringes of the
white nationalist movement. He wants to be a Congressman. He's
trying to make himself everybody's problem, and that makes him
(01:16):
part of what is happening here. Back in August, Representative
Nancy Mace announced that she wouldn't seek reelection in South
Carolina's first congressional district and she would instead focus on
making a run for governor, And that announcement opened the floodgates.
All but one of the ten Republicans vying for the
(01:39):
nomination to replace her filed their paperwork after the announcement.
I don't pay a ton of attention to this sort
of thing. It's not really my wheelhouse. But last month
a man named Tyler Dikes joined the race, filing paperwork
as a congressional candidate in Mace's district. Now, like I said,
(02:00):
it's a crowded field. There are ten people in this primary,
and it's Nancy Mace's district. So being a little bit
of a conspiracy theorist with an extremely right wing policy
platform doesn't really set you apart. They all kind of
blend together most years. I probably couldn't tell you a
(02:20):
whole lot about every primary candidate in my own district,
let alone won two states away. So on the surface,
he's just another carbon copy America first Zelot trying to
fit this particular mold. He's created an image for his
campaign that's not unlike Nancy Mace's and I guess that
(02:41):
makes sense, right. These people voted for her, so maybe
that's what works here. Tyler Dykes's campaign website is pretty
similar to Nancy Mace's. They both emphasize their personal connection
to military service. Nancy Mace graduated from the Citadel Military
College and Hyler Dykes features photos of himself and his
(03:03):
Marine Corps dress blues. They both describe themselves as entrepreneurs
and business owners, and they both hate immigrants so much
that their lust for mass deportation isn't even confined only
to the pages devoted to their position on the issue.
It's in their candidate biographies, and they frame themselves as fighters.
(03:26):
There's a lot of fight based language, fighting for America,
fighting for Christ, and they both really position their devotion
to God as something they have to fight for and
fight against the Christ hating whardes on the left to
keep like this is something someone's trying to take from them.
(03:48):
Their platforms are pretty similar to America first, South Carolina first,
law and order, tough on crime, deport millions of people.
Nancy Mace is running for governor on eliminating the state
income tax and if he gets to congress. Tyler Diyke
says he wants to slash taxes too, But of the
(04:08):
five main policy ideas on his congressional campaign website, the
one that's about taxes the tax that he will cut
as a congressman. He wrote that he will end property
taxes now. Regardless of how you feel about property taxes,
those are imposed by your state and local government. The
(04:28):
federal government doesn't tax your property. So I guess he's
got that Republican tax cut spirit. But he's a little confused.
But overall just another far right America First candidate trying
to elbow his way into this attention economy. It's distasteful,
it's bigoted, it's chrysto fascist, enophobic, poorly articulated, economically unsound,
(04:54):
but it's not unique or interesting. These guys are a
dime a dozen and they'll mostly be gone by the
time the primaries end. But there is one really weird
thing about Tyler Diyke's campaign messaging. He keeps bringing up
that he's not a Nazi. He wants you to know
(05:15):
that no one's asking him this. He's bringing it up preemptively.
I am not a Nazi. Letters that he mailed to
the homes of hundreds of voters in his district are
starting to raise questions he thinks are already answered in
those letters.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
And here's the thing. They still call me a Nazi.
Speaker 4 (05:33):
To this there they still random me is all these evil,
horrific things.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
But let me tell you this, what makes me a Nazi?
Speaker 4 (05:42):
I love Christ, I love God. I love my country.
I love my safe, my family, and my community and
the entirety of the Low Country area. And that's why
I live here because I love it so much. So
does that make me a Nazi? Does loving your family,
loving God? Does love in your country? Does that make
(06:03):
you a Nazi?
Speaker 3 (06:04):
That makes you a nazi?
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Sophiets, Oh wow, he's just another tragic victim of cancel culture.
He's being attacked by the woke mobs who hate good
Christian men, and that's why they're calling him nazi.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Right?
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Is there another reason that this keeps coming up? Or
is it just because he loves his family so much?
Speaker 4 (06:28):
So it's quite interesting. You know, my experience is anily six.
For example, my brand is a neo Nazi domestic terrorists
because of the wave.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Oh it's not just because he loves his family. It's
because he's a peaceful, patriotic supporter of Donald Trump who
visited the Capitol Building and the communists who run the
mainstream media are unfairly showing a photograph of him where
he was simply waving hello to a friend. And that's
why they're calling him a Nazi, because he loves America
(06:59):
too much and he waved to load to a friend
while on a sightseeing trip to the Capitol Building. It
probably won't surprise you to know that that is not
the whole story. He's getting closer. It's definitely a little
bit more about what specifically he was doing with his
right arm at the top of the east stairs of
(07:19):
the Capitol Building a little after two pm on January sixth,
twenty twenty one. It's more about that than it is
about his love of his family. He's getting warmer. See.
(07:42):
The reason he keeps bringing up that he doesn't want
to be called a Nazi is because there are Nazi allegations.
But these allegations aren't just lies from the evil left
wing media. It's something he's been asked about by the FBI,
by the DOJ, and the Marine Corps and police in
(08:05):
multiple jurisdictions. Across several states. A lot of people are
asking him about the Nazi thing, so it makes sense
that he'd want to get out ahead of it and
assure the voters that there's a good explanation when he
brings up that innocent wave that's being taken out of
context to smear him as a Nazi. He's talking about
(08:26):
a photograph, a particular photograph and one of many that
federal prosecutors included in their sentencing memorandum after Tyler Dykes
accepted a plea agreement in federal court, he pleaded guilty
to two counts of assaulting an officer during the breach
of the Capitol on January sixth, twenty twenty one. In
exchange for his cooperation, the government dropped the other eight
(08:49):
counts on the indictment. So in that sentencing memorandum there's
a picture. It's a still frame that was taken from
a video, but obviously you can't put a video on paper,
so it's just a still frame, and it shows a
mass of people making their way up the east steps
of the Capitol Building on the afternoon of January sixth.
(09:11):
Whoever's taking the video was standing at the bottom of
the stairs, so you're just seeing the backs of the
people in this crowd who are walking up the stairs,
except for the figure in the center. In the center
of the picture, at the top of the stairs, a
very tall man in a black jacket and a gray
mask has turned around so he's facing the plaza below,
(09:34):
and he's sort of squared up facing down the stairs,
and his right arm is completely extended at about a
forty five degree angle, elbow straight wrists, straight, fingers together.
The government's caption reads still from video showing Dikes performing
(09:54):
what appears to be the Sein Kyle's salute after he
arrives on the landing in front of the East Rotunda doors.
He maintains that he was waving to a friend. For
what it's worth, I've seen a lot of these waves,
and I know what it looks like to me, and
regardless of what it looks like to you in this photograph,
(10:15):
I have a video of him doing the exact same
wave at a Nazi rally, so it's not just a picture.
He only served three of the fifty seven months he
was sentenced to spend in prison before he was released
in January of twenty twenty five. As a result of
Trump's blanket pardons for the nearly sixteen hundred January sixth defendants.
(10:37):
But that's not the issue here. He's not ashamed of
being a January sixth defendant. That's a badge of honor.
That's not a problem. If he can spin this Nazi
thing into a story that reinforces this narrative of brave
January sixth patriots who are being persecuted by communists and
(10:57):
liberals and the wop mob, it stops being a problem
for the people whose attention and votes and donations he wants.
So his story is pretty simple. All the people calling
him a Nazi are lying. They're taking a single photograph
out of context. It's not a Nazi salute. It's a wave.
(11:18):
And all of this, all of this Nazi talk, it's
all just about this one single incident, this one picture,
this one wave, and the government, the government is preventing
him from proving that to.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
You and then the honorable judge that I had denied
me being able to get that evidence and being able
to show the other people, and so a lot of
these people, unfortunately, because of a lot of the news
media and because of the efforts of the Biden administration.
They see me as an enemy and as a terrorist.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
That's Tyler Dyke's in mid October of this year, telling
a local TV news crew in Hiltonhead that the media
is complicit in spreading these lies the government told about
him in court. When he was interviewed last month by
a conspiracy theorist and right wing podcaster named Anne Vandersteele,
she was on his side. She was earnest and she
(12:06):
wanted to get to the bottom of this. He told
her that the government's entire case was lie after lie,
and there's proof that he never did any of those
things on January sixth. And she's excited to hear this,
and she wants to see these videos because she would
love to see proof that the government is persecuting our
brave January sixth patriots. But there's one little problem.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
Well, you know that's a very funny thing. The honorable
judge in my case actually put out a gaggle order
banning me from being able to have any of the
discovery evidence for me to be able to defend myself
from these That is the in the dockets.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Oh, it's in the dockets. It's in the dockets. Phenomenal
I can look at the dockets. We can look at
that together. That's easy. And I do see here that
there is a protective order filed in this case. Shortly
after he was first arrest the judge entered an order
prohibiting the public dissemination of certain discovery materials. If you
(13:06):
look at enough J six cases, this kind of protective
order was almost universal. The government didn't want to publicly
release stuff like the names of confidential informants, security footage
from inside certain secure government areas, personal information about witnesses,
just a laundry list of kinds of evidence that was
(13:27):
likely to be produced in these cases that would be sensitive.
So they're not saying they can't turn it over to
the defense in discovery. They're just saying this stays between us, right,
This doesn't get released to the public. This was normal
and it was routine, and it was agreed to by
everyone involved. The Defense council agreed to this. So okay,
(13:50):
off to a good start. I do see a protective
order on the docket. But if you skip down a
year down to the bottom of the docket, to the
end of the case, after the guilty plea, the government
filed their exhibit list for the sentencing hearing, and in
that document, the federal prosecutor wrote, the government does not
object to any photo or video evidence being released to
(14:14):
the public. So of the exhibits they planned to show
in court at sentencing, they said, it's okay if everyone
sees these, the media can have these, And so the
judge in turn asked defense counsel how they felt about that,
and the defense replied, defendant Tyler Bradley Dyke's buy and
through his attorneys, does not object to the video and
(14:37):
photo evidence identified and the government's noticed ECF number forty
four being made publicly available. Defendant does subject to any
public disclosure of his military records identified in Exhibit nineteen.
And so the judge signed an order the exhibits that
the government identified for the sentencing hearing, which the file
(14:58):
names are in that document. It includes the video of
the wave, the video of him grabbing the policeman's shield,
the things he's saying he can't get based on the
file names, those videos can absolutely be requested from the court.
These aren't under seal. There's not a gag order. He
can request these and I think he should do that.
(15:20):
There are a lot of videos on that exhibit list,
and I'm sure people would like to decide for themselves
if he's describing them faithfully. The only exhibit on that
(15:41):
list for the Defense objected to making publicly available. The
only one that remains sealed and isn't available for public
access are his military records. Those military records are specifically
the ones related to the other than honorable discharge he
received from the Marines. See those campaign flyers, the ones
(16:03):
he was mailing to people's houses. They're all signed at
the bottom. Tyler Dykes, US Marine Corps veteran business owner,
pardoned J six's patriot On November tenth, the Marine Corps birthday.
He posted a photo of himself in his dress blues
on the campaign's Instagram account. Being a Marine Corps veteran
is as big a part of his campaign identity as
(16:27):
talking about how he's not a Nazi. These are kind
of the top two things. He's a marine, and he
really wants you to know that Nazi stuff isn't true,
and he was a marine. That's true. He definitely was
in the Marine Corps. But those military records that he
doesn't want released would really undermine his narrative about being
(16:50):
a proud honorable veteran who definitely isn't a Nazi, because
they would show that he received an other than honorable
discharge for participating in prohibited extremist activity on November eighth,
twenty twenty, and that's in the file. I know that
specifically is in that sealed file because in other documents
(17:13):
that refer to it, that's all it says. I don't
know what else is in that record. All I know
for sure is that the stated reason for his other
than honorable discharge is something that happened on November eighth,
twenty twenty. Now, luckily for us, I know that on
November eighth, twenty twenty, a security camera in Sumter County,
(17:37):
South Carolina recorded footage of two men. One of the
men looked exactly like Tyler Dikes. Even his father had
to agree it kind of did. And the men were
putting up flyers with swastikas on them outside local businesses.
I don't know if his military discharge records include anything else.
(17:59):
Was it really just the flyers, just the one time
with the swastika flyers and that was it. I don't
know if the military was aware that he had been
attending things like a paramilitary training weekend at a compounded
Michigan hosted by members of the neo Nazi group the Base.
I don't know if there's a memo in there about
(18:19):
the time in January of twenty nineteen that an FBI
agent from the Joint Terrorism Task Force questioned him about
his possible connections to domestic extremist groups. I don't know
if the Marine Corps knew that he was one of
just a handful of white nationalists who attended the Unite
the Right Too, the flop of a Nazi rally held
(18:40):
in Washington, d C. In twenty eighteen to commemorate the
deadly rally that had happened a year earlier, and along
that same line of thought. I don't know if the
Marine Corp knew back then the Tyler Dykes had attended
the Unite the Right rally in Charlesville in twenty seventeen.
I don't know if they saw the videos of him
marching with a tea he torched, or the videos of
(19:01):
him punching wildly at counter protesters that he'd helped trap
in that sea of flames. And with the exception of
the Unit the Right rally in twenty seventeen, which was
before he enlisted. All of the rest of that conduct
occurred while Tyler Dykes was a Marine. He went to
Nazi rallies, he joined Nazi groups, he put up Nazi flyers,
(19:24):
he went to Nazi training camps to prepare for the
race war, and he fought his way into the Capitol
Building on January sixth. So, okay, yeah, he was a
United States Marine. He can post that picture in his
uniform on his campaign website. I don't care. I'm not
personally offended about him being a stain on the honor
(19:45):
of the US military or whatever, but I think a
lot of voters would feel like this isn't quite honest.
By the time Tyler Dykes was arrested in twenty twenty
three and extradited back to Virginia to face charges for
men missing those counter protesters with a lit torch, he'd
already been kicked out of the Marines. He had apparently
(20:06):
hidden that fact from his parents, and there was a
lot they didn't know about their son. The day he
was arrested in twenty twenty three, he'd been out with
other members of a group called the Southern Sons Active
Club a sort of white supremacist fight club for friendless
young men. They were trying to hang Nazi banners from
a highway overpass, but Tyler Dykes was bitten by a
(20:29):
dog and had to go to the hospital instead. He
eventually pleaded guilty to that felony charge in Almarle County,
Virginia related to the torch March, and he spent a
few months in the local jail. On the day he
was supposed to go home, he was picked up by
a federal marshal. The doj had waited until the last
day of his sentence here to unseal the charges against
(20:52):
him for January sixth, and after that he spent a
year out on pre trial bond in that case, and
then he eventually pleaded guilty to those charges in the
summer of twenty twenty four, and he finally reported to
federal prison in October of twenty twenty four, expecting to
be there for almost five years, but he was released
a few months later in January of this year after
(21:15):
receiving a federal pardon. And now he wants to go
back to the Capitol Building, not as a rioter this time,
but as a congressman. The campaign is barely a month old.
He's using a right wing crowdfunding site for campaign donations,
so you can see that he hasn't cracked two hundred
(21:35):
dollars yet. The only photo of his launch party is
so tightly cropped that you can only see the candidate
himself standing in an empty field in a public park.
I don't think there's a lot of grassroots excitement for
Tyler Diykes in South Carolina's first district. But if he
does keep making the rounds, and if he ever ends
up in front of a real reporter, I hope they'll
(21:57):
ask him why doesn't he just produce those exhibits. The
videos he's claiming are being kept from him under seal aren't.
And if he's so against any exhibits being held back
from the court of public opinion, he could go ahead
and release the one he actually has in his own possession,
the only one that is sealed. He has his own
(22:19):
discharge records show him to us. I'm dying to know
how many of those Nazi rallies the Marine Corps knew
about before they finally kicked him out. If you're interested
in hearing more about this particular weird Little Guy. There
are two episodes available right now over on the Weird
Little Guy's feed. It's a cool Zone Media show you
(22:40):
can listen to wherever you get your podcasts, if you're
in the Charleston area, or more importantly, if your conservative
boomer parents are, it can't hurt to let folks know
that one of your local candidates isn't being entirely forthcoming
about why people are calling him a Nazi. And wherever
you're conservative parents live, maybe this is a useful example
(23:03):
of the kind of thing you might find when you
start gently scratching the surface of these America First candidates.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
now find sources for It Could Happen here, listed directly
in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Hello, and welcome back to it could happen here. I
am your occasional host, Molly Conger, and today I have
exactly the kind of story you probably expect when you
hear my voice on this feed. A white nationalist has
gone and done something we all wish that he was
not doing. If you listen to my show Weird Little Guys,
(00:28):
you already know a little bit about this particular guy.
On that show, I talk about white nationalists, Neo Nazis,
right wing extremists, aspiring terrorists, things of that nature. My
domain is mostly guys you've never heard of because they
failed to live up to their goal of becoming the
next Hitler or whatever. It's funnier than it sounds, I swear,
(00:52):
But unfortunately for all of us, sometimes one of those
guys breaches containment talking about today, wants to be more
than just one of the weird little guys trying to
make a name for himself on the fringes of the
white nationalist movement. He wants to be a Congressman. He's
trying to make himself everybody's problem, and that makes him
(01:16):
part of what is happening here. Back in August, Representative
Nancy Mace announced that she wouldn't seek reelection in South
Carolina's first congressional district and she would instead focus on
making a run for governor, And that announcement opened the floodgates.
All but one of the ten Republicans vying for the
(01:39):
nomination to replace her filed their paperwork after the announcement.
I don't pay a ton of attention to this sort
of thing. It's not really my wheelhouse. But last month
a man named Tyler Dikes joined the race, filing paperwork
as a congressional candidate in Mace's district. Now, like I said,
(02:00):
it's a crowded field. There are ten people in this primary,
and it's Nancy Mace's district. So being a little bit
of a conspiracy theorist with an extremely right wing policy
platform doesn't really set you apart. They all kind of
blend together most years. I probably couldn't tell you a
(02:20):
whole lot about every primary candidate in my own district,
let alone won two states away. So on the surface,
he's just another carbon copy America first Zelot trying to
fit this particular mold. He's created an image for his
campaign that's not unlike Nancy Mace's and I guess that
(02:41):
makes sense, right. These people voted for her, so maybe
that's what works here. Tyler Dykes's campaign website is pretty
similar to Nancy Mace's. They both emphasize their personal connection
to military service. Nancy Mace graduated from the Citadel Military
College and Hyler Dykes features photos of himself and his
(03:03):
Marine Corps dress blues. They both describe themselves as entrepreneurs
and business owners, and they both hate immigrants so much
that their lust for mass deportation isn't even confined only
to the pages devoted to their position on the issue.
It's in their candidate biographies, and they frame themselves as fighters.
(03:26):
There's a lot of fight based language, fighting for America,
fighting for Christ, and they both really position their devotion
to God as something they have to fight for and
fight against the Christ hating whardes on the left to
keep like this is something someone's trying to take from them.
(03:48):
Their platforms are pretty similar to America first, South Carolina first,
law and order, tough on crime, deport millions of people.
Nancy Mace is running for governor on eliminating the state
income tax and if he gets to congress. Tyler Diyke
says he wants to slash taxes too, But of the
(04:08):
five main policy ideas on his congressional campaign website, the
one that's about taxes the tax that he will cut
as a congressman. He wrote that he will end property
taxes now. Regardless of how you feel about property taxes,
those are imposed by your state and local government. The
(04:28):
federal government doesn't tax your property. So I guess he's
got that Republican tax cut spirit. But he's a little confused.
But overall just another far right America First candidate trying
to elbow his way into this attention economy. It's distasteful,
it's bigoted, it's chrysto fascist, enophobic, poorly articulated, economically unsound,
(04:54):
but it's not unique or interesting. These guys are a
dime a dozen and they'll mostly be gone by the
time the primaries end. But there is one really weird
thing about Tyler Diyke's campaign messaging. He keeps bringing up
that he's not a Nazi. He wants you to know
(05:15):
that no one's asking him this. He's bringing it up preemptively.
I am not a Nazi. Letters that he mailed to
the homes of hundreds of voters in his district are
starting to raise questions he thinks are already answered in
those letters.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
And here's the thing. They still call me a Nazi.
Speaker 4 (05:33):
To this there they still random me is all these evil,
horrific things.
Speaker 3 (05:38):
But let me tell you this, what makes me a Nazi?
Speaker 4 (05:42):
I love Christ, I love God. I love my country.
I love my safe, my family, and my community and
the entirety of the Low Country area. And that's why
I live here because I love it so much. So
does that make me a Nazi? Does loving your family,
loving God? Does love in your country? Does that make
(06:03):
you a Nazi?
Speaker 3 (06:04):
That makes you a nazi?
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Sophiets, Oh wow, he's just another tragic victim of cancel culture.
He's being attacked by the woke mobs who hate good
Christian men, and that's why they're calling him nazi.
Speaker 3 (06:20):
Right?
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Is there another reason that this keeps coming up? Or
is it just because he loves his family so much?
Speaker 4 (06:28):
So it's quite interesting. You know, my experience is anily six.
For example, my brand is a neo Nazi domestic terrorists
because of the wave.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Oh it's not just because he loves his family. It's
because he's a peaceful, patriotic supporter of Donald Trump who
visited the Capitol Building and the communists who run the
mainstream media are unfairly showing a photograph of him where
he was simply waving hello to a friend. And that's
why they're calling him a Nazi, because he loves America
(06:59):
too much and he waved to load to a friend
while on a sightseeing trip to the Capitol Building. It
probably won't surprise you to know that that is not
the whole story. He's getting closer. It's definitely a little
bit more about what specifically he was doing with his
right arm at the top of the east stairs of
(07:19):
the Capitol Building a little after two pm on January sixth,
twenty twenty one. It's more about that than it is
about his love of his family. He's getting warmer. See.
(07:42):
The reason he keeps bringing up that he doesn't want
to be called a Nazi is because there are Nazi allegations.
But these allegations aren't just lies from the evil left
wing media. It's something he's been asked about by the FBI,
by the DOJ, and the Marine Corps and police in
(08:05):
multiple jurisdictions. Across several states. A lot of people are
asking him about the Nazi thing, so it makes sense
that he'd want to get out ahead of it and
assure the voters that there's a good explanation when he
brings up that innocent wave that's being taken out of
context to smear him as a Nazi. He's talking about
(08:26):
a photograph, a particular photograph and one of many that
federal prosecutors included in their sentencing memorandum after Tyler Dykes
accepted a plea agreement in federal court, he pleaded guilty
to two counts of assaulting an officer during the breach
of the Capitol on January sixth, twenty twenty one. In
exchange for his cooperation, the government dropped the other eight
(08:49):
counts on the indictment. So in that sentencing memorandum there's
a picture. It's a still frame that was taken from
a video, but obviously you can't put a video on paper,
so it's just a still frame, and it shows a
mass of people making their way up the east steps
of the Capitol Building on the afternoon of January sixth.
(09:11):
Whoever's taking the video was standing at the bottom of
the stairs, so you're just seeing the backs of the
people in this crowd who are walking up the stairs,
except for the figure in the center. In the center
of the picture, at the top of the stairs, a
very tall man in a black jacket and a gray
mask has turned around so he's facing the plaza below,
(09:34):
and he's sort of squared up facing down the stairs,
and his right arm is completely extended at about a
forty five degree angle, elbow straight wrists, straight, fingers together.
The government's caption reads still from video showing Dikes performing
(09:54):
what appears to be the Sein Kyle's salute after he
arrives on the landing in front of the East Rotunda doors.
He maintains that he was waving to a friend. For
what it's worth, I've seen a lot of these waves,
and I know what it looks like to me, and
regardless of what it looks like to you in this photograph,
(10:15):
I have a video of him doing the exact same
wave at a Nazi rally, so it's not just a picture.
He only served three of the fifty seven months he
was sentenced to spend in prison before he was released
in January of twenty twenty five. As a result of
Trump's blanket pardons for the nearly sixteen hundred January sixth defendants.
(10:37):
But that's not the issue here. He's not ashamed of
being a January sixth defendant. That's a badge of honor.
That's not a problem. If he can spin this Nazi
thing into a story that reinforces this narrative of brave
January sixth patriots who are being persecuted by communists and
(10:57):
liberals and the wop mob, it stops being a problem
for the people whose attention and votes and donations he wants.
So his story is pretty simple. All the people calling
him a Nazi are lying. They're taking a single photograph
out of context. It's not a Nazi salute. It's a wave.
(11:18):
And all of this, all of this Nazi talk, it's
all just about this one single incident, this one picture,
this one wave, and the government, the government is preventing
him from proving that to.
Speaker 4 (11:30):
You and then the honorable judge that I had denied
me being able to get that evidence and being able
to show the other people, and so a lot of
these people, unfortunately, because of a lot of the news
media and because of the efforts of the Biden administration.
They see me as an enemy and as a terrorist.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
That's Tyler Dyke's in mid October of this year, telling
a local TV news crew in Hiltonhead that the media
is complicit in spreading these lies the government told about
him in court. When he was interviewed last month by
a conspiracy theorist and right wing podcaster named Anne Vandersteele,
she was on his side. She was earnest and she
(12:06):
wanted to get to the bottom of this. He told
her that the government's entire case was lie after lie,
and there's proof that he never did any of those
things on January sixth. And she's excited to hear this,
and she wants to see these videos because she would
love to see proof that the government is persecuting our
brave January sixth patriots. But there's one little problem.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
Well, you know that's a very funny thing. The honorable
judge in my case actually put out a gaggle order
banning me from being able to have any of the
discovery evidence for me to be able to defend myself
from these That is the in the dockets.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
Oh, it's in the dockets. It's in the dockets. Phenomenal
I can look at the dockets. We can look at
that together. That's easy. And I do see here that
there is a protective order filed in this case. Shortly
after he was first arrest the judge entered an order
prohibiting the public dissemination of certain discovery materials. If you
(13:06):
look at enough J six cases, this kind of protective
order was almost universal. The government didn't want to publicly
release stuff like the names of confidential informants, security footage
from inside certain secure government areas, personal information about witnesses,
just a laundry list of kinds of evidence that was
(13:27):
likely to be produced in these cases that would be sensitive.
So they're not saying they can't turn it over to
the defense in discovery. They're just saying this stays between us, right,
This doesn't get released to the public. This was normal
and it was routine, and it was agreed to by
everyone involved. The Defense council agreed to this. So okay,
(13:50):
off to a good start. I do see a protective
order on the docket. But if you skip down a
year down to the bottom of the docket, to the
end of the case, after the guilty plea, the government
filed their exhibit list for the sentencing hearing, and in
that document, the federal prosecutor wrote, the government does not
object to any photo or video evidence being released to
(14:14):
the public. So of the exhibits they planned to show
in court at sentencing, they said, it's okay if everyone
sees these, the media can have these, And so the
judge in turn asked defense counsel how they felt about that,
and the defense replied, defendant Tyler Bradley Dyke's buy and
through his attorneys, does not object to the video and
(14:37):
photo evidence identified and the government's noticed ECF number forty
four being made publicly available. Defendant does subject to any
public disclosure of his military records identified in Exhibit nineteen.
And so the judge signed an order the exhibits that
the government identified for the sentencing hearing, which the file
(14:58):
names are in that document. It includes the video of
the wave, the video of him grabbing the policeman's shield,
the things he's saying he can't get based on the
file names, those videos can absolutely be requested from the court.
These aren't under seal. There's not a gag order. He
can request these and I think he should do that.
(15:20):
There are a lot of videos on that exhibit list,
and I'm sure people would like to decide for themselves
if he's describing them faithfully. The only exhibit on that
(15:41):
list for the Defense objected to making publicly available. The
only one that remains sealed and isn't available for public
access are his military records. Those military records are specifically
the ones related to the other than honorable discharge he
received from the Marines. See those campaign flyers, the ones
(16:03):
he was mailing to people's houses. They're all signed at
the bottom. Tyler Dykes, US Marine Corps veteran business owner,
pardoned J six's patriot On November tenth, the Marine Corps birthday.
He posted a photo of himself in his dress blues
on the campaign's Instagram account. Being a Marine Corps veteran
is as big a part of his campaign identity as
(16:27):
talking about how he's not a Nazi. These are kind
of the top two things. He's a marine, and he
really wants you to know that Nazi stuff isn't true,
and he was a marine. That's true. He definitely was
in the Marine Corps. But those military records that he
doesn't want released would really undermine his narrative about being
(16:50):
a proud honorable veteran who definitely isn't a Nazi, because
they would show that he received an other than honorable
discharge for participating in prohibited extremist activity on November eighth,
twenty twenty, and that's in the file. I know that
specifically is in that sealed file because in other documents
(17:13):
that refer to it, that's all it says. I don't
know what else is in that record. All I know
for sure is that the stated reason for his other
than honorable discharge is something that happened on November eighth,
twenty twenty. Now, luckily for us, I know that on
November eighth, twenty twenty, a security camera in Sumter County,
(17:37):
South Carolina recorded footage of two men. One of the
men looked exactly like Tyler Dikes. Even his father had
to agree it kind of did. And the men were
putting up flyers with swastikas on them outside local businesses.
I don't know if his military discharge records include anything else.
(17:59):
Was it really just the flyers, just the one time
with the swastika flyers and that was it. I don't
know if the military was aware that he had been
attending things like a paramilitary training weekend at a compounded
Michigan hosted by members of the neo Nazi group the Base.
I don't know if there's a memo in there about
(18:19):
the time in January of twenty nineteen that an FBI
agent from the Joint Terrorism Task Force questioned him about
his possible connections to domestic extremist groups. I don't know
if the Marine Corps knew that he was one of
just a handful of white nationalists who attended the Unite
the Right Too, the flop of a Nazi rally held
(18:40):
in Washington, d C. In twenty eighteen to commemorate the
deadly rally that had happened a year earlier, and along
that same line of thought. I don't know if the
Marine Corp knew back then the Tyler Dykes had attended
the Unite the Right rally in Charlesville in twenty seventeen.
I don't know if they saw the videos of him
marching with a tea he torched, or the videos of
(19:01):
him punching wildly at counter protesters that he'd helped trap
in that sea of flames. And with the exception of
the Unit the Right rally in twenty seventeen, which was
before he enlisted. All of the rest of that conduct
occurred while Tyler Dykes was a Marine. He went to
Nazi rallies, he joined Nazi groups, he put up Nazi flyers,
(19:24):
he went to Nazi training camps to prepare for the
race war, and he fought his way into the Capitol
Building on January sixth. So, okay, yeah, he was a
United States Marine. He can post that picture in his
uniform on his campaign website. I don't care. I'm not
personally offended about him being a stain on the honor
(19:45):
of the US military or whatever, but I think a
lot of voters would feel like this isn't quite honest.
By the time Tyler Dykes was arrested in twenty twenty
three and extradited back to Virginia to face charges for
men missing those counter protesters with a lit torch, he'd
already been kicked out of the Marines. He had apparently
(20:06):
hidden that fact from his parents, and there was a
lot they didn't know about their son. The day he
was arrested in twenty twenty three, he'd been out with
other members of a group called the Southern Sons Active
Club a sort of white supremacist fight club for friendless
young men. They were trying to hang Nazi banners from
a highway overpass, but Tyler Dykes was bitten by a
(20:29):
dog and had to go to the hospital instead. He
eventually pleaded guilty to that felony charge in Almarle County,
Virginia related to the torch March, and he spent a
few months in the local jail. On the day he
was supposed to go home, he was picked up by
a federal marshal. The doj had waited until the last
day of his sentence here to unseal the charges against
(20:52):
him for January sixth, and after that he spent a
year out on pre trial bond in that case, and
then he eventually pleaded guilty to those charges in the
summer of twenty twenty four, and he finally reported to
federal prison in October of twenty twenty four, expecting to
be there for almost five years, but he was released
a few months later in January of this year after
(21:15):
receiving a federal pardon. And now he wants to go
back to the Capitol Building, not as a rioter this time,
but as a congressman. The campaign is barely a month old.
He's using a right wing crowdfunding site for campaign donations,
so you can see that he hasn't cracked two hundred
(21:35):
dollars yet. The only photo of his launch party is
so tightly cropped that you can only see the candidate
himself standing in an empty field in a public park.
I don't think there's a lot of grassroots excitement for
Tyler Diykes in South Carolina's first district. But if he
does keep making the rounds, and if he ever ends
up in front of a real reporter, I hope they'll
(21:57):
ask him why doesn't he just produce those exhibits. The
videos he's claiming are being kept from him under seal aren't.
And if he's so against any exhibits being held back
from the court of public opinion, he could go ahead
and release the one he actually has in his own possession,
the only one that is sealed. He has his own
(22:19):
discharge records show him to us. I'm dying to know
how many of those Nazi rallies the Marine Corps knew
about before they finally kicked him out. If you're interested
in hearing more about this particular weird Little Guy. There
are two episodes available right now over on the Weird
Little Guy's feed. It's a cool Zone Media show you
(22:40):
can listen to wherever you get your podcasts, if you're
in the Charleston area, or more importantly, if your conservative
boomer parents are, it can't hurt to let folks know
that one of your local candidates isn't being entirely forthcoming
about why people are calling him a Nazi. And wherever
you're conservative parents live, maybe this is a useful example
(23:03):
of the kind of thing you might find when you
start gently scratching the surface of these America First candidates.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
now find sources for It Could Happen here, listed directly
in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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