Release the Matthew Huttle Bodycam Footage
A Capitol Insurrectionist was shot by police. Schadenfreude is inappropriate.
Matthew Huttle, who watched his uncle Dale injure several Capitol Police officers by beating them with an American flag during the Capitol Insurrection on January 6, 2021, was killed during a traffic stop on January 27, 2025, just seven days after being pardoned alongside 1,500 other violent rioters by a fellow felon, President Donald Trump.
It was predictable these blanket pardons would lead to tragedy. Obviously unleashing more than a thousand domestic terrorists back into the country would have bad effects. We have already seen J6er Daniel Ball, who allegedly attacked police with “an explosive weapon,” re-arrested on gun charges, and another, Andrew Taake, who beat officers with a metal whip before bear macing them (Simon Belmont, eat your heart out), is “at large” for sexting a child.
Still, I must chide those schadenfreude junkies extracting sadistic joy from Mr. Huttle’s tragic death. Be more thoughtful—however he postured himself, he was also a victim.
As of this writing, we have not seen body camera footage of Mr. Huttle’s death. We must. After the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Sonya Massey, and the whole litany of officer-involved murders, the American public made clear their discomfort with police “jumping the gun” and violently escalating situations. Could that be what happened here? Initial reports say Mr. Huttle was resisting arrest, and of course, it would not be unlikely that someone who has already been involved with assaulting police might do so again. And he was carrying a firearm—always a “bad look” for someone freshly free from jail. But was this the sort of resistance that necessitated a gunshot?
Demand this footage so that we might ascertain whether “he had it coming” or if this was police misconduct.
If Mr. Huttle were grabbing at the officer’s gun or fighting his arrest in a way that would place a brave police officer’s life and safety in danger, his execution would be understandable. Nobody of good character would disagree. In that instance, I would “point the finger” and place responsibility on the head of the Republican Party, who miserably failed Mr. Huttle by convincing him he was “hostage” and “hero.” By tricking him, for their own political ends, into earnestly believing he had nothing to repent of, Mr. Trump and his harpies Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-GA) (the #2 Google result for “crazy congresswoman”), Kash Patel (or “Kush Patel” as I like to call him, because that fool has got to be smoking something), et al. deprived him the opportunity to seek treatment for his criminal tendencies. They did this sick man a great disservice by telling him he needed no curing—after all, if beating police is an act of patriotism, then he should want to be party to it again.
If his death was unlawful or unfair, I hope Democrats will stand alongside his family and hold the police accountable. I have sometimes felt the Black Lives Matter movement, which I strongly support, did an inadequate job explaining to racists that they should also be afraid of police violence, because even white Americans can be, and are, abused by malevolent or reckless actors in law enforcement.
If instead Mr. Huttle is determined to have earned his death by threatening the life and safety of the officer, then we must hold Republicans accountable, and not only for endangering our communities by loosing these thugs—as we continue to see J6 rioters be hurt and arrested again, there will be time for that accountability. We should use soft eyes, too, and understand that while this man was deplorable for a time, he still might have been able to find a redemption and be reintegrated into society, if only he could have recognized his wrongdoing and sought to change. But since that would not have profited Mr. Trump and the Republican Party, they instead chose to keep him sick, and now he is dead.
I hope sincerely we find a way to help these people become better than they are—as is, setting them free, as Mr. Trump did, condemned them to worse fates than they were already facing.