Unite the Right Marcher Pleads Guilty to J6 Charges

Tyler Dykes, the first of the Unite the Right torch marchers to plead guilty to a felony burning object charge, has also pled guilty to federal charges for his participation in the January 6, 2021 insurrection.

After years of involvement in right wing extremism, it all caught up with him at once. Dykes was arrested on March 17, 2023 after going to the emergency room for a dog bite. He had been trying to hang a racist banner from a highway overpass with other members of a white supremacist group called the Southern Sons Active Club, but things didn’t go according to plan. After checking out the location for the banner, Dykes walked back to his car to get the tools they needed to secure the banner. Instead, he encountered a man walking his dogs. Hospitals are required to report injuries from dog bites, so while Dykes was getting cleaned up, an officer arrived to make a report. Until that moment, he had no idea that a grand jury in Virginia had returned an indictment a month earlier. When the officer’s routine warrant check came back with a capias from Albemarle County, Dykes sent a panicked message to his group chat - “I’m arrested by Virginia. Nuke my account.”

At a bond hearing a few days after his extradition to Virginia, Dykes’ father, an 85 year old retired accountant, took the stand to tell the court he would take responsibility for his 25 year old son if he were released on bond. Albemarle County Commonwealth’s Attorney Lawton Tufts passed him a stack of photographs. Did he know his son was a suspect in an investigation in Sumter County, SC? Did he know why his son had been other than honorably discharged from the Marines? Did he know what his son had been doing on the day of his arrest? He did not. 

The photos Dykes’ father was shown in court last April were still frames from security camera footage in Sumter County, SC. The sheriff in Sumter County was investigating after flyers bearing swastikas were found on several local businesses on a Monday morning, November 9, 2020. The man in the images certainly bore a strong resemblance to Tyler Dykes, even his father reluctantly agreed. Apparently the United States Marine Corps did, too. According to information in the US Attorney’s sentencing memorandum in Dykes’ federal case, he was discharged from the Marine Corps “under other than honorable conditions for participating in prohibited activities, namely, “participating in extremist behavior” on or about November 8, 2020.” In text messages found on his phone, Dykes sent a photo of his discharge letter to someone. He claimed he was being discharged “for being incredibly political with my fellow marines” after the 2020 election. When he was interviewed by the probation office in his federal case, he lied, saying he “was asked to leave the military after not reporting for drill.” 

The military records were filed under seal, but the memorandum does not indicate the Marine Corps was aware at the time Dykes was discharged that he had participated in the capitol riot. On January 6, 2021, when Tyler Dykes stole a police officer’s riot shield and used it to assault officers trying to keep the mob from entering the capitol, he was still a United States Marine

Tyler Dykes pled guilty to the charge of burning an object with the intent to intimidate in May 2023. He was sentenced five years, but four years and six months of that was suspended, meaning he would have an active incarceration of just six months. With good behavior and time served before he took the plea agreement, he was released from the Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail on July 17, 2023. Instead of going home to South Carolina, he was transferred directly into federal custody on newly filed federal charges for his participation in the January 6th insurrection. The initial indictment was for ten counts. He entered a plea agreement in April of this year, agreeing to plead guilty to two counts of assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers with a dangerous weapon. 

With no trial, some questions will remain unanswered. In December 2021, the FBI received an anonymous tip from someone who said Dykes told them he had entered the capitol on January 6, writing:

He then told me about how he went into the capital with a mask on with the other rioters and started beating up police officers. He states he was still in the military at the time. He said he has video evidence of him being there but he did not show me since we were in a public setting. He was there for ‘fun’ and wanting to make a statement. He was there with other group of people but would not state who.

The agent assigned to investigate the tip confirmed the source’s identification of Dykes through typical investigative means (issuing a subpoena to his cell phone provider, comparing footage to the suspect’s DMV photo, etc), but he had an extra source this time: he already knew what Tyler Dykes looked like. He had personally interviewed Dykes in January 2019 “regarding his potential ties to domestic extremist groups.” No additional information was offered in the affidavit about the circumstances that prompted that original interview, whether any followup investigation was done, if the investigation was at the request of or reported to the Marine Corps, or which extremist groups the FBI believed he was involved with in 2019. 

The government’s sentencing memorandum also indicates that despite his willingness to plead guilty to the charges, Dykes was not truthful in his final interview with federal agents. Dykes’ plea agreement requires his cooperation with the ongoing investigation into the events of January 6. Part of that agreement was a final debrief with federal agents, conducted on June 28, 2024. In that interview, Dykes told agents that he left his home in South Carolina mid-morning on January 5th and arrived in DC in the evening, after dark but in time to have dinner with friends. His cell phone tells a different story. Verizon records have his phone in Marathon, FL at 3:20pm on January 5. A little before 8pm, he took a photo with his cell phone of a slip printed by an American Airlines kiosk at the Miami airport indicating he would need to see a ticket agent for assistance. His phone pinged again an hour outside his home in South Carolina at 12:30am on January 6. No clear conclusion is drawn in the memo, but it appears that Dykes drove 1300 miles from the Florida Keys to Washington DC overnight after unsuccessfully trying to board a flight in Miami. It would be very hard to forget driving for twenty hours and then immediately fighting your way inside the United States Capitol, making it far more likely he chose to conceal his activities in the lead up to January 6. It remains to be seen if the DOJ will pursue additional charges - it is a federal crime to lie to an FBI agent. Whatever he is hiding about his trip to Florida the day before the insurrection must be worth the possibility of additional prison time. 

Dykes is scheduled to be sentenced on July 19. The defense is asking for 24 months, a downward departure from the guideline range, citing Dykes’ age at the time of offense and his aging parents’ reliance on their son. The government is asking for a sentence of 63 months, which falls in the middle of the guideline range.