Ryan J. Reilly Profile picture
@NBCNews Justice reporter. 📚Author of SEDITION HUNTERS, one of Publishers Weekly’s best books of 2023 https://t.co/of2wEZEgyy SIGNAL: ryanjreilly.62 🚲

Apr 6, 2021, 13 tweets

So this newly discovered image from Jan. 6 might not look very important. But it is. Let me explain why.

(Thread warning.)

Citizen sleuths noted that Matthew Beddingfield, a 20-year-old North Carolina man currently out on bond in an attempted murder case, bore a striking resemblance to a Capitol rioter who was captured on video jabbing at a police line with his American flag. huffpost.com/entry/facial-r…

Jason Beddingfield, Matthew's father, previously brought his son to the "Million MAGA March" in November. Note those shoes, note the flag pole.

That brings us to Jan. 6. "We are here to take this country back from those commie bastards," Jason Beddingfield writes on Facebook. Who's we, exactly? Jason Beddingfield admits he went to the Capitol, but denies his son was with him in DC. huffpost.com/entry/facial-r…

Citizen sleuths found video of the men believed to be Matthew Beddingfield and Jason Beddingfield at the Capitol. While the men arrive at the same time and are within feet of one another at one point at the from of the police line, they arrive from separate paths.

Welp, guess what? Here's the father-and-son pair together on Jan. 6, seen in the location where Jason Beddingfield took his Facebook photos. Note the flags, note the outfits, note those Nikes with the reverse swoosh. Incredible detective work from the Sedition Hunters community.

You'll find the father-and-son duo together at 27:00, in this YouTube video with barely 100 views. Turn the quality all the way up. Blink and you'll miss it.

“He was not there, he was not with me. He did not do the things that have been speculated about. I mean, there’s a lot of doppelgangers in the world, isn’t it?” huffpost.com/entry/facial-r…

Here’s the video HuffPost put together, built on the work of citzen sleuths, that shows Matthew Beddingfield’s activities at the Capitol:

Now given how much law enforcement has used facial recognition (see this BuzzFeed piece today) why hasn’t the guy with the pending attempted murder charges been arrested yet? Good question! One potential answer: Bureaucracy! buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanma…

The D.C. Metropolitian Police Department did release an image of the suspect.

But it was low-quality, and it was buried on literally the last page of this PDF that most Americans never set eyes on.

mpdc.dc.gov/sites/default/…

Are there early tips about Matthew Beddingfield that were buried in the FBI database somewhere? Maybe! We might find out when he’s arrested.

You can watch the start of Matthew Beddingfield’s invasion of the Capitol here. He eventually enters the building:

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