At least one man with Northwest Indiana ties who was pardoned for his actions on January 6, 2021, wants his share of the proposed nearly $1.8 billion settlement fund if it comes to fruition.
“I think that everybody that was locked up with me in D.C. (prison), even the scumbags, like even they deserve some compensation,” Kash Lee Kelly, 37, of Hobart, said on a Facebook video posted Tuesday morning. He could not be immediately reached for comment on Thursday.
In the video, Kelly said he expects to receive at least $1.6 million as part of his claim.
Since the proposed fund was announced, two police officers who helped protect the U.S. Capitol that day sued to stop it, calling it a “taxpayer-funded slush fund,” according to court filings. Senate Republicans appeared increasingly unlikely to meet their self-imposed deadline for passing a roughly $70 billion immigration enforcement bill this week as disputes over security funding for the White House ballroom and the proposed settlement fund effectively derailed progress, according to the Associated Press. On Thursday afternoon, Republican senators expressed concerns about who would get the money with acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.
The potential fund stems from the settlement of President Donald Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns in 2019 and 2020. It’s designed to compensate those who believe they were mistreated by the Justice Department during prior administrations. Decisions on payouts would be made by a five-member commission appointed by the attorney general.
The potential settlement also would include an additional document signed by Blanche, who was previously Trump’s personal defense attorney, that bars the government from levying any future tax penalties against Trump, his family and his companies.
More than 100 police officers were injured during the Capitol riot. Nearly 1,600 people were charged with Jan. 6-related crimes, but Trump used his pardon powers to erase all of those cases in a sweeping act of clemency on his first day in office last year.
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In Kelly’s video, he opens with saying that the idea of a fund was circulated among other Jan. 6 inmates in the Washington, DC jail.
” … and I remember telling all the guys when I was in there… ‘yo, supposedly, there’s a fund out there that when we all get home, we’re all gonna be millionaires.’ And I remember people being like, ‘Yeah right, whatever.’ And I even started to question it because man, I got out of prison, I came home and I ain’t seen nothing,” Kelly said in the video.
“Turns out, Trump just come out on the news talking about a 1.7 billion dollar fund for the January 6ers and other people who were persecuted by the agencies because of their political beliefs or political alignment. … I’m just like ‘wow because now it’s even more real’.”
The proposed fund would be an “unprecedented abuse of power” that would “allow the president to funnel taxpayer dollars to his loyalists,” Democracy Defenders Fund, led by prominent attorney and Obama-era ambassador Norm Eisen, wrote in a media release.
“It is part of a demonstrated pattern of self-dealing that has spanned crypto ventures, foreign policy entanglements, and now, a lawsuit in which (President Trump) the plaintiff and the defendant are, in practical terms, the same person.”
Kelly was initially charged in 2021 with knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority; violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol Grounds. He later pleaded guilty in November 2022 to one count of parading, demonstrating or picketing in the Capitol Building in exchange for dropping the remaining charges. Kelly was sentenced to 60 days of incarceration and $500 in restitution.
Kelly’s case was complicated by the fact that, on Jan. 6, he was awaiting sentencing for pleading guilty to distribution of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine and marijuana when he was a member of the Latin Kings gang from 2003 until he was indicted in 2017.
He had posted several photos on social media while inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, as insurrectionists injured police officers and destroyed Capitol property with prior encouragement from President Trump at a rally.
“I’m excited,” Kelly said in the Tuesday video. “First thing I buy — his and hers (Chevy) Tahoe … Sage and white.”
Dale Huttle, now 75, of Crown Point, hit at least two police officers with a long flagpole, according to federal prosecutors.
Huttle was “one of the more violent participants,” then-District of Columbia U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves wrote.
One of the cops he jabbed with a flagpole ended up with a slipped disk after he fell down stairs, while Huttle kept beating him with a flagpole, records show. The officer had to pepper-spray rioters so he could get back on his feet.
Huttle did not respond to multiple attempts to reach him.
Before the pardon, he pleaded guilty in 2023 to one count of felony assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers using a dangerous weapon and causing serious bodily injury in the U.S. District Court in Washington D.C., according to a U.S. Department of Justice news release. Huttle had served six months of a 2 1/2-year sentence when he was pardoned.
Court filings state Huttle had two “violent confrontations” with law enforcement officers on the building’s Lower West Terrace. That afternoon, as the crowd was pulling bike racks used as a barrier, Dale Huttle went to the front of the crowd and hit at least two officers with a long flagpole, according to a release. A half-hour later, he allegedly grabbed another officer’s baton, yelling: “Surrender!”
His nephew, Matthew Huttle, was also convicted of misdemeanors after trespassing and served six months in prison. At the age of 42, six days after his pardon, he was killed by a Jasper County Deputy during a traffic stop in January 2025.
A special prosecutor declined to charge the officer in the Jan. 26, 2025, shooting, which he determined to be “legally justified.”
A 10-minute released bodycam video appeared to show Huttle, 42, feared getting arrested and violating his parole. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
A fourth man, Gregory Mijares, 44, of Crown Point, could not be immediately reached.
He was slated to stand trial about two months after his pardon for felony civil disorder charge and misdemeanor offenses of assaulting officers, entering a restricted building, and violent entry.
Court records state that, on Jan. 6, Mijares made his way to the Lower West Terrace, pursuing law enforcement officers, court records said. He was standing in their path, raising a flag over his head, and fighting with them as they tried to remove him. Video footage shows Mijares and other rioters smashed one of the glass panes of a door, and Mijares flipped off the officers before pulling open the door for the other rioters, records said.
Mijares was able to grab a baton with which an officer hit him. Mijares remained at the front and pushed against police in a couple “heave ho” efforts, passing out riot shields taken from officers to rioters, according to the statement of facts. After one last “heave ho” against police, he left the tunnel about 3:19 p.m. EST, records said.
Post-Tribune archives and the Associated Press contributed.
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