'Ready for civil war': Cops find conspiracist's car packed with pipe bombs

A central Illinois man was arrested after officers found two pipe bombs and a pistol under his seat during a traffic stop.

A Pekin police officer pulled over a car on May 17 for a traffic violation and spotted a canvas bag locked with a padlock under the passenger seat where Dalton Mattus was sitting. Police found a 45 caliber pistol and two homemade pipe bombs rigged with BBs after obtaining a warrant to search the bag, reported Rolling Stone.

The 34-year-old Mattus had refused to let police search the bag without a warrant, but they seized it and let him go before obtaining the warrant and opened the bag at city hall, which was evacuated once they saw the improvised explosive devices.

Police went to Mattus' home, where they engaged in a brief standoff with him before he was arrested and charged with being a felon in possession of a weapon. Officers said they found three more pipe bombs there.

A local radio station reported that Mattus told police he made the bombs as protection from “undocumented immigrants and a corrupt government,” and Rolling Stone and American Doom analyzed more than 200 of his social media posts dating back to 2016. They found he had been drawn to far-right conspiracy theories starting around June 2020.

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“To everybody that is disgusted with the way our government is being ran,” Mattus said in an April 2023 TikTok video. “There needs to be, like, a call to arms. Something needs to happen — now.”

Mattus was interested in conspiracy theories involving QAnon, election lies and sweeping anti-government conspiracies, and he repeatedly shared his willingness to engage in civil war. In March 2023 he changed his profile picture to an upside-down American flag — like the one U.S. Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito flew outside his home days after the Jan. 6 insurrection.

“I am completely disgusted that people voted for Joe Biden to be the president,” Mattus wrote on Facebook shortly after the 2020 election. “I am f---ing irate this is complete and utter bulls--t I’m ready for the f--ing Civil War."

Mattus is a welder by trade and has a felony and misdemeanor convictions for theft, criminal trespass, domestic batter and damage to property, and has been the subject of a restraining order, and he complained online about having his children taken away by family with the help of child protective services.

“Now my children are pumped full of vaccines that they didn’t even need and for what reason but the (sic) poison them,” Mattus wrote on Facebook in December 2023. “I was a monster before my children were born and now that I don’t get to see them anymore you will see the f---ing devil.”

Police said Mattus would likely face additional charges related to the explosive devices, and he remains in jail with a court hearing scheduled for June 20.