(L-R) Cole Evan White, Michael Paul Miselis, Thomas Walter Gillen and Benjamin Drake Daley.
Of all the groups that were in Charlottesville that day, this one was really trying to make themselves a problem beyond such events. These four won’t.
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA ― Just over a year after the White Supremacist “Unite the Right” Rally, federal authorities in Virginia have arrested members of the violent Rise Above Movement (RAM) connected to the violence that day that resulted in the death of one person protesting against the assembled neo-fascists.
RAM members 25-year-old Benjamin Drake Daley of Redondo Beach, CA 34-year-old Thomas Walter Gillen also of Redondo Beach, 29-year-old Michael Paul Miselis of Lawndale, CA and 24-year-old Cole Evan White of Clayton, CA were arrested and each charged with one count of conspiracy to violate the federal Riot Act and one count of violating the federal Riot Act. All four were identified as either marchers at the Aug. 11, torch rally on the campus of the Virginia Tech University or at the main rally the following day.
READ: Court Documents on the Arrests
FBI U.S. Attorney Thomas Cullen says their investigation hinged on the group’s social media activity. “I think we’ll have a number of witnesses, in addition to video and other evidence, that clearly establishes how these four individuals incited a riot, committed acts of violence, and therefore violated federal law,” Cullen said at a press conference on Tuesday, noting they had more digital video evidence than for even the Boston Marathon bombing in 2014 that took the lives of two people.
The California-based Rise Above Movement is a neo-Nazi organization that has been called a “street-fighting club” by observers, but has ties to older groups such as the Hammerskin Nation, who are among RAM’s membership. Many of their members have faced serious criminal charges, including assault, robbery and weapon offenses. Their actions in Charlottesville were detailed in news reports that name Daley in particular. Daley, the article notes, runs a tree-trimming business and has had run-ins with the law in the past, including serving a seven-day stint in jail for carrying a concealed snub-nosed revolver. Regardless, he planned to join the military. Miselis was recently fired from his position as a defense contractor with security clearance for Northrop Grumman when his activities in Charlottesville were discovered. Cole White was one of the first people fired from his job after Charlottesville, his old position being a hot dog vendor in Berkeley, California. According to the Twitter account @YesYoureRacist, he was also a participant in a racist protest in May 2017 in Oakland.
Cole was part of the violent protests in Oakland back in May pic.twitter.com/yQQkTqXUMl
— Yes, You’re Racist (@YesYoureRacist) August 12, 2017
Several neo-fascists have been arrested and await trial for their roles in the violence in Charlottesville that day, most notably White supremacist James Alex Fields Jr. who drove a car that slammed into a crowd of protesters, killing 34-year-old Heather Heyer. Federal authorities filed hate crimes charges against Fields, who is currently being held on first degree murder charges. Jacob Scott Goodwin of Billy Roper’s Shieldwall Network and militia member and Proud Boy Alex Michael Ramos are both in prison for their role in the assault on DeAndre Harris while Daniel Patrick Borden’s sentencing for his role, which was supposed to take place on Monday, has been delayed until January 7 because of Borden’s unwillingness to speak with probation officers conducting a pre-sentence investigation, as well as a request from his lawyer to bring multiple character witnesses to the hearing.
Others who have been convicted in the wake of the Charlottesville rally include Ku Klux Klan leader Richard Preston, who is serving four years after he fired a shot at a counter protester and Chris Cantwell, who was dubbed the “Crying Nazi” after a video surfaced where he appeared to be crying after learning he was to be arrested on felony assault charges. He pled guilty in July and banished from Virginia for the next five years.
The four charged today are currently being held in California and face the possibility of ten years in prison if convicted.
Hahaha, Judge dropped ALL charges against them!
Hahaha indeed. We have some bad news for this commenter. The case they are thinking of is the one where RAM members Robert Rundo, Robert Boman, Aaron Eason, and Tyler Laube were arrested last October and charged under the Anti-Riot Act stemming from charges that they allegedly planned riots and incited violence across California in 2017. Laube pleaded guilty to the charge in November. But Rundo, Boman, and Eason saw their charges dismissed. In his dismissal, U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney called the Anti-Riot statute “unconstitutionally overbroad” because it “criminalizes protected speech.” and that has been something that leftists have been saying about this particular law for generations, ever since they imposed to law to quell anti-war protests in the sixties! The RAM members in this article however are not faring as well. One month before the cases in California were dismissed, Daley and Miselis plead guilty to their charges while Gillen and White are awaiting sentencing, which is supposed to take place July 2019. So we have five RAM members locked up or on their way to be, and three who even though it would been nice to see them on the chopping block, just helped scuttle an unjust law. Works for us!