Four California white nationalists arrested after Charlottesville rally
ATLANTA — Four militant white nationalists from California were arrested by federal authorities Tuesday on charges that they traveled to Virginia with the intent to incite a riot and commit violence at last year’s deadly farright rallies in Charlottesville.
Thomas Cullen, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia, announced that charges had been filed against Benjamin Drake Daley, 25, of Redondo Beach; Thomas Walter Gillen, 34, of Redondo Beach; Michael Paul Miselis, 29, of Lawndale; and Cole Evan White, 24, of Clayton. All four were set to appear in federal court in Los Angeles on Tuesday afternoon.
The four are all members of the so-called Rise Above Movement, a white supremacist group based in Southern California that espouses antiSemitism, promotes “clean living” and meets regularly in public parks to train in physical fitness, boxing and other street fighting techniques, according to the affidavit.
Last August, the four California men traveled to Charlottesville, the affidavit says, to join hundreds of other white nationalists at a rally organized by Richard Spencer, the leader of a white supremacist think tank, to protest the planned removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
The defendants came to the rally prepared to engage in physical violence, having taped their fists “in the manner of boxers or MMA style fighters,” the affidavit says. Photographic and video evidence, the affidavit alleges, shows Daley and other white nationalists from California punching, kicking and headbutting counterprotesters, including an African-American man, two females and a minister wearing a clerical collar.
“They were essentially serial rioters,” Cullen said. “This wasn’t the lawful exercise of First Amendment rights. These guys came to Charlottesville to commit violent acts.”
Each defendant has been charged with one count of conspiracy to violate the federal riots statute and one count of violating the federal riots statute. If convicted, each faces up to 10 years in prison, prosecutors said.
On Aug. 11, the group marched through the University of Virginia campus, carrying torches and chanting “Blood and Soil!” and “White Lives Matter.” The next day, more clashes erupted when hundreds of white supremacists assembled for a “Unite the Right” rally in downtown Charlottesville. Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old paralegal, was killed when a man rammed his car into a crowd of antiracism protesters. Nineteen other protesters were injured.
The charges against the four California men are not related to Heyer’s death. The suspected driver, James Alex Fields Jr., 21, of Maumee, Ohio, was charged in June with federal hate crimes, including one count of a hate crime act that resulted in Heyer’s death and 28 counts of hate crime causing bodily injury. Fields, who has pleaded not guilty, is also charged under Virginia law with murder and other crimes.