Maryland judge denies motions aimed at suppressing evidence against Patrik Mathews
A Maryland judge batted away a volley of motions Tuesday aimed at undermining the case against a former Canadian Forces reservist who allegedly hoped to trigger a race war in the United States.
Only two of the motions filed on behalf of alleged neoNazi Patrik Mathews — one to dismiss two of the four charges he faces, the other to suppress his statements — survived the day.
His lawyer, Joseph Balter, had hoped the court would agree to suppress a raft of wiretap, email and video evidence on the basis that investigators lacked sufficient probable cause to collect it.
Balter also argued that much of the “odious” hatefilled, anti-Semitic rhetoric Mathews can be heard using on various videos, recordings and online chats is protected by his right to free speech.
District Court Judge Theodore Chuang disagreed.
“The primary argument offered by Mr. Mathews is that these discussions of racist views and ideology are protected by the First Amendment and should have been minimized,” Chuang said.
“That argument fails ... They provide evidence of intent to engage in hate crime, so those conversations were appropriately captured.”
Balter had also asked the court to allow his client to stand trial separately from his alleged co-conspirator, Brian Lemley Jr., on the grounds that some of the evidence against Lemley could be prejudicial against Mathews, and that Balter might want to call him as a witness.
Chuang rejected that request as well, insisting that the two cases are “properly joined” given that the charges the men face are intertwined and that any risk of prejudice can be dealt with at trial.
Mathews, a former combat engineer, vanished from Beausejour, Man., in 2019 following media reports alleging he was a recruiter for a whitesupremacist group known as The Base.
He was arrested in January 2020 along with Lemley and William Bilbrough, as part of a broader FBI investigation of the group.
Prosecutors allege the three were part of an elaborate white-supremacist plot to touch off a U.S. race war. They accuse Mathews of advocating for killing people, poisoning water supplies and derailing trains to incite a civil war in the name of creating a white “ethno-state,” and of planning to violently disrupt a pro-gun rally in Virginia.
Mathews is facing four charges, including two counts of being an alien in possession of a firearm and two counts of transporting a firearm across state lines with intent to commit a felony.
Balter wants two of those charges dropped on the grounds that they are “multiplicious,” meaning Mathews has effectively been charged twice for the same alleged offence.
Chuang opted to reserve judgment on that motion, and said he would address whether to suppress certain statements — they violate Mathews’s right against self-incrimination, Balter argued — during the next evidentiary hearing.
During his arguments, Balter also insisted that in their zeal to target members of The Base for a hate crime, investigators overstepped their bounds and violated his client’s right to free speech.