Canadian accused of wanting to ignite race war
U.S. prosecutors arguing for 25-year sentence
GREENBELT, MD. — A former Canadian Armed Forces reservist who faces up to 25 years in prison for his role in a plot to violently trigger a race war in the United States was already backing away from the plan when he was arrested, defence lawyers argued Monday.
Patrik Mathews, 28, from Beausejour, Man., and U.S. army veteran Brian Mark Lemley Jr. have both already pleaded guilty to various weapons charges in advance of a sentencing hearing scheduled for Thursday.
But U.S. prosecutors want
District Court
Judge Theodore Chuang to apply a so- called “terror- ism enhancement” that would result in 25year sentences because their crimes involved an effort to “promote” federal terrorism offences.
Mathews, sporting a thick head of hair that reached nearly to the middle of his back and a scruffy beard, looked relaxed and animated at times throughout the daylong hearing.
The plot, revealed through FBI wiretaps, surveillance and conversations with an undercover operative, revolved mainly around a scheme to violently disrupt a gun-rights rally at the state capitol in Virginia in January 2020.
But Lemley’s lawyer told a hearing Monday that the government’s own evidence shows the two men had already decided instead to attend an event in Michigan with fellow members of the white supremacist group The Base.
Ned Smock displayed pages of a transcript of a conversation between the two men and an undercover agent, whose primary goal was to extract incriminating details of the plan.
“What you see in these conversations is there is not an intent to be in Virginia, and in fact they are going to Michigan to be at this Base event,” Smock said.
The Virginia rally has “been the essence of the government’s theory from the beginning of this case, and we now know it’s not accurate.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Windom said the evidence “shows it’s more than idle talk … there’s a core purpose.”
He quoted from text messages and transcripts to show Mathews firmly believed in the principles of white supremacy, describing “affirmative action” as a policy designed “to subjugate white people.”
“’We’re the bad guys already to them,’ ” Windom quoted Mathews as saying. “‘I think it’s time we became the bad guys.”