Neo-Nazi who threatened journalist gets prison term

The leader of a White supremacist group who admitted posting an online death threat targeting a Brooklyn journalist in a bid to silence coverage of the group was sentenced Friday to about 31/2 years in prison, federal prosecutors said. The White supremacist, Nicholas Welker of San Jose, was sentenced to 44 months in federal prison after pleading guilty in September to conspiring to make interstate threats, prosecutors said. At the time of the threat, which he posted in an online public forum in August 2021, he was the leader of Feuerkrieg Division, a neo-Nazi hate group, prosecutors said.

Welker, 33, issued the threat by posting a photograph of the journalist, whom prosecutors did not identify, with an image of a gun aimed at the person's head and the words “race traitor” plastered over the person's eyes, prosecutors said.

The post included the name of the journalist and the person's employer as well as the phrase “Responsible for stalking our boys for information,” according to a criminal complaint.

Welker, who also is known as “King ov Wrath,” also used an expletive in his threat while demanding that the reporter stop reporting on Feuerkrieg Division,” prosecutors said.

Two underage members of Welker's group sent the post directly to a social media account maintained by the journalist, prosecutors said. Welker's goal was to “silence” the journalist so that Welker's “fellow extremists could continue to commit violence against racial, ethnic, and religious minorities, and the LGBTQ+ community,” Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, said in a statement.