The Los Angeles Times, the OC Weekly, and ProPublica—all in their own ways, and in their own time—have, since early 2017, identified multiple members of the Rise Above Movement as perpetrators of white supremacist violence at various events across California and in Charlottesville, Virginia. As a result of that good journalism, some members of RAM—classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center—lost their jobs due to their affiliations, yet none faced arrest. The group also proudly boasted of their hateful violence on social media, yet somehow, the violent white nationalists never faced any criminal charges.
Until now.
In a press conference held Tuesday, Thomas Cullen, United States attorney for the United States District Court for the Western District of Virginia, announced the unsealing of the August 27 affidavit against four members of RAM. The Southern-California-based group has been described by the Anti-Defamation League as an “alt-right street fighting club” that, in between training sessions in local parks, arrogantly used social media to tout their violent performances at events in Huntington Beach and Berkeley—long before the tragedy in Charlottesville in August 2017. The FBI appears to have finally caught on.
The defendants — Benjamin Drake Daley, Michael Paul Miselis, Thomas Walter Gillen and Cole Evan White — are part of the Rise Above Movement, which espouses anti-Semitic views and meets regularly in public parks to train in boxing and other fighting techniques, according to an affidavit.
The affidavit alleges that the four men were "among the most violent individuals present in Charlottesville" on Aug. 11 and 12 of last year. It says photos and video show they attacked counterprotesters, "which in some cases resulted in serious injuries."
The men have also taken part in "acts of violence" at political rallies in Huntington Beach, Berkeley and other places, the affidavit alleges.
The four have been arrested and are awaiting their initial hearings, according to another court filing the case. It wasn't immediately clear if they have attorneys who could comment on their behalf.
Cullen said that the quartet of modern-day Nazis, ranging in age from 23 to 34, were arrested this morning, and warned that additional arrests may follow. They face federal conspiracy charges based on their devious plot to travel across the country to incite violence.
The newly unsealed affidavit gives a lot of credit to ProPublica, a nonprofit dedicated to investigative journalism, for its work (in partnership with PBS’ Frontline) in identifying the brutal bigots, but offers no explanation as to why it took well over a year to get any of them behind bars.
As ProPublica put it in October 2017:
Despite their prior records, and open boasting of current violence, RAM has seemingly drawn little notice from law enforcement. Four episodes of violence documented by ProPublica resulted in only a single arrest — and in that case prosecutors declined to go forward. Law enforcement officials in the four cities — Charlottesville, Huntington Beach, San Bernardino and Berkeley — either would not comment about RAM or said they had too little evidence or too few resources to seriously investigate the group’s members.
That’s one fact that might explain why the investigation took so long, or possibly was considered low-priority. Here’s another.
(Edit: Yes, that’s a pinch of sarcasm, just to clarify.)
The arrests are not connected to the death of counterprotester Heather Heyer, who was killed when an Ohio man, James A. Fields, allegedly drove his car into a crowd. Fields was charged locally within a week of the Charlottesville rally, and saw federal hate crime charges added to his plate in June.
