It appears that authorities have finally caught up with Patrik Mathews, the Canadian military reservist who went on the lam after authorities found out about his activities in the neo-Nazi organization The Base. And it may have been just in the nick of time.
The FBI announced today that it had arrested Mathews, along with two other members of The Base. They were planning acts of violence around Monday’s planned protest in Richmond, Virginia, against gun control measures being planned by the Virginia Legislature.
Brian Mark Lemley of Elkton, Maryland and Newark, Delaware, and William Garfield Bilbrough IV of Denton, Maryland, were the two other men charged, according to the U.S. Attorney's office in Maryland, the state where the men were based.
The complaint unsealed Thursday says Lemley and Mathews transported a firearm and ammunition “with intent to commit a felony.” It also charges Lemley and Bilbrough with transporting and harboring aliens, as well as conspiracy to do so.
According to the affidavit, Lemley and Mathews bought about 1,650 rounds of 5.56mm and 6.5mm ammunition for their planned trip to Virginia to participate in the anti-gun-control rally.
Concerned about the presence of such extremists and the violent rhetoric on social media surrounding the protest, Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam on Wednesday declared a state of emergency, and announced that firearms would be prohibited from the Capitol grounds on Monday.
Mathews became a fugitive after Canadian authorities raided his home in Manitoba last August, seizing several firearms. His involvement in The Base had been exposed by the Winnipeg Free Press, after Mathews was identified as the person pasting up fliers promoting the group around the city.
In December, Vice revealed that Mathews was hiding out in the United States, protected by his colleagues in The Base.
The Base is a neo-Nazi “accelerationist” group that has been surreptitiously organizing paramilitary training operations around the country, notably in the Pacific Northwest. As Vice reported in a 2018 exposé, it features much of the same neo-Nazi ideology (as well as some crossover members) shared with the extremist AtomWaffen Division organization.
The Maryland affidavit says that during December 2019, Lemley and Mathews used an upper receiver ordered by Lemley, as well as other firearms parts, to make a functioning assault rifle.
“Oh oops, it looks like I accidentally made a machine gun,” Lemley said, according to the affidavit. Lemley served in the U.S. Army as a scout.
“Within The Base’s encrypted chat rooms, members have discussed, among other things, recruitment, creating a white ethno-state, committing acts of violence against minority communities (including African-Americans and Jewish-Americans), the organization’s military-style training camps, and ways to make improvised explosive devices,” the affidavit reads.
According to the complaint, Lemley, Mathews, and Bilbrough also allegedly attempted to manufacture DMT, a hallucinogenic tryptamine drug and a controlled substance, at Lemley and Mathews’s apartment.
The men face extensive prison sentences if convicted.