A number of Southern California residents have been charged by the Justice Department with participating in violent attacks at political in California and elsewhere in the United States.
On Oct. 24, four Southern California men, alleged members of the white supremacy extremist group, “Rise Above Movement,” were named in a federal criminal complaint stemming from violence at Huntington Beach “Make America Great Again” rally in March 2018 and a rally in Berkeley in April 2017.
The complaint describes RAM as an online group that operate with the intent to organize, promote, encourage, participate in, or carry on riots.
RAM openly identifies as “alt-right” and “nationalist” and its members frequently post photographs and videos of themselves engaging in physical training and mixed martial arts street-fighting techniques, along with references to their alt-right and nationalist beliefs and ideology.
The four RAM members allegedly engaged in a series of violent attacks at political rallies in 2017, including events in Huntington Beach, Berkeley and San Bernardino.
The three men taken into custody are:
- Robert Rundo, 28, of Huntington Beach, allegedly a founding member of RAM and the man behind RAM’s Twitter account. He was ordered detained pending trial;
- Robert Boman, 25, of Torrance, who was arrested Oct. 24, by special agents with the FBI.
- Tyler Laube, 22, of Redondo Beach, who also was arrested Oct. 24, by the FBI.
The fourth defendant named in the complaint — Aaron Eason, 38, who resides in the Riverside County community of Anza – recently turned himself in to the FBI at the Westwood Federal Building. The complaint charges the four defendants with violating the federal conspiracy and riots statutes.
At the Huntington Beach “Make America Great Again” rally on March 25, members of RAM broke off from the main rally and confronted counter-protesters
On Oct. 10, a federal grand jury in Charlottesville indicted four California men with conspiring to violate the federal riots statue.
The four defendants in this case include:
- Benjamin Drake Daley, 25, of Redondo Beach,
- Thomas Walter Gillen, 24, of Redondo Beach,
- Michael Paul Miselis, 29, of Lawndale,
- Cole Evan White, 24, of Clayton.
The indictment charged each defendant with one count of conspiracy to violate the federal riots act and one count of traveling in interstate commerce from California to Virginia with the intent to incite a riot, organize, promote, encourage, participate in, and carry on in a riot, to commit an act of violence in furtherance of a riot, or aid or abet any person inciting and participating in or carrying on in a riot.