The violent neo-Nazi Robert Rundo thought he’d won freedom last week after a US district court judge in California threw out a federal indictment against the white-nationalist militant, arguing prosecutors selectively went after him and did not put far-leftist protesters through the same treatment.
Fewer than 12 hours later, Rundo found himself in jail again on the order of appellate judges from the ninth circuit.
It was a stunning turn of events in a case that has bewildered both longtime legal observers and researchers of the far right.
Rundo, whose life traces a winding path from gang feuds on the streets of Queens, New York, to time in a state prison for the gruesome stabbing of another gang member, was the leader of a now-defunct white nationalist “fight club” called the Rise Above Movement (RAM) that instigated brawls with anti-fascist protesters up and down California in 2017.
Federal prosecutors indicted Rundo in 2018 on anti-riot charges stemming from fights in Huntington Beach, San Bernardino and Berkeley, and he was extradited from Romania last year to face charges in the US.
On 21 February, the US district court judge Cormac Carney threw out the indictment, arguing prosecutors had selectively prosecuted the militant. Rundo’s public defenders had argued that their client and the rest of RAM were merely defending themselves against anti-fascist and leftwing protesters during melees, despite ample documentation that RAM trained for combat, instigated fights at the rallies and assaulted a journalist covering one of the protests at an Orange county beach.
It wasn’t the first time Carney made a stunning ruling in the case. In 2019, the judge threw out Rundo’s charges, that time on the grounds that the anti-riot act was unconstitutional. A ninth circuit panel reversed that dismissal in 2021.
The higher court intervened this time as well. Shortly after Carney’s verdict, federal prosecutors filed an emergency motion before the appeal panel requesting Rundo’s rearrest. They called Rundo an “extremely serious flight risk and danger to the community”, citing a 2018 European trip with other RAM members to visit neo-Nazis in Italy, Ukraine and Germany, Rundo’s repeated attempts to flee to Ukraine and Moscow before he was arrested in 2018 in El Salvador and extradited to the US, and his ability to evade arrest for two years in eastern Europe after the charges against him had been reinstated.
The ninth circuit panel sided with prosecutors, ordering Rundo’s rearrrest, barring any lower court from releasing him while the government challenges Judge Carney’s reversal. By 22 February, Rundo had been arrested north of San Diego and returned to the federal jail in downtown Los Angeles.
Carney’s ruling was concerning to those studying white nationalist organizations in the US. Mike German, a former FBI agent who infiltrated southern California neo-Nazi groups in the 1990s, said the judge’s latest order of dismissal was the result of law enforcement not acting early enough to hold violent far-right militants to account.
“The narrative that the violence at these protests was two sides squaring off rather than an organized plot to bring violence to different communities around the country is a deliberate distortion that these rightwingers have promoted,” German said. There also, German says, are echoes in the 20th-century rise of fascism.
“This is what was happening in Germany in the 1930s,” German said. “It’s not a new far-right tactic, it’s an old one, that you set up these events in places where you know you have political opposition for the purpose of drawing out that opposition and, attack them, and then lean on a victim narrative.”
It’s also unclear why prosecutors have not updated Rundo’s charges in the half decade since Carney first dismissed his case. When arrested in Romania last year, Rundo was found to be in the possession of a forged Croatian identity document.
Rundo moved to eastern Europe, where he bounced among Serbia, Hungary, Greece, the Serbian region of Bosnia and elsewhere while building a career as a far-right influencer. He’s successfully bridged the gap between the European and American far-right scenes, and succeeded in connecting older skinhead gangs like the Hammerskins to a new, more online far-right generation. The wellspring of popularity Rundo enjoys among the international far right is evident on Telegram, where messages of support, photos of graffiti and videos of rallies in the US, Europe and elsewhere have been circulating since last week.
Rundo was also instrumental in organizing a network of “active clubs”“ across the United States, Europe, Australia and New Zealand that took RAM’s template and recruited heavily from white supremacist and neo-fascist scenes. One such affiliated white nationalist group in North Carolina recently intimidated a reporter who investigated it, showing up at his house following publication of a news article.
Since the charges against Rundo were first filed, federal prosecutors have secured guilty pleas and convictions for four Rise Above Movement affiliates or members on Anti-Riot Act charges for attacks they committed at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Testimony in a sentencing hearing for the RAM co-founder Ben Daley and member Michael Miselis in Virginia federal court reveal the group had practiced drive-by-style shootings in the desert east of Los Angeles, and that law enforcement officials recovered thousands of rounds of ammunition when Miselis was arrested in 2018.
Last week, the Patriot Front founder, Thomas Rousseau, a close ally of Rundo, was arrested on state hate-crime charges related to the Unite the Right rally.
On Wednesday, Rundo’s public defenders appealed the ninth circuit’s order to indefinitely detain him pending resolution of the government’s attempt to void Carney’s dismissal order. They have also filed motions challenging his rearrest and detention on the grounds that Carney’s release of the white nationalist pre-empted any stay of that order by the higher circuit.
On Thursday, the ninth circuit issued a curt denial, affirming Rundo’s detention until the government’s appeal is resolved.
Opening motions in the latest round of the case are scheduled for 12 March.
Rundo’s defense team did not respond to a request for comment.
