LOS ANGELES (CN) — A California white supremacist who twice had his federal rioting charges thrown out, only to have those charges reinstated both times by the Ninth Circuit, ended up pleading guilty Friday after years of legal wrangling.
Robert Rundo, 34, admitted to one count of conspiracy to riot at a hearing in downtown Los Angeles. As part of his plea deal, prosecutors with the U.S. attorneys’ office in LA have agreed not to seek more than two years in prison.
The maximum sentence for conspiracy to riot is five years in federal prison. U.S. District Judge Josephine Staton, a Barack Obama appointee, warned Rundo before he entered his plea that she wasn’t bound by the plea agreement between him and the Justice Department. She set sentencing for Dec. 13.
“This defendant sought to incite riots to promote a white supremacist agenda and impede the constitutional rights of others,” U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada said after the hearing. “Safeguarding civil rights goes to the core of my office’s mission, and we will continue to unite with our community against those who promote hate and divisiveness.”
Rundo — from Huntington Beach, California — admitted in court he was part of white-supremacist gang Rise Above Movement (RAM) in 2017 and 2018. He organized and participated in hand-to-hand combat training sessions as the group prepared for violent confrontations at political rallies, often with antifa counterdemonstrators.
A purported co-founder of the group, Rundo and his cronies posted messages and photos of themselves on social media preparing for or engaging in violence. Included with the posts were messages like “When the squad[‘s] not out smashing commies,” “#rightwingdeathsquad,” and “goodnightleftside.”
In March 2017, the group attacked counterdemonstrators at a pro-Trump rally in Huntington Beach, with Rundo tackling and punching one protester multiple times.
They then posted photos and videos online celebrating their violence. In one post, Rundo said that “shortly after this pic antifa was btfo [blown the fuck out] in Huntington Beach.”
Rundo and others in his group also sought out confrontations with left-wing demonstrators at rallies in Berkeley and San Bernardino, California, pursuing and attacking them, according to his plea agreement.
At the Berkeley rally, Rundo and other RAM members wrapped their hands with athletic tape and wore matching gray shirts and black masks with white skeleton designs around their faces, according to an affidavit from an FBI agent. They displayed a sign that stated “Defend America.”
Like at the Huntington Beach rally, Rundo also assaulted counterprotesters. He led a group of RAM members in knocking down two temporary plastic fences, erected by the Berkeley Police Department to separate the opposing groups, in order to engage in altercations with counterprotesters.
Rundo punched multiple people during the Berkeley violence, the FBI agent said in his affidavit. In one instance, he approached a counterprotester from behind and punched him in the side of the head, knocking him to the ground.
In a different altercation, a police officer ordered Rundo to stop attacking the counterprotesters. Rundo did not comply with that order and instead punched the officer twice in the head.
Four Southern California members of the group, including Rundo, were first indicted in 2018. But Senior U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney, a George W. Bush appointee, threw out the case the following year, saying that the Anti-Riot Act under which the men were charged was “unconstitutionally overbroad in violation of the First Amendment.”
Prosecutors appealed that decision. In 2021, the Ninth Circuit reversed Carney’s dismissal of the charges and sent the case back to him.
The government filed a superseding indictment early in 2023, and Rundo was extradited from Romania, where he was using a false identity, to answer the charges.
But Carney again threw out the case, this time concluding that the Rundo and the others were the victim of selective prosecution, supposedly because federal prosecutors hadn’t gone after antifa rioters who engaged in similar violence at the 2017 rally in Huntington Beach.
Again, the Ninth Circuit reversed Carney’s dismissal. At a hearing in June, a panel agreed with federal prosecutors that there was no evidence antifa activists engaged in interstate communications to plan their rioting — an essential element for charges under the Anti-Riot Act.
“The reality is, you got to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that each of element of the Anti-Riot Act has been violated, and you don’t even come close that,” U.S. Circuit Judge Milan Smith Jr., a George W. Bush appointee, said of the antifa activists. In the case of the white supremacists, on the other hand, “they actually put all the evidence up on the internet, bragging about what they did, the preparation and the like.”
The Ninth Circuit panel declined to send the case back to Carney, instead ordering that a different judge should take over.