It Could Happen Here - The Rob Rundown

Episode Date: March 8, 2024

Molly and Garrison talk about the many arrests of Rob Rundo, the founder of the nazi fight club rise above movement.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Calls are media. Hello, and welcome back to It Could Happen Here. I am once again your guest host, Molly Conger. Joining me today is our friend Garrison. Hello. Excited to get the Robert Rundo rundown. So you already know what we are talking about today. It is a guy that you probably already know more about than you ever wanted to. It is Rob Rundo, the founder of the Nazi fight club, the Rise Above Movement.

to it is rob rundo the founder of the nazi fight club the rise above movement uh you and robert did a great two-part behind the bastards on ram back in 2021 which is shock shockingly three years ago which does not sound right but i guess is the case it's been a long three years for you but an even stranger one for rob he's yeah he's been really country hopping a lot the past few years, huh? He's been busy. So when you recorded that episode back in January of 2021, Rundo's federal charges had been dismissed by Judge Cormac Carney in 2019.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that decision in March 2021, right around the time the episode came out. I think at the end of the second episode, you had a postscript, like an addendum you recorded afterwards, because before it came out, the Ninth Circuit ruling had been issued. Okay, okay. But in an almost comical turn of events, Judge Carney has once again dismissed those charges two weeks ago now so three three years later a few countries later hopping from from serbia to the united states to probably other places around europe um yeah and we're sort of back in the same position you were in when you talked about him three years ago time is a flat circle but before we get into one of the sort of strangest

legal slap fights I've ever read, let's back up for a second. Who is Rob Rundo and what was he charged with? Yeah. So if you want a more robust look at the early days of the Rise Above movement, I do recommend going back and listening to that Behind the Bastards two-parter on the Rise Above movement. It originally aired in March 2021. So like really scroll back in your podcast app. But we'll do a quick recap here because it's not, I can't assign the listener homework. So the Rise Above Movement first emerged in early 2017 after a brief period of being called the DIY Division. Both stupid names. I don't know which one's better, but Ram. We're just going to call them Ram. In 2017 was a big year for political violence.

It was really hot that year. The group was on its surface a mixed martial arts club for white men. They trained together and bonded over their shared and abhorrent political views. In their own words, they are fighting against the modern world corrupted by the destructive cultural influences of liberals, Jews, Muslims, and immigrants. You know. And gay people. And gay people.

Yeah. Just pretty much everybody except, you know, themselves. Except Rob Rundo. Yeah. Essentially. If you are not a member of the Nazi Fight Club, you are a victim of the Nazi Fight Club. That's the first rule of nazi fight sure whatever okay the first rule of nazi fight club was not don't talk about nazi fight club

and i think no because they can't shut up about it they cannot stop talking like if they had just followed the first rule of fight club they might not be in this position but ram quickly became a staple at rallies in southern california that year in the spring and summer of 2017 they kept showing up and kept throwing punches in march members assaulted journalists and counter protesters at a maga rally in huntington beach in april they assaulted numerous counter protesters at a rally in berkeley in august ram members attended unite the right in charlottesville and assaulted counter protesters in the streets again and you know they're not just going to these events and getting in fights right they? They're not just like showing up and just

like it just happens. They're going to these events, planning on committing these assaults and then bragging about the assaults publicly and privately. They're using these acts of violence as propaganda and recruitment tools, right? Like they're making little videos, they're posting about it. It's not just about committing the assault. So the violence is not just about physically hurting people. It's part of a larger strategy to incite others to join them in this project and that's i mean you already know this you covered that in your episode three years ago this is for everybody else and and they're and they're still going there unfortunately these these they're now often called active clubs are more popular than what they were three years ago.

They've become a very big staple of white supremacist organizing across the United States and Canada, mirroring a lot of organizational styles in Eastern Europe. There's probably one in your area that you might not know about. They are active on Telegram. They're actively recruiting. They recruit from high schools it is a big increasing problem as patriot front becomes more and more like fed jacketed between their own nazi ranks we see more people plugging into these uh into these active clubs right ram did not go away it just sort of morphed and so like back in 2017 you know they said they had a lot of members they

probably had like 20 but now these active clubs just they do genuinely have chapters all over the country yeah but back in the past right so after unite the right ram members decided to lay off the rallies a little bit you know being seen on camera beating a woman into the pavement at a rally that ended in a hate crime murder invited some bad press and they weren't looking to get door knocks at that particular moment. So they backed off a little bit at the end of 2017, but they'd spent most of that year attending rallies and getting into physical altercations. It wasn't until over a year after Unite the Right, in October of 2018, that there was any attempt to do anything about this very

obvious problem. You know, the criminal complaint itself even says that some of these assaults were committed in plain view of cops who just stood there and did nothing while these guys beat the shit out of people in the streets. They're in each other's DMs bragging about kicking a woman in the head while she's lying on the ground, but nobody lifted a finger to stop them. But in October of 2018, two cases were filed. One in the Western District of Virginia. Charges were filed against Ben Daly, Cole White, Thomas Gillen, and Michael Macellus. And a few weeks later in the Central District of California, charges were filed against Rob Rundo, Robert Bowman, Tyler Laub, and Aaron Eason. So all eight of them, four in each district,

all eight of them were charged under the federal riot act and conspiracy to riot i think it was robert who said in the original ram episode you know like if at any point early on like if at any point in those first few months of this happening there had been any kind of intervention if anyone had been arrested in the act maybe this could have been nipped in the butt and a lot of what happens later wouldn't have happened or even if they were like beaten up like if it's like if a group of like anti-fascists like beat them up that would disincentivize them from going to future events to try to beat up other people right like violence is actually very good at doing this specific thing i think if you feel like you're

going to go somewhere to get beaten up you probably don't want to go there and even like divorce from the actions of the state like that is that is a demotivating factor which has been effective against proud boys in portland now obviously some of these guys especially the ram crew go there with the express interest of getting into fights so that's something you should definitely like consider but yeah like if as long as they have a bad time it makes them not want to come to these things but when they're able to just beat up anyone they want to without any pushback it's like yeah it becomes like a fun thing it becomes like a a large amount of incentive is gained for going to a rally whether that's in Huntington Beach or halfway across the country yeah I mean they were having a great time and there was no there was no movement

to stop this. And it's hard to know why it took over a year for any charges to get brought. I think you speculated in that Ram episode a few years ago that it was public pressure after that in-depth reporting came out of mainstream press. But I was going back over the timeline and that ProPublica piece came out in October 2017. That was just two months after Unite the Right and a whole year before those charges were filed. It's not really possible to know why they waited so long unless some you know young u.s attorney wants to level with us about it but i don't foresee that probably probably not just you know what's going on behind the scenes buddy but i do have one sort of interesting little

anecdote a couple months ago i was at an event here in Charlottesville. It was a panel discussion, and one of the speakers was the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia, Chris Kavanaugh. He was speaking to a group of people about the work that he does, and he was talking about the work that he did on some of these sort of extremism cases after Unite the Right. Back in 2018, he was the assistant U.S. attorney here. He's been promoted since then. But he worked on the James Fields case, and he worked on the Ram case that was filed here in Virginia. And he said something really interesting that I hadn't thought about before. So right after Unite the Right in August 2017, a bunch of FBI agents were assigned to, you know, check out what happened here at this mass casualty event, right? They had the

resources to investigate and try to develop cases. I, you know, I love my documents. I spent a lot of time in the documents. So I've actually seen they got some federal search warrants. It was actually an FBI agent who dug the round that Richard Preston fired at Corey Long out of the mulch in Market Street Park. They got search warrants for social media for a couple of guys who ended up prosecuted locally, Alex Ramos, Richard Preston, Daniel Borden. So it looks like they were trying to develop hate crime cases, right? Like that federal warrant they got for Richard Preston's Twitter account said that they were developing a hate crime case and they never did. So like right

after Unite the Right, they're getting these warrants, they're developing these cases. But back to that event that I was at with Chris Kavanaugh, the US attorney, he said when the Las Vegas shooting happened in October of 2017, they lost their task force. They had this huge volume of agents working, trying to develop Unite the Right cases. When that shooting happened two months later, they all got reassigned. He was left with like a skeleton crew and they just didn't have the resources to develop these cases. Like, I don't know how the FBI is managing their resources internally so badly that they can only handle one mass casualty event at a time or why the Washington field office was so heavily impacted by a shooting in Nevada. But that is what he said. So take that as you will.

And I think that theory is at least in part supported by the fact that the federal charges against James Fields didn't get brought until June of 2018. federal charges against James Fields didn't get brought until June of 2018, right? He'd been charged locally for the car attack that killed Heather Heyer, but the federal charges didn't pop up until June of 2018. So I don't know if maybe something shifted in terms of resources in their office that summer. I don't know. It's interesting to think about. But then, so in, back to October of 2018, right, when these two different Ram cases get filed, Virginia's case was actually filed first. It was filed a few weeks before the case in California. So I don't know. I assume they were in communication about that, but I don't have any special insight into what their federal prosecutor was doing. a whole ass year to do anything, no matter what. Right. In a recent filing in the Rundo case, the government's talking about how this investigation was developed. And it says you're going to shit a brick, Harrison. It says that the FBI investigation into Ram only started when a bartender in L.A. called the FBI a few weeks after Unite the Right, because he overheard a patron, Ben Daly, quote, gleefully bragging about having caused havoc during the riots.

Amazing. And he also, quote, bragged about hitting a guy and punching a girl in the face during protests in Berkeley. So that first comment was about Charlottesville. He had just come home from Charlottesville. He was talking about how he caused havoc. He's bragging about punching people in Berkeley. And the bartender's like, that's suspicious. That's suspicious. This unnamed complainant also told the FBI that Daly and other RAM members had come to the bar often and sometimes used it for

recruitment. They were recruiting the patrons at this bar. And based on what he overheard, he told the FBI that the group, quote, did not care about the issues regarding the statues in Charlottesville, but rather, quote, enjoyed going to protests just to raise havoc, cause trouble and fight. So it wasn't until a bartender called the FBI to be like, hey, this guy's talking about like doing a lot of gang violence. I don't know if you guys know about this. talking about like doing a lot of gang violence. I don't know if you guys know about this. And according to that same court filing, the FBI took until January of 2018. So a few weeks after Unite the Right, maybe we're looking at September. It took them three or four more months until January of 2018 to discover in the course of their investigation that Ram was based in Southern California. Great work. Great work, everybody fantastic stuff they're they're on it now

garrison and so at this point the la field office opens an investigation into members in the area now i i kind of hope this isn't true right like i i hope that this is not a correct summary of the of the these events because if it really took someone calling the fbi to say like hey i heard a guy bragging about doing crime in september that definitely happened no that is definitely how this went down absolutely that makes so much sense but then it took three months of investigating to figure out that the guys who recruit for their nazi gang at a bar in la probably live in la yeah yeah i mean, I mean, that is... What? This is kind of how the FBI investigates white supremacist groups. But, like...

They have... They're too busy investigating teenagers in black hoodies. They can't bother to spare the manpower for this. There's Antifa out there. By the time they got this tip from the bartender that pro publica article was already out why did it take them three months to find out that the guys whose

names were already in the newspaper lived in california i don't know i don't trust anyone who lives in virginia so it took them a few months right it took some time i hope that's not true but it is what the government has put on the record as the truth. So anyway, that's how this case starts, right? So these eight members of RAM are charged, four in Virginia, four in California, with rioting and conspiracy to riot. Just for efficiency's sake, I'll just say that the cases in Virginia are fully resolved. Daily Miss Ellis, Gillen, and White all pleaded guilty. There were some later unsuccessful appeals where after they saw what happened in the California cases.

They were like, oh, actually, us too? Can we? But that didn't work, and their convictions stood, and that's all over. Where is Daly now? Is he out again? They're out. He's out.

He's out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. White didn't get any additional time after his plea because he was so cooperative, and the other three all got less than three years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they're out these california cases where rondo was charged they have been a mess from day one so they're charged october 2018 in 2019 judge cormac carney dismissed the charges in california saying that the riot act was unconstitutionally overbroad and its application

violated the defendant's first amendment rights so true first amendment defender here that's right travel across state lines to riot endorsed by this judge that's free speech garrison like love it or leave it go back to canada so the prosecutor appealed that ruling because it was hot garbage and the ninth circuit agreed it takes a long time for things to get appealed it's like slower than watching grass grow so the ninth circuit reversed that ruling in march of 2021 reinstating the indictments things move really so so you know it took two years for them to reverse it and then another year to enter the order so it wasn't until february of 2022 that the case was formally reopened in which case around this time rundo's trying to like hide in eastern europe and eventually get sent back to

the united states curiously around the same time that andrew tate does god imagine imagine an andrew tate rob rundo fight oh i okay i wouldn't pay money because I don't want to support them, but I would love to watch that. Actually send them both back to Romania and let them fight. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So by the time that the California Ram defendants are re-indicted on the original charges, it's January of 2023 and only three of them get re-indicted because Aaron Eason has died.

So sad. It doesn't say much more than that tragic loss of life i don't know i don't want to i guess i don't want to speculate because it doesn't say on the record and i was unable to determine i couldn't find anything other than the court record dismissing his charges because he was dead i can't find any record of his death um It must have just been, you know, private. But, you know, you were talking about that Ram episode a couple years ago about how, you know, they're all about clean living and fighting. They're all straight edge except for all of the ones who do drugs. A lot of them have really serious drug problems. And I don't know for a fact what was going on with Aaron Eason. But I know Robert Bowman had some trouble staying out on bond due to a very severe meth addiction.

Yes, yes. So I don't know what happened to Aaron Eason, but- Very, very pure. You got to keep the bloodline pure. So they're re-indicted January 2023. And as you guys talked about back in 2021, Rundo had been living in Serbia for most of this time. He is overseas, making friends, doing fight club, doing Nazi nazi stuff hanging out making bad t-shirts doing bad graffiti mostly opening up t-shirt factories it's really what he spent a lot of

time doing it's really about the merch you have to merchandise that's the hey if you took away one thing from a from revolt against the modern world, it's that Ovola loved merch. That's the biggest through line in that work. It's you got to sell those stickers, man. You have to, it's a, a sort of a pointy shaped operation,

right? The guys on the bottom have to keep selling the stickers to the guys. It has to be new bottoms, right? There's, there's no bottom. It is a pyramid scheme. Patriot front is a period pyramid scheme well i didn't and and patriot front and rundo had the same sticker manufacturer for

quite a while their websites well their merch websites were identical look i mean how many webmasters can these nazi groups have it's got to be one guy yeah they do not have a graphic designer so anyway so he's in serbia in 2021 serbia made a big show of saying like oh like he's not welcome here he's deported to bosnia he was still in serbia i think bellingcat has some some great articles tracking exactly where in belgrade rundo was hanging out but serbia was like no he's not here he we can't he's not welcome here he's in bosnia bosnia was like he's not fucking here uh he was in serbia he kept trying to lie to he kept trying to like like make people think he was somewhere else but he just couldn't stop posting and if you ever post anything outside or really even inside you you you can be found so like he

couldn't stop posting and every single time he'd be like haha the the cia assets of bellingcat think i'm here when in fact i'm actually over there and you're like no you're actually right here it's really easy to find out where you are you posted yourself standing next to this tree there's only one type of this tree in this area it's obvious you're right here and it's like you can post all you like if you have terminal posting disease you can keep posting but just like don't post photographs of yourself in a place. Give his Nazi followers advice on how to flee the country if they have a felony while sitting at like a European cafe filming on his iPhone. It's the most it's the funniest thing I've ever seen. In a sane world, evidence like that would make a judge say, I don't think we should let you back out. You probably shouldn't be let out on bail considering your main instructions.

considering your main instructions so finally in march of 2023 he's freshly re-indicted in january 2023 march of 2023 the romanian police are like we fucking found him we got him he's here in romania so he's arrested in romania and it takes a few months to sort out all the paperwork and get him extradited back to the u.s in august of You know what? Won't get you indicted on federal felony charges that result in you being extradited from a Romanian prison. Listening to these ads as long as we declare them, as my FTC training today

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Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. Well, I hope you enjoyed those paid advertisements. Pa this is this is this is we're only airing them because they're paying us money these these are not our sincere belief we we can't really say that either there's really no way to win there's no way to win here anyway i'm going to the war against the ftc so so true so that more or less gets us up to the current controversy so we get rundo back august 2023 and then february 2024 about 10 days ago judge carney dismisses the case again

so in 20 back in 2019 carney said no there's no crime here this is just protective first amendment activities you can't use the riot act. That's unconstitutional, right? And he dismisses the case. And the Ninth Circuit says, no, no, I don't think so. That's not how we're reading this. You got to take the case back. So it gets remanded back to the same judge. It goes back to Judge Carney. But of course, Rundo is missing now.

It takes a while to get him back. And so he finally gets his defendant back from his Nazi lair in Eastern Europe. He has to come up with a new reason why a Nazi street fighting fighting gang shouldn't be charged with a crime okay so like it's obvious he just doesn't want to fucking try this case yeah so he has to come up with a new reason and honestly i i think no shade to the federal public defender right rento has a public defender it is their job to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks they are providing zealous defense to their clients so they write up what i would say, in my personal opinion, was an absolute dog shit motion. And I think maybe they knew that too. I don't know. They're just doing their jobs.

I think Judge Carney would have agreed with whatever they put on paper. He gets this motion. He's like, yes, for sure. Dismissed again. So true. And this time it's selective prosecution that if the government wants to charge ram with rioting they would have had to charge antifa too because otherwise it's not fair which they do all the fucking time it's just not fair i mean this this case does actually like showcase like selective prosecution the fact that you were super willing to drop charges against a white supremacist but will send like quote-unquote antifa gay gay teenagers to prison for going to a going to a blm protest like yeah that actually does show exactly exactly how these cases are very selectively

prosecuted right like these guys are playing on easy mode and as soon as they draw the wrong card it's like well this deck is stacked this deck is stacked right so now i'm again we talked about this before garrison i'm not a lawyer we know this but i am an enthusiastic consumer of the law and i did read a bunch of law review articles today okay selective prosecution sounds like the kind of thing that could work right like oh it's not constitutional to selectively prosecute based on maybe a protected characteristic, right? Like, if you're only prosecuting Black people for a crime, like, of course that's wrong. Yeah. But here's the thing. It doesn't work. It never works. This is not an argument that is effective.

I won't say it never works. It is generally not an effective argument argument even when a lay person could look at it and say oh yeah that is kind of that's kind of fucked up it just doesn't work you can't just walk into court and say you know well your honor i was speeding but so was everybody else on the interstate it's unconstitutional to give me a ticket unless everyone gets a ticket right that it's not how it works they're they're picking on me it's just yeah you can't just say you know other people did what i did but i'm the only one standing here so it's just yeah you can't just say you know other people did what i did but i'm the only one standing here so it's not fair you have to there's an actual structure to this oj got away with it that means i should too right right we're not catching every murderer so

like i should get a freebie yeah so you have to show not only that there was a particular other individual who engaged in the same conduct who was not charged, but also that, quote, a federal prosecutorial policy had a discriminatory effect and it was motivated by a discriminatory purpose. So in the speeding ticket analogy, right, you'd have to say, you know, I was doing 80 in the school zone, but so were these three other particular women like john jane and gina were all doing it too and we all got pulled over but the cop only gave me a ticket because he hates men or something right like you'd have to show that based misandrist cop right so you'd have to show that other people did the exact same thing you did, and it was possible for them to have gotten in trouble too. Yeah. But they didn't because of a particular form of discrimination.

Yeah. So in order to make a valid claim of selective prosecution, Rundo's lawyers would have to say, look, here's Joe Antifa, a real guy who exists. set of circumstances in which Joe Antifa ran an organized group that got into fights on purpose, provoked confrontations, chased people to their cars, beat women in the streets, and then used that footage to recruit people to his gang, right? Like, here's Joe Antifa bragging online about targeting members of a particular minority group for brutal gang assaults at political rallies. Here's his group actively planning and organizing to travel to different cities and other states across the country with the explicit and stated goal of provoking and attacking people, right? You can't just say, well, Antifa didn't get charged. You have to present an actual person who did what you did. Not just some other guy who did something

you don't like or somebody else who maybe did kind of a crime. You have to say this is a specific person and he did what I did in a materially similar way to the same degree that I did it and with just as much evidence to support that. Yeah. And in the Ram case, there's so much evidence because they couldn't stop fucking posting. So they can't produce evidence that Antifa, to whatever degree that's a meaningful term here, engaged in similar behavior to what the evidence shows Ram did, right? It's not just, well, other people were fighting. And in this case, that's kind of preposterous because the evidence does show that they specifically bragged, like there's a text that was produced from Ben Daly bragging about how they were first through

the barricades at Berkeley. So you're acknowledging that, you know, there was this big riot and that you started it. Sure, other people are fighting in the riot that you started on purpose. So no one else can be similarly situated to you because even if they were fighting, you started it. There has to be a real, actual other person who is similarly situated. that's an actual legal term that encompasses a sort of set of criteria is there a similar amount of evidence against this other person would it take a similar amount of state resources to investigate arrest and convict this person we just don't have an organized militant street gang of antifa that sold branded apparel and bragged about crimes online there is no similarly situated uncharged actor on the other side of this. That person doesn't exist.

But it's even more than that. Even if we did have Joe Antifa, the gang leader who's bragging online about doing this kind of stuff, even if he existed, even then, even then, there is what's called prosecutorial discretion. There may be reasons that we just aren't entitled to know about as to why a prosecutor made the decisions they did about who gets charged. For a selective prosecution argument to work, you have to show that this decision was made for a discriminatory purpose. And that's really hard to do because they're not going to tell you that, right? In an ideal world, selective prosecution would be an argument raised about racial bias

because we do know that there is racial bias in who is investigated, arrested, charged, and convicted for crimes. Like at every step along the way, there's a thumb on the scale against people of color. And even then, even when it is so obvious, even when you have a prosecutor who is a member of the fucking Klan,

even then these arguments don't tend to work. This should not have worked. But Judge Carney clearly just doesn't want this case prosecuted, right? I think it's very obvious that he just like thinks Rob Rundo is a nice boy who shouldn't have to go to jail for this. He is also, I think, notably about to retire. He hits the minimum retirement age in May,

and he is going to retire the day that he can. I think Megan Kuniff, who has a great blog, Legal Affairs, she's been covering this case. She noted in a tweet a few weeks ago that she knows that he intends to retire because he, in rescheduling some hearings, said that that was the only day he could go to the retirement benefits class that he needs to go to to make sure he can retire the day he's eligible in May. So he just doesn't want to deal with this, right? That this was scheduled to go to trial in March and he's retiring in May. He just doesn't want to do it what's even the point anymore what's even what what i just and it's like why why are they even trying here like it just just just like kick the can down to someone else if

you don't want to like deal with this i don't know it's turning this whole like i don't know i've read other things from this judge how he's like he's like very much into like this big like antifa conspiracy theory and he's a little bit racist like there was a an issue he was oh i'm shocked he was chief judge of the circuit briefly but he had to step down so he's still a judge in in the um the central district of california but he's not the chief judge anymore because he made a racist comment to the clerk of court. So he's, I mean, I think there's some stuff going on with Judge Carney. So I think he knows when he made this ruling that like the Ninth Circuit is going to send it back, but that's not going to be his problem anymore because he's out of here in May.

So he heard this like absolute dog shit argument and he was like, so true, King, this is not fair. You are free to go. Go ahead. And he let him out. Same day, like he heard this argument. he was like, so true, King, this is not fair. You are free to go. Go ahead. And he let him out. Same day, like he heard this argument. He was like, absolutely. That's the one. Go on home. And he let him out that day. The U.S. attorney made a motion for an emergency stay saying like, OK, well, let's just let's not get ahead of ourselves when we just hang on to him till we can talk to the Ninth Circuit about this, Because I don't know. And that's pretty normal. That would be normal for the judge to say, let's give it a day. I mean, I want him released, but we'll give it a day. We'll let you get your paperwork in order. No, he just let him out. Just let him out right that day.

And considering his history of fleeing the country, not the call I would have made. It is quite the choice. So the very next day, the Ninth Circuit was like, hold on, let's get him back in custody while we think about this. And it makes no sense for Carney to deny the emergency stay. That would be really normal to stay the decision until we have a chance to sort of think this through, even if he truly believed with his whole heart that there's no way that this would ever get kicked back by the Ninth Circuit, that the case would stay dismissed and Rundo would be free to go, it would not be unusual to say, you know, well, this has been pretty

contentious. The defendant has fled the country multiple times. So let's just hang on to him for 24, 48 hours while we go through the motions of getting that emergency hearing. But that's not what happened because Robert Rundo is the definition of a flight risk. Yes, he is like, he's the platonic, like, ideal form of a flight risk. I've sat through a lot of bond hearings, and I know we are definitely not all using the same dictionary here when it comes to what is a flight risk, but you really can't find a guy who has done more to demonstrate that he absolutely can and will flee the country to avoid going back to court. He does not want to go to court. So back in 2018, when those two prosecutions were initially filed, right, the Virginia case was

filed first. So when Ben Daly was arrested, the charges hadn't actually been filed yet against Rob Rundo. But I guess when they came to get Ben on October 2nd, so 18 days before the charges hadn't actually been filed yet against Rob Rundo. But I guess when they came to get Ben on October 2nd, so 18 days before the charges were filed against Rob Rundo himself, they came to get Ben in L.A. and he was like, hmm, time to get out of Dodge. Right. So I think that was the moment he was like, I got to go. You know, he knew they might be coming for him next. So first he tries going to Ukraine, which is a great place for a militant right-wing extremist to go hang out with friends. Right. Yeah.

And unfortunately for him, his flight had a layover in London. I don't know if it like didn't occur to him that maybe when they look at your passport, like maybe maybe the U.S. government like anticipated that you would do this. But so Heathrow looks at his passport and was like, the U.S. government says do not would do this. But so Heathrow looks at his passport and was like, the U.S. government says do not pass go, do not collect $200, do not proceed to Nazi asylum, and they turn him back. Now, mind you, he's not arrested yet, right?

They just won't let him go to Ukraine. Interesting. So he does get to London, though. I think he gets to London. And they were like, like no you can't you can't go i don't know how he got that far yeah yeah that is that is intriguing so back in california he walked to mexico yeah which is which is part of his tea tie with robert rundo advice right so like he literally went on foot over the u.s mexico border to avoid passport control and

then he traveled over land through mexico into el salvador yep where he presumably intended to try getting on a plane again you need to you need to get far enough south so that when you fly you don't cross over american airspace other people in ram have tried this and have not gone far south enough and their plane crosses over like the tip of u.s airspace around florida and then they get flagged so that when they land they get they get like arrested or turned back see that's so tricky like i bought a plane ticket funny i bought a plane ticket recently for for vacation i'm not fleeing the country or anything molly's fleeing everyone i actually don't even have a passport but when you buy a plane ticket, they do not provide

for you a sort of schematic of the flight path. So I don't know how they're figuring this out. I guess they're not if it's not working. Rondo, I think typically tries to get far enough south that he just gets a direct flight to like somewhere in like the Middle East or Eastern Europe. Well, I don't know if it would have worked because when he got to El Salvador, the plane that he got on was not headed to Ukraine. It was headed back to LAX in the company of some FBI agents. Ope. So they brought him back and he was formally arrested in the LA airport when they brought him back.

Very funny. Because in the weeks that he had spent trying to get away, the indictment against him had come back and he was also being charged. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist

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I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of black literature. Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audio books while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our

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iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. So after Judge Carney dropped the charges the first time back in 2019, Rundo got his passport back and immediately left the country again, traveling to Europe, visiting other fascist fight clubs. And so, you know, in this time period, the U.S. attorney is appealing the dismissal of the charges like they they want to bring this case there. You know, they're waiting for the Ninth Circuit to hear them, but they're watching him cavorting around Eastern Europe and they're filing motions saying, like, we really got to get him back like he's at a nazi rally in

hungary he's he's got a podcast he's got a podcast where he's telling people how to evade capture by getting foreign passports like we've got to get him back and so when the charges were finally reinstated by the ninth circuit in 2021 he'd been formally expelled from serbia where he'd been living and he was eventually arrested in and extradited from Romania. And then when Judge Carney dismissed the charges again two weeks ago, and the Ninth Circuit was like, we got to get him back. Do you know where they found him? The Mexican border.

Oh, curious. Who could have predicted? Huh? So he really loves leaving the country. Time is a flat circle. Right. So Carney lets him out. He tries to leave the country again immediately the ninth circuit says hold on let's bring him back and because the system works in just the most like insane imaginable ways like i guess when they wrote how this was going to work

they just assumed everyone would act in good faith and they didn't put anything in for when that's not what happens you know i'm pretty sure that's in the Constitution. You have to assume good faith intention. That's, I believe, the 69th Amendment. You have to assume good faith. Everyone's going to be normal about this. We don't need to build in any contingencies here. So every time the Ninth Circuit is like, ooh, Judge Carney, that's nuts.

They just have to send it back to him. It doesn't get sent to a different judge. It's just they just keep sending it back to the guy who is bound and determined to ruin this. So it gets sent back to Judge Carney. This case is still in front of Judge Carney. So the Ninth Circuit, they put him back in and Judge Carney's like, I'm going to let him back out. And the Ninth Circuit is like, no, you really can't do that. You really can't do that. And he's being kind of a pissy little baby about this, right? Like, the Ninth Circuit issues an order saying, like, no one can let him out but us.

If he gets let out, it will be because we said so. No one can let him out. You can't do it. The Ninth Circuit said so. We're up here. We're on top. This is fascism. This is tyranny.

This is fascism. But the bad kind, the kind I don't like, Robert Rundell. So Carney's on the bench and he's like, well, I really want to, though. And so he issues an order saying, like, he's released. But I'm going to stay my own order. I mean, like, you know, I'm going to enter this order saying he's released, but like it won't go into effect because technically I'm not allowed. It's such a dorky,

like piss baby tantrum move from a judge. Like you're being a real baby, Cormac. And he says, quote, I would like to be in a position to release him right now and let him walk out the door. Well, you can't. You can't.

So it gets like stupid messy here, right? So the Ninth Circuit put him back in and it comes back to carnie and carnie's like well this arrest wasn't even legal i should let him out because this you can't even you couldn't put him back in you can't arrest someone without there being cause for a crime well it is a little bit messy here right so carney argues that rondo's rearrest wasn't legal because he dismissed the case so technically when rondo was arrested again there was no charge against him there is currently because the indictment was dismissed you know the prosecutor is appealing that that dismissal maybe it'll get reinstated like it did last time but like right now

he is not charged with a crime which is which is ridiculous because there's so many other things you could charge him with right just like find a different crime like there's like between all of his between all of his passport stuff between all of his crossing the border like there's there's so much other there's so many other things that you could you could decide to charge him with surely some fbi agent has been sort of keeping tabs on his activities and they could come up with something. But as it stands, when he was rearrested, there was no charge, right? Yeah.

So the Ninth Circuit does have the authority to stay the release order. So Carney issued a release order saying, let him out of jail, right? And so the prosecutor was like, we need an emergency hearing in front of the Ninth Circuit on that release order. So Carney issues the release order, the prosecutor goes to the Ninth Circuit and say, we need you to push the pause button on the implementation of this order. That's really normal. That should have been what happened. But because he was released immediately, you know, before they had a chance to get heard by the Ninth Circuit, Carney's argument, which I think may be true here, right, is that by the time the Ninth Circuit heard the motion to stay the release order, it was mooch. They can't hear argument on a motion that doesn't mean anything.

You can't stay an order that's already been implemented. So once the release order was carried out and Rundo was no longer physically in custody, there was no order to stay. So the Ninth Circuit had nothing to rule on. So they they rearrested him saying, like, we're staying the release order. But the order of operations there is kind of key. At the next hearing, Carney said, I must tell you from the little things I've read, I'm quite concerned. I feel Mr. Rundo is being unconstitutionally detained. And it's messy. And I don't know what the right answer is here, right?

Like, it's not unusual for someone to stay in custody pending appeal, especially if they have repeatedly attempted and succeeded at fleeing the country. especially if they have repeatedly attempted and succeeded at fleeing the country. And Carney's refusal to stay the release order kind of makes you wonder if he didn't create this procedural nightmare intentionally. Sure. He kind of created this legal dilemma that now puts Rundo's incarceration and actually like a point of question. Right. Like he had to know that when the ninth circuit did hear this motion they would probably reverse him yeah he had to know that and he absolutely knew rundo would flee the country before that could happen and he's not wrong that it looks a little a little questionable

to issue an arrest warrant when there is no live charge right the end the end result that rundo is in custody pending some kind of further ruling from the Ninth Circuit, that's not weird. That's really normal. But everything that happened in between is a mess. I don't know what the answer to that is. I mean, I mean, as nuts as Carney is behaving, like he is probably right that you can't make a ruling on a moot motion and you can't arrest someone who's not charged with a crime. Those things are true, but I don't know what the answer is here. And I think it's his fault. So at this point, the government is appealing Carney's dismissal of the charges, just like they did back in 2019. Remember that it took

almost two years from the original dismissal to the Ninth Circuit ruling reversing and remanding the case in 2021. So this could take a while. At this point, what the government is asking for is a stay of the release order to keep him in custody while they work through this appeals process because they are appealing the dismissal of the indictment. I don't expect a lot of movement on that this week. appealing the dismissal of the indictment. I don't expect a lot of movement on that this week. I think the docket shows that the appellant's brief is due on the 12th. Today, as we're recording, this is the 4th. So they'll file that brief. They may file more sort of emergency petitions for his release. I'm not sure the Ninth Circuit will do that. But it's anybody's guess at this point,

because it's kind of a big mess. The only thing that is clear is that only the Ninth Circuit can let Rob Rundo out. Well, what a what an enticing Rundo down of the legal events of this case. Don't want to be in that position.

You know, Karrison, I'm not sure that you'll ever be in this position i i hope i hope not at least not in this exact one unless you're running a secret nazi gang that i do not know about in which case disavow disavow okay that's good that's good yeah you should that's probably the right move but so it'll take some time i don't know yeah i don't know what else there is to say um this is like sort of inciting a lot of active club activity you were saying earlier that you know ram doesn't exist anymore it's morphed into these active clubs there's these cells all over

the country and they are fired up about this so i think this has the potential to incite more political violence or at the very least incite more t-shirt sales which would be be just as horrifying to see one of those things out in the wild already marketing free rundo merch yeah i bet yeah uh i guess even nazis have constitutional rights i guess they do although it does feel again slightly uh insidious at the selective non-enforcement of some of these things where there is many many people who are being held especially like in atlanta it's been many people being helped out bail because they've been deemed a flight risk for, for a long,

long time for, for crimes. And not because they hold like a Serbian passport, you know? No, no. Just because they attended a music festival. Right.

It's, I mean, it's hard to get like super fired up about Rob Rundo's constitutional rights in terms of this, this sort of like procedural quagmire when it's like people are actively and intentionally violating everyone else's constitutional rights constantly. Yeah, like the only thing I'm left to think of is how this whole system of law does not seem to work very much. And especially we often point out how a whole bunch of laws get put in place that are like ostensibly framed to like combat white supremacist terrorism or whatever and in in in

actuality really only get used against people fighting for like the rights of black people people fighting for getting trans people not to be murdered like that's that's really what all these laws get targeted against and they face so so much more harsh punishment because we have we have a judge who's treating rob rundo like a little baby who's this innocent little creature. Meanwhile, people can get constantly locked up for completely bullshit charges in other parts of the country for engaging in, like, actually, like, pretty valid acts of protest, not even related to any like alleged violence like there's it's it's it's quite it's quite frustrating to to to look at yes there is actually a decent case of selective enforcement here and it's the other way around yeah it is it is not in fact they're letting antifa run wild and burn down cities in fact these these these nazis get treated like little innocent First Amendment defenders as they purposely talk about and brag about their claims of traveling across the country to assault people and start riots.

Anyway, well, that's not great. Things are not good. I hope only the worst for Rundo, regardless of whatever legal thing happens. Just like in general, I wish him bad just like in life. I hope he trips and falls down the stairs. In general, stub his toe really bad. I'm not optimistic about this situation.

There are a million outcomes here that are the dumbest possible ending to this story. So I'm not holding my breath for, you know, some brilliant prosecutor to save the day here. But I do hope that Rob Rundo continues to have a bad day regardless. Yeah.

Well, thank you for this lovely piece of legal research, Molly. Now I have to close 87 tabs. That is always the joy of wrapping up one of these episodes, is closing the ridiculous amount of tabs that are open. Because at any moment in my research process, if any of my friends looks at my computer, they are horrified by the stress that I'm putting my own RAM through. Different RAM.

The other RAM. Yeah, the computer RAM. Also under considerable strain at this time. Yeah, exactly. my own ram through a different ram the other ram than the yeah it is computer computer ram not also under considerable strain at this time yeah exactly well all right i feel like that's that's as bad enough a joke to end it on as anything else where can people find you online molly oh gosh yeah i am online at socialist dog mom on twitter um on my newsletter on ghost the devil's advocates and um i don't know my dogs have an Instagram that I haven't updated lately. It's at Otto and Buck.

That's it for me. How about you, Garrison? Oh, you can find me documenting my process of slowly turning my entire apartment into the Black Lodge on Twitter at Hungry Bowtie. Jesus Christ. All right. Wow, you can actually see a little bit of it behind me.

It's kind of dark, but you can see a glimmer of red curtains. Yeah, it's spooky back there. It is quite spooky back there. Wait until I turn on the strobe light. All right. Thank you for joining me today, Garrison. All right.

Thank you, Molly. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com. Thanks for listening. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline Podcast. And we're kicking off our second season digging into Tex Elite Thanks for listening. the underbelly of tech, brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from.

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