Three members of a white supremacist group accused of attacking counterprotesters at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville were sentenced to prison Friday.
Benjamin Daley, 26, was sentenced to 37 months behind bars, Thomas Gillen, 25, was sentenced to 33 months and Michael Miselis, 30, was sentenced to 27 months, the Department of Justice announced.
“These defendants, motivated by hateful ideology, incited and committed acts of violence in Charlottesville, as well at other purported political rallies in California,” U.S. Attorney Thomas Cullen said in a statement.
“They were not interested in peaceful protest or lawful First Amendment expression; instead, they intended to provoke and engage in street battles with those that they perceived as their enemies. I am grateful for the diligence and hard work of the FBI and Virginia State Police in bringing these violent white supremacists to justice.”
The three were all part of a now-defunct “combat-ready militant group” in California called the Rise Above Movement that “openly identified as ‘alt-right’ and ‘nationalist'” and whose members regularly shared propaganda “related to their alt-right, anti-Semitic and white-supremacist views,” according to DOJ officials.
Along with the Charlottesville rally, Daley, Gillen and Miselis were also in attendance at a March 2017 rally in Huntington Beach, Calif., and an April 2017 rally in Berkeley, Calif., where RAM members were photographed assaulting protesters.
At the Unite the Right protest, RAM members “pushed, punched, kicked, chocked, head-butted, and otherwise assaulted several individuals, resulting in a riot,” according to the DOJ.
Last week, white supremacist James Fields Jr. was given a second life sentence for the death of 32-year-old Heather Heyer, who he killed after intentionally driving his car into a group of counterprotesters as the Unite the Right rally.
