Circuit Court Blocks Judge’s Decision to Release White Supremacist for Being ‘Selectively Prosecuted’

A federal appeals court panel on Thursday moved to stay a district judge’s order that cleared the release of an alleged leader of a white supremacist organization who had previously fled the U.S. to evade prosecution.

Robert Rundo, the alleged leader of the white supremacist ‘Rise Above Movement,’ was released from prison in Orange County Wednesday, before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals issued their temporary stay. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Central District of California confirmed Thursday night that Rundo had been taken into custody.

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U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney had earlier dismissed charges against Rundo and a co-defendant, Robert Boman, both of whom were charged in 2018 with conspiracy to violate the Anti-Riot Act, and rioting, for their role in alleged attacks on counter-protesters at political rallies in 2017.

In an extraordinary ruling Wednesday, Carney argued that Rundo and Boman had shown they were “selectively prosecuted” in comparison with members of far-left groups like Antifa, who also physically assaulted supporters of former President Trump at some of the rallies but were not charged with the same crimes.

“By many accounts, members of Antifa and related far-left groups engaged in worse conduct and in fact instigated much of the violence that broke out at these otherwise constitutionally protected rallies to silence the protected speech of the supporters of President Trump,” Judge Carney wrote in his opinion. “That is constitutionally impermissible…prosecuting only members of the far right and ignoring members of the far left leads to the troubling conclusion that the government believes it is permissible to physically assault and injure Trump supporters to silence speech.”

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