LOS ANGELES (CN) — A California white supremacist was extradited from Romania to the U.S. to face charges that he led a group that assaulted anti-fascist protesters at political rallies.
Robert Rundo, 33, appeared in court Wednesday afternoon in downtown Los Angeles following his arrival to California the previous day.
He pleaded not guilty and was ordered held in jail while awaiting trial. Magistrate Judge Jean Rosenbluth said there were no bail conditions that would secure his appearance for trial given that he's flight risk and the seriousness of the crimes he's charged with. Rundo's court-appointed attorney didn't argue for bail at the hearing but reserved his right to challenge his extradition from Romania.
The Huntington Beach, California, resident said he had read and understood his constitutional rights and the indictment against him. He also reassured the judge that he was OK to proceed after his 15-hour flight from Bucharest the previous day.
"I just want to make sure you're not falling asleep on your feet," Rosenbluth said.
Rundo, according to federal prosecutors, is a co-founder of the Rise Above Movement, a white racially motivated violent extremist organization that portrayed itself as a combat-ready, militant group of a new nationalist white supremacy and identity movement.
The group trained in mixed martial arts and in 2017 went to political rallies in Huntington Beach and Berkeley, California, specifically to confront and attack counter-protesters affiliated with the antifa movement, leftist anti-fascist groups that became prominent in response to the election of Donald Trump in 2016.
According to a ProPublica report on the Rise Above Movement, some of its members were also at the violent Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, where an assortment of white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups clashed with counter-demonstrators.
Rundo and other members of his group were first charged with violating the Anti-Riot Act in 2018. However, a federal judge threw out the indictment the next year because he concluded the 1968 law, enacted during the height of protests against the Vietnam War, was unconstitutionally overbroad in violation of the First Amendment.
"Make no mistake that it is reprehensible to throw punches in the name of teaching antifa some lesson," U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney said at the time. "Nor does the court condone RAM’s hateful and toxic ideology. But the government has sufficient means at its disposal to prevent and punish such behavior without sacrificing the First Amendment."
The Ninth Circuit reversed Carney's decision, and federal prosecutors filed a superseding indictment against Rundo and two of his associates in January.
Rundo is charged with conspiracy to violate the Anti Riot Act and with rioting and faces as long as five years in prison on each count.
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