He said Patriot Front did not have a reputation for violence and that the case could be a First Amendment issue. Michael Kielty, Wagner’s attorney, said Sunday that he had not been provided information about the charges. Wagner, 24, of Florissant, Missouri, who was previously charged with defacing a mural of famous Black Americans on a college campus in St. No attorney was immediately listed for him and phone numbers associated with him went unanswered Sunday.Īlso among the arrestees was Mitchell F.
The 31 Patriot Front members were arrested with riot gear after a tipster reported seeing people loading up into a U-Haul like “a little army” at a hotel parking lot in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, police said.Īmong those booked into jail on misdemeanor charges of conspiracy to riot was Thomas Ryan Rousseau of Grapevine, Texas, who has been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as the 23-year-old who founded the group after the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. After the arrest of more than two dozen members of a white supremacist group near a northern Idaho pride event, including one identified as its founder, LGBTQ advocates said Sunday that polarization and a fraught political climate are putting their community increasingly at risk.
