3 White Extremists Held In Maryland Ahead Of Virginia Gun Rally

MARYLAND — Two Maryland men and a Canadian believed to be part of the white extremist group The Base are in federal custody on firearms and immigration charges, prosecutors said Thursday. They planned to go to a gun rights rally in Richmond, Virginia, set for Jan. 20, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press.

A federal criminal complaint charges that Brian Mark Lemley Jr., 33, of Elkton, Maryland, and Newark, Delaware, and William Garfield Bilbrough IV, 19, of Denton, Maryland, are members of the racially motivated violent extremist group The Base. Both men are charged with transporting and harboring aliens and conspiring to do so. Lemley is also charged with transporting a machine gun and disposing of a firearm and ammunition to an alien unlawfully present in the United States.

Prosecutors say Lemley and Canadian national Patrik Jordan Mathews, 27, currently of Newark, Delaware, with transporting a firearm and ammunition with intent to commit a felony. The complaint also charges Mathews with being an alien in possession of a firearm and ammunition.

According to the criminal complaint, members of The Base used encrypted chat rooms to discuss recruitment, creating a white ethno-state, making improvised explosive devices, and committing acts of violence against African-Americans and Jewish-Americans. Lemley previously served as a cavalry scout in the Army, and as of August 2019, Mathews, a Canadian citizen in the United States illegally, was a combat engineer in the Canadian Army Reserve, officials said in a statement.

Related: 3 GA Men Hoped To Start Race War, Overthrow Government: FBI

The Maryland indictments came just two days before three Georgia men were arrested on charges that they are also involved in The Base with plans to overthrow the government and murder a Bartow County, Georgia, couple.

Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam announced plans Wednesday to declare a temporary emergency banning all weapons, including guns, from the state Capitol grounds ahead of a massive rally planned for Monday.

With a large number of gun advocates in Virginia and across the country expected to come to Richmond, authorities want to avoid a repeat of the deadly violence that occurred August 2017 in Charlottesville when armed neo-Nazis, white nationalists and Confederate sympathizers sparked violence in the city.

Prosecutors said that in August 2019, Mathews unlawfully crossed from Canada into the United States near the Manitoba/Minnesota border; Lemley and Bilbrough allegedly drove from Maryland to Michigan to pick up Mathews, and they all arrived in Maryland on Aug. 31.

Last month, Lemley and Mathews made a functioning assault rifle, and the trio attempted to manufacture a controlled hallucinogenic drug, DMT, at Lemley and Mathews’s apartment in Delaware, authorities said in charging documents.

According to the affidavit, earlier this month Lemley and Mathews purchased about 1,650 rounds of 5.56mm and 6.5mm ammunition; went to a gun range in Maryland where they shot an assault rifle; and retrieved plate carriers to support body armor.

If convicted, Lemley and Bilbrough each face a maximum sentence of five years for transporting and harboring certain aliens, and 10 years for conspiracy to do so. Lemley also faces a maximum of five years in prison for transporting a machine gun in interstate commerce, and a maximum of 10 years in federal prison for disposing of a firearm and ammunition to an illegal alien. Lemley and Mathews each face a maximum of 10 years in federal prison for transporting a firearm and ammunition in interstate commerce with intent to commit a felony offense. Finally, Mathews faces a maximum of 10 years in federal prison for being an alien in possession of a firearm and ammunition.