Tag: Elmer Woodard

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Watching their backs: Cantwell’s request for change of venue and special prosecutor denied

Chris Cantwell, center, and his security detail with Gregory Conte and Eli Mosley is led by attorney Elmer Woodard, right, into Albemarle Circuit Court. Staff photo

 

Another high-profile case went through Albemarle County Circuit Court on January 31, where motions for a self-proclaimed racist who found himself in trouble after the weekend of the Unite the Right rally had two motions denied and one granted.

Christopher Cantwell is accused of using a caustic substance on counterprotesters at the August 11 brawl between torch-wielding white supremacists and anti-racists at the University of Virginia.

Defense attorney Elmer Woodard, who represents several of the alt-right men facing charges from the deadly mid-August weekend, said Cantwell won’t be able to get a fair trial in Albemarle County. He asked to take his client’s trial, which is scheduled exactly six months after August 12, to a different locality.

“Mr. Cantwell’s got some men with him because it’s dangerous for him to move around Charlottesville,” Woodard told Judge Cheryl Higgins. When Cantwell entered circuit court that day, he was accompanied by an entourage that included Woodard, the attorney’s assistant and former Identity Evropa leader Eli Mosley.

Because Cantwell has such a high profile, Woodard said he expects a mob scene at each hearing—like the one at Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler’s August 13 press conference, where he was tackled to the ground and rescued by police.

The attorney told the judge before he and the suited men entered the building, they hid in the general district court “because we’re vulnerable.” He apparently scanned the vicinity before leading the group from one courthouse into the other. “My assistant, his job is to look behind me,” Woodard added.

Aside from this reporter and one man waiting for his own hearing, no one was outside the courthouses. “Who are those guys?” the man asked after Cantwell and his apparent security detail entered the building and the door closed behind them.

Among the entourage was Gregory Conte, who identifies himself in his Twitter bio as a Tyr 1 Security employee and the director of operations at the National Policy Institute, Richard Spencer’s white nationalist think tank based in Alexandria.

Conte formed the security company with his partner, Brian Brathovd, who is reportedly Spencer’s bodyguard. Conte never entered the courtroom, but stayed in the lobby where he appeared to be guarding a black box full of cell phones, which are prohibited inside.

In court, Woodard noted several instances of what he called “prejudice and excitement” from the local community, including press coverage from NBC29 and WINA and a publication he called “Charlottesville Today.”

He said the cars of alt-right members who came to support Cantwell at his November 9 preliminary hearing were towed. The cars were parked in a private church lot, and sources say the church had the vehicles removed.

“I used a transport service so my car can’t be traced,” Woodard said. He alleged that a woman tried to smuggle a steak knife into one of another client’s hearings in Charlottesville General District Court, and she told deputies the metal detector was beeping because she had a hip replacement.

For the second time that week in Albemarle Circuit Court, an attorney expressed worry about “sleeper activists” who could sit on the jury with the intention of convicting his client.

The day before Cantwell’s hearing, Kessler’s attorney expressed the same concern. The judge denied Kessler’s motion to move his trial out of Albemarle, and she did the same for the so-called “Crying Nazi,” who was given that name after he posted a tearful video to the web before turning himself in to Lynchburg police in August.

“Well, first of all, I’m not a Nazi,” Cantwell said in a jail interview in September. “I came down [to Charlottesville] because I think that I fucking have rights and that I don’t deserve my fucking race to be exterminated from the planet. Not everybody who’s skeptical of Jews is a fucking socialist, okay?”

Judge Higgins also denied his attorney’s request for a special prosecutor for the three-day trial, though Woodard explained that he may want to call Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert Tracci as a witness, resulting in a mistrial and “a very, very, very upset judge.”

Depending on the answers from witnesses Emily Gorcenski and Kristopher Goad—who originally made statements that Cantwell sprayed them with pepper spray on August 11—Woodard said he’d like to question Tracci about some of their previous testimony.

Legal expert David Heilberg says calling the commonwealth’s attorney as a witness “is extremely rare and it might be a ploy to disqualify the prosecutor.”

“I find it is too speculative,” said Higgins as she denied the motion.

However, she did grant a final motion to amend Cantwell’s bond to allow him to go anywhere within the undisclosed Virginia city where he currently resides.

After the hearing, Christian Picciolini waited on the courthouse steps for Cantwell to exit and called out to Cantwell that he just wanted to talk.

“You have my phone number, loser,” Cantwell spat back at him.

Piccolini was recruited to join the Chicago Area Skinheads, America’s first group of neo-Nazis, at the age of 14.

“I used to be just like him,” Picciolini says, but he disassociated himself from the movement in 1996. “I started to receive compassion 30 years ago from the people I least deserved it from.”

Christian Picciolini Staff photo

The Chicago man, who is the co-founder of a nonprofit called Life After Hate, says he wants to sit down with Cantwell and offer him the same support that helped changed his ideologies.

He adds, “Nobody’s born with a swastika flag under his pillow.”

 

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Split decision: Shooter gets bond, alleged assailant doesn’t

KKK imperial wizard Richard Wilson Preston is charged with firing a gun August 12. ACLU video

 

Two ponytailed Unite the Right participants represented by the same Blairs, Virginia-based lawyer had different fates in their January 4 bond hearings in Charlottesville Circuit Court.

Judge Humes Franklin granted 52-year-old Baltimore resident Richard Preston, an imperial wizard of the Confederate White Knights of the KKK who was filmed firing a gun during the August 12 Unite the Right rally, a $50,000 cash bond with the instruction to not leave the state, possess a firearm or “engage in any assemblies, if you will.”

Defense attorney Elmer Woodard called on Billy Snuffer Sr., the imperial wizard of the Rebel Brigade Knights of the True Invisible Empire, who testified he had a “trailer down on the farm” in Martinsville, where he would allow Preston to live pending his three-day trial in May.

Snuffer, who told the judge he owns Snuffer’s Auto Repair in Buchanan, offered to give Preston a job while out on bond, but it is unclear whether the judge will allow Preston to leave the trailer for matters other than court and to meet with his attorney, who also represents several other white nationalists, including “Crying Nazi” Chris Cantwell.

In a separate hearing on the same day, Jacob Goodwin, a 22-year-old from Arkansas who allegedly participated in the Market Street Parking Garage beatdown of DeAndre Harris, was denied his shot at getting out of jail.

Goodwin, wearing all-black clothing, black goggles, a helmet and carrying a shield on August 12, can be identified in widely circulated videos of the attack, but Woodard told the judge his client was simply walking to his car in the garage when he encountered two groups of people “exercising their First Amendment rights with great vigor,” and unintentionally became involved in the scuffle.

“I was walking and DeAndre Harris come sprinting at me,” Goodwin testified. “He come at me, kind of bounced off my shield and I kicked him.”

On a small scrap of paper, Woodard offered to the judge an address apparently near Richmond where a friend identified by the prosecution as Eric Davis had invited Goodwin to live, if granted bond.

When Franklin asked how long Goodwin had known the Central Virginia resident, the Arkansas man first said four months, but quickly changed his answer to about a year. No one could determine whether Goodwin’s friend, whom he said he met at a “political meeting” in Kentucky and roomed with in hotels, lived in a house or apartment near Richmond, or whether he has a criminal record.

As Franklin was in the process of denying the request for bond, Matthew Heimbach—a co-founder of the Traditionalist Worker Party and Holocaust denier often considered to be the face of a new generation of white nationalists—approached the defense and whispered for several seconds before a deputy ordered him to sit down.

“Apparently someone in the courtroom has the answer to your questions,” interjected Woodard, but the ruling had already been made, Heimbach had already retaken his seat next to Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler and Franklin said he was done with that hearing for the day.

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August 12 shooter and Market Street Garage attackers go to grand jury

Imperial wizard Billy Snuffer came to court to support fellow Klansman Richard Preston, accused of firing a gun at Emancipation Park August 12. Daryl Davis has made it a mission to meet KKKers to find out why they hate him for the color of his skin. Eze Amos

Three out-of-towners who were charged following the August 12 Unite the Right rally were in court December 14 for preliminary hearings, where a judge determined there was probable cause to seek grand jury indictments.

Baltimore resident and Confederate White Knights of the KKK imperial wizard Richard Preston, 52, is charged with shooting a firearm within 1,000 feet of a school. Alex Michael Ramos, 34, from Jackson, Georgia, is charged with felonious assault, and Jacob Scott Goodwin, 23, from Ward, Arkansas, is charged with malicious wounding, both in the Market Street Garage beating of Deandre Harris.

The three men were in court the same day as the hearing for James Fields, the man accused of killing Heather Heyer when he drove into a crowd. The judge ordered increased security in the courtroom, and he warned that anyone making noise would be removed.

Fellow KKKers, including Billy Snuffer, imperial wizard of the Rebel Brigade Knights of the True Invisible Empire, showed up in support of Preston.

Preston’s attorney, Elmer Woodard, also represents Goodwin and “Crying Nazi” Chris Cantwell. The Danville attorney, known for his showmanship in his appearances here, was corrected twice on the pronunciation of the name of Commonwealth’s Attorney-elect Joe Platania.

Platania called one witness, attorney and former mayor Frank Buck, who was near the corner of Market and Second streets when the rally was declared an unlawful assembly and whites-righters streamed out of Emancipation Park.

Buck testified he saw Preston point his gun at Corey Long, who made a flamethrower from an aerosol can. “I heard the gun discharge,” he said, and he saw a puff in the mulch near Long’s feet.

ACLU video

He followed Preston at a distance, and then filed a complaint with a magistrate. “He fired a handgun in the midst of people,” said Buck. “That struck me as an unlawful discharge.”

Woodard, who brought an aerosol can that he shook in court, asked Buck why he didn’t file a complaint against Long.

At that point, Judge Bob Downer interrupted the attorney. “All we’re here for today is to determine whether a firearm was unlawfully fired within 1,000 feet of a school. You seem to quibble about the distance of the flamethrower.”

Widely circulated video shows Preston firing a Ruger SR9 in the direction of Long, who was subpoenaed by Woodard but did not appear in court.

Woodard produced four witnesses who testified Preston saved them from the flamethrower. “There was nowhere to go and I was getting ready to be burned alive,” said Glasgow resident Scott Woods.

Another witness was testifying to the proficiency of Preston’s shooting when Downer interrupted again and reminded the lawyer that the preliminary hearing was only to determine probable cause that Preston fired his gun in the vicinity of Park School.

Despite Woodard’s argument that Preston’s firing was justifiable, that he kept people from being burned and was a “hero,” Downer certified the charge to the grand jury, which indicted him December 18.

Jacob Goodwin, Alex Michael Ramos and Richard Preston were in court December 14 for August 12-related charges. Charlottesville police

Detective Declan Hickey described on the stand his investigation into the beating of Harris, and the identification of some of the men who allegedly took part in that, including Goodwin and Ramos.

Goodwin was arrested October 11, and Hickey pointed him out in a video wearing all black and carrying a shield. Goodwin’s attorney painted a picture of self-defense and said Harris “ran at this man. He had to defend himself.”

Woodard asked the detective why he didn’t arrest another man in the video, who was wearing a brimmed hat and whom Woodard dubbed “Boonie Hat.”

“What’s appalling,” he said, “is that the commonwealth didn’t know Boonie Hat existed.”

He had Goodwin stand up, and the lawyer kneed him in the buttocks, apparently to demonstrate the extent of Goodwin’s involvement, contending, “That’s not malicious wounding.”

Ramos’ attorney, Jake Joyce, argued his client’s involvement in the beating did not rise to malicious wounding. “It might be assault and battery,” he said.

Downer did not buy those arguments, and said under the standard of probable cause, there was enough evidence to certify the charges to the grand jury, which met December 18 and handed down indictments for the two men. As for Boonie Hat, the judge said he hoped police find him.

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‘Crying Nazi’: Judge dismisses two charges against Cantwell

Christopher Cantwell posted a tearful video online before turning himself into police. Cantwell video

Two of three felony charges were thrown out in a more than six-hour-long preliminary hearing November 9 for “Crying Nazi” Chris Cantwell, the New Hampshire man accused of pepper spraying multiple people at the violent August 11 tiki-torch march across the University of Virginia.

Hundreds of white supremacists were in town that weekend for homegrown whites-righter Jason Kessler’s Unite the Right rally, which left three people dead and many injured in its aftermath.

In Cantwell’s case, an Albemarle General District Court judge is allowing one count of illegal use of tear gas to go before the grand jury, after he said Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert Tracci was unable to prove that the two victims who brought the charges against Cantwell were actually sprayed by the shock jock, who continues to broadcast his show, the Radical Agenda, from the Albemarle-Charlottesville Regional Jail.

His supporters, known for their fashy haircuts and white polos and khakis, coordinated new outfits this time. About a dozen of them lined the courtroom’s benches wearing black, some dressed head-to-toe in the color.

While Tracci claimed the inmate maliciously used pepper spray during the tiki-torch march, Cantwell himself, who appeared in a dark grey and white-striped jail jumpsuit and handcuffs, called it self defense.

“I said I would not attend the UVA demonstration unless we were coordinating with law enforcement,” he told Judge William Barkley during his testimony, but when there were no cops there to “protect [white nationalists] from the counterprotesters,” he said he had no choice but to take matters into his own hands. And he came to Charlottesville prepared to do so.

He brought with him an AR-15, an AK-47, a Ruger LC9, a Glock, a folding knife and what he called the “now infamous can of pepper spray,” to name a few of the weapons he rattled off. He had a couple of ballistic vests with him, too, he said.

“I was hoping very much to avoid violence,” testified the white nationalist, who said he didn’t bring any of the firearms out on the night of August 11 because he was told that the university is a gun-free zone. When he didn’t have a tiki torch at the march, he said he was asked to walk on the outside of the group and work security for the group of white nationalists and neo-Nazis.

“I was on edge the entire time because [counterprotesters] kept bumping into people with torches,” Cantwell said. When asked if he was taken aback by the heatedness of the march, he said, “It’s difficult to say that I was surprised because I talk about this stuff for a living. I know these people are dangerous.”

He later portrayed it as, “two groups of people who hated each other attacking one another and I was in the middle of it.”

Alleged victims Emily Gorcenski and Kristopher Goad testified against Cantwell, describing being sprayed with a caustic substance and losing their vision, but the latter said video footage Tracci recently showed him displayed a man with a dragon tattoo—not Cantwell—macing him at least one of the times.

Cantwell’s attorney, Elmer Woodard, asked Goad multiple times why he did not leave the demonstration when he noticed things were getting out of hand. At this point on August 11, Goad, along with about 25 other counterprotesters, were encircled by about 300 chanting, torch-wielding white nationalists.

“I did not have an option to leave,” Goad said. “I was surrounded 360 degrees by hundreds of people.” To that, the attorney said, “You could have said excuse me, couldn’t you?”

The room erupted in laughter. And it did again, when Woodard suggested that perhaps it was the smoke from the tiki torches instead of mace that caused the victim’s faces to burn, or “maybe it was the citronella candles,” he said.

Along with dropping two of Cantwell’s charges, Judge Barkley also did not extend a protective order Gorcenski had against Cantwell, and said his bond prohibited him from contacting the woman, whom Woodard called an “antifa operative.”

Woodard’s assistant played Gorcenski’s own video footage, in which the attorney later pointed out that if she was pepper sprayed, she never audibly seemed to react to it. “She’s quiet as a mouse, which I’m pretty sure everyone in this room wishes I would be.”

Also present in the courtroom was Vice News’ Elle Reeve, who followed and interviewed Cantwell throughout the August 12 weekend, Kessler, who appeared in court a week ago to amend his bond on a perjury charge so he could take a job in Ohio, and Unite the Right organizer Eli Mosley.

Some of the white nationalists in town may have found their cars towed when they left court. Sources say the church where they parked had the vehicles removed.

Cantwell, who has been incarcerated since he turned himself in August 24, is expected to request bond November 13.

 

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KKK support group: Gun-firer and alleged Harris attackers remain in jail

KKK imperial wizard Richard Wilson Preston is charged with firing a gun August 12. ACLU video

A judge was unswayed hearing testimony from a man who first said he was threatened by the thrower of a C-VILLE Weekly box at the August 12 Unite the Right rally and who then fired his pistol to defend a man who was the target of a homemade flamethrower.

Richard Preston photo Charlottesville police

Baltimore resident Richard Wilson Preston Jr., 52, imperial wizard of the Confederate White Knights of the KKK, appeared in Charlottesville General District Court October 12 seeking bond. He was arrested August 26 for discharging a weapon within 1,000 feet of a school after video circulated of him firing the gun at the rally.

Preston was represented by Elmer Woodard, who is also the attorney for other white nationalists arrested in conjunction with the August 12 weekend and were in court October 13—Identity Evropa’s Nathan Damigo, Richard Spencer’s National Policy Institute cohort Evan McLaren and JonPaul Struys—as well as Chris Cantwell, aka the “Crying Nazi.”

Originally scheduled for a preliminary hearing, Preston first asked that it be continued, and then changed his mind the Saturday before, according to Woodard. The prosecution objected because Preston’s change of heart came about October 7 on a holiday weekend.

“You can’t have it both ways if you ask for a continuance,” said Judge Bob Downer, who rejected going forward with the preliminary hearing.

Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Joe Platania also said he was not prepared for a bond hearing, but Downer agreed to hear testimony at the end of the day from the half dozen Preston Klan supporters who came to vouch that he’d show up in court if released.

Wearing a striped jail jumpsuit and ponytail, Preston told the judge that initially he’d been threatened with a C-VILLE Weekly box and pulled his pistol in that encounter, but the box was tossed in a different direction. Beside him, a man clad in black wearing shorts and a mask had what Preston described as a nail-spiked stick. “He said he was going to kill me,” said Preston. “I pulled my pistol back up and said if he tried that, I’d fucking shoot him.”

Attorney Elmer Woodard had white nationalist clients in court October 12 and 13. Photo Natalie Jacobsen

Preston’s gun is registered in Baltimore. “There’s no restriction on marching around this beautiful city with a firearm,” said Woodard.

Scott “Woodsy” Woods from Glasgow, Virginia, testified he’d been hit with pepper spray August 12 when a second threat emerged. “I’m right here getting attacked by this guy with a flamethrower,” he said. “I saw this guy flick this thing three times. Then he sprayed it in my face. I felt the heat.”

Said Woods, “Someone fired a shot.” And that’s when the threat stopped, he said.

Culpeper resident Corey Long, 23, identified as the man in the iconic flamethrower photo, turned himself in October 13 and was charged with disorderly conduct and in another August 12 incident, assault. He was released on an unsecured bond.

Woods said he’d been Facebook friends with Preston for about five years, and has met him “two or three times,” the last occasion at a June cookout in Martinsville.

Billy Wayne Snuffer Sr., the imperial wizard of the Rebel Brigade Knights of the True Invisible Empire, which had a gathering in Martinsville in June, came from Buchanan and testified he was prepared to put up $2,500—10 percent of a $25,000 bond, the amount Woodard suggested.

According to Vice, Snuffer was connected to another KKKer—Chris Barker, who organized the July 8 rally in Charlottesville. Snuffer expelled Barker in 2015 for defacing a synagogue in Danville.

Woodard said if released, Preston had friends who would house him in Virginia. “They’ll drag him up here,” he assured the judge. And while Preston didn’t object to electronic monitoring, because his friends live in rural areas, it might not work, said his lawyer.

Downer said it was not the flight risk that worried him. “I do think he’s a danger to others,” he said. That Preston would fire a gun in a crowd of people there to exercise their First Amendment rights, Downer said, was “totally and completely reckless.”

Two other men arrested for felonious assault for the beating of Deandre Harris in the Market Street Garage August 12 also had hearings.

Daniel Borden Photo Charlottesville police

Daniel Borden, the 18-year-old from Mason, Ohio, looked surprised on the video feed from Albemarle Charlottesville Regional Jail when he learned that his lawyer, Mike Hallahan, was not able to be in court that day and his hearing would be continued to December 14. Borden shook his head.

And Alex Michael Ramos, 33, from Jackson, Georgia, who was denied bond September 25, again was rebuffed because of his lack of ties in this area and the “very violent encounter” with Harris, said prosecutor Nina Antony.

Ramos, she said, was not part of the original gang beating Harris, but came from across the street to join in and punch Harris, who was on the ground.

Once again, Downer expressed his concerns about “someone who strikes someone, who kicks someone when they’re down.”

Alex Ramos from wanted poster

And Ramos’ non-resident status was another factor. “I’ve had oodles of experience with out-of-state defendants voluntarily coming back,” said Downer, in denying bond.

Ramos, too, will be back in court December 14.

Earlier that day, Harris, 20, turned himself in on a charge of unlawful wounding after League of the South member Harold Ray Crews alleged Harris assaulted him. Harris was released on an unsecured bond.

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Alt-righters found guilty of failing to disperse

JonPaul Struys, Evan McLaren and Nathan Damigo leave Charlottesville District Court after being convicted of failing to disperse August 12. Photo Natalie Jacobsen

Police had to intervene after an October 13 court hearing where three white nationalists were found guilty of failure to disperse during the Unite the Right rally, and then were chased into a nearby parking garage by people waiting for them outside the courthouse.

Counterprotesters with their middle fingers in the air rushed Nathan Damigo, Evan McLaren and JonPaul Struys when they left Charlottesville General District Court. The group chanted “fuck white supremacists” and followed the men into the Market Street Garage where McLaren was parked.

Damigo—founder of white supremacist group Identity Evropa—trailed McLaren—the executive director of the National Policy Institute, which was formerly reigned by Richard Spencer—to the car while Struys turned to face the angry group, making a peace sign and pursing his lips.

About a dozen police were on-hand, and ordered everyone who wasn’t parked in the garage to leave. The three men then rode off in the silver car McLaren was driving.

In court, Virginia State Police troopers testified they arrested Damigo and Struys on August 12 after the rally had been declared an unlawful assembly and its participants were instructed to leave Emancipation Park. The two refused to leave and pushed up against the shields of a line of riot cops.

Another trooper testified that McLaren was lying face down on the ground in the park when he was arrested for failure to disperse.

All three are represented by Elmer Woodard, who also represents “Crying Nazi” Chris Cantwell and Richard Preston, who’s charged with firing a gun during the rally. The Blairs, Virginia-based attorney argued that the rally should never have been declared an unlawful assembly, so police did not have grounds to arrest the men.

He said his clients were “bellyaching,” and not participating in violence.

Attorney Elmer Woodard threatens to sue a photographer if she sells his image for profit. Photo Natalie Jacobsen

Brian O’Donnell, who served as a Charlottesville Police Department zone commander August 12, testified that people in attendance threw bottles, used pepper spray and beat each other with sticks and bats, and prosecutor Nina-Alice Antony said that was enough to declare the meetup unlawful.

But Woodard said all of the violence was happening on the outskirts of the permitted area, so if an unlawful assembly needed to be declared, it should have only affected those participating in violence outside of Emancipation Park. He called rally organizer Jason Kessler to testify, who said the three alt-righters in question were his guests, and they all behaved during the event.

As the homegrown white nationalist took the stand, he was greeted with hissing from courtroom attendee Nancy Carpenter.

“I didn’t see anybody making any violence,” Kessler said, and added that the drone footage of the event that he watched a few days ago was “super boring.”

Judge Robert Downer found all three men guilty of the class one misdemeanor, and fined Damigo and Struys $200. McLaren, who was “cordial” with police, was ordered to fork over $100.

The three have appealed the charges and will appear on the December docket call in Charlottesville Circuit Court, according to prosecutor Antony.

 

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Judge denies Cantwell jail release

Christopher Cantwell posted a tearful video online before turning himself into police. Cantwell video

Christopher Cantwell, who has been dubbed the “Crying Nazi” by critics of his teary Youtube video made after the August 12 alt-right rally and before he turned himself into police August 24, was denied bond today by a judge who cited a widely seen Vice interview that she said showed Cantwell’s approval of the violence that left local woman Heather Heyer dead.

Wearing a black-and-white jail jumpsuit, with his formerly shaved head sprouting patches of brown hair, Cantwell this morning secured a $25,000 bond for two felony counts of illegal use of tear gas and one felony count of malicious bodily injury by means of a caustic substance stemming from the August 11 tiki-torch rally of hundreds of white nationalists through UVA Grounds.

“A guilty man does not come back and turn himself in,” said his attorney, Elmer Woodard, of Pittsylvania County. “If he was a flight risk, he would have already flighted.”

But Commonwealth’s Attorney Robert Tracci, who appealed the decision today in Albemarle Circuit Court before Cantwell’s scheduled release at 4pm, said the alt-right radio show host is a threat to public safety.

He also cited Cantwell’s August 13 interview with Vice News, in which he said Heyer’s murder during the Unite the Right rally was more than justified.

Cantwell also interviewed with Vice News in McIntire Park August 11, the day of the tiki-torch rally. Staff photo

“We’ll fucking kill these people if we have to,” he told reporter Elle Reeve in that interview. When she asked about the next alt-right rally, he said, “It’s going to be really tough to top, but we’re up to the challenge. …I think a lot more people are going to die before we’re done, frankly.”

In circuit court, Cantwell’s mutton-chopped attorney Woodard described his client as a “shock jock,” who made statements about murdering people to the 1,000 or so people who listened to his Radical Agenda podcast without actually intending to kill anyone.

Cantwell said the shock on his show was “race related,” but that he “never advocated that people kill Jews or blacks.”

“Did you shoot, kill or maim anyone before you got out of Charlottesville?” asked Woodard of his client, who listed the four guns he brought with him to Virginia.

Ultimately it wasn’t Cantwell’s weaponry that made Judge Cheryl Higgins decide to deny bond. She said she considered the “characteristics of the person,” and the words he used that “show a certain level of approval of the violence” of the August 11-12 weekend.

She also noted his lack of community ties, despite an offer to live with a local person that Cantwell said he only knew through the Unite the Right rally.

Cantwell’s preliminary hearing is scheduled for November 9.

Also in court this morning was Richard Preston, the Baltimore man charged with firing his gun during the Unite the Right rally. He appeared via video call in Charlottesville General District Court, where he said his family is working to find an attorney to represent him, and he has no other ties to the city.

Also this morning, about 20 people charged with obstructing justice or obstructing free passage during the July 8 Ku Klux Klan rally in Justice Park were scheduled to appear in the same courtroom. All but one case was continued.

Thomas Freeman, a 52 year old Twin Oaks resident, pleaded guilty for locking arms with other protesters in front of the entrance to Justice Park.

“We wanted to make it known that we, citizens of the city, did not want the KKK in the park,” he tearfully told the judge, who imposed a $100 fine, or offered a punishment of 10 days of community service instead.

“We applaud and admire a citizen who stands by his or her principles in a manner such as exhibited today,” Commonwealth’s Attorney Dave Chapman said in a statement. His office will continue to offer defendants of the free passage cases, “in which the citizen willingly submitted to his or her arrest and cooperated with the arrest process,” the opportunity to complete 10 days of community service and have their cases dismissed.

Outside the courthouse, Freeman said he grew up in the ‘70s and remembered his parents driving him over the James River Bridge from Hampton to Smithfield, so he wouldn’t have to swim with kids with different skin tones.

“I feel guilty,” he said. “I am ashamed. …As a white man, I think it’s my job to stand up and say no, you’re not going to do that anymore.”

Freeman had a message to those who look different than him. “We’re with you. We have your back. We’re not going to allow people who look like me to beat on you.”

—With additional reporting by Lisa Provence

Updated at 8:06pm with the results of Cantwell’s bond hearing.

Updated September 1 at 10am with comments from Commonwealth’s Attorney Dave Chapman.