Two men accused of plotting deadly violence at a Virginia gun rights rally last year to incite a racial “civil war” were sentenced to nine years each in federal prison Thursday after apologizing in court, with one speaking ruefully of his “false ideology” and the other lamenting that he “got involved with the wrong people.”
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Patrik J. Mathews, 29, and Brian M. Lemley Jr., 35, who belonged to a white-supremacist group, each pleaded guilty in June to firearms- and immigration-related charges. Citing federal sentencing guidelines, defense attorneys sought prison terms in the range of three years for each man, arguing that their clients were merely fantasizing aloud when they talked about sowing mayhem.
But U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang, in Greenbelt, Md., departed from the guidelines and imposed 108-month sentences, saying a “terrorism enhancement,” allowed by federal law, was warranted in the cases. The nine-year sentences fell far short of the 25-year terms that a prosecutor asked for.
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The two men belonged to an extremist group called the Base, whose members espouse racial hatred, antisemitism and violent ethno-nationalism.
“What else is there to say?” Mathews told Chuang, voicing regret for his association with the Base. “I got involved with the wrong people.”
Lemley, of Elkton, Md., said he abandoned his racist views after finding camaraderie among Black men who “embraced” him while he was in jail after his arrest last year.
“The change came too late,” he said, in tears, “but the power of friendship healed a festering wound of a false ideology.” Addressing the judge, he said, “I am begging you for your mercy that something could be salvaged from this terrible wreckage and disaster I brought upon my loved ones.”
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Mathews, a Canadian national, said that when he joined the Base, he thought the group’s main focus was immigration control, but he learned his “perception was wrong, horrifically wrong, disastrously wrong.” He said, “I am most sorry for the harm I put my family through.”
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How much prison time Mathews and Lemley faced hinged on the question of how serious they were about wreaking havoc at the huge gun rights rally, held in Richmond on Jan. 20, 2020. The two men were arrested in Delaware four days before the rally, which unfolded peacefully near the Virginia Capitol.
The sentence enhancement is sometimes used in cases of alleged domestic terrorism. That is because there is no federal statute defining such terrorism as a distinct crime. Instead, defendants are typically prosecuted only for the individual offenses that make up an alleged terrorist conspiracy, such as weapons violations.
Judge rules on sentencing for men accused of plotting ‘race war’
In arguing that Mathews and Lemley were intent on carrying out deadly attacks in Richmond that amounted to terrorism, authorities cited secretly recorded discussions between the men in the weeks leading up to the demonstration.
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Their aim, prosecutors said, was to whip participants into a violent frenzy, precipitating what one of the men called “a full-blown civil war” that would topple the U.S. government and empower White people. The two discussed killing police officers, among others, and assassinating state House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn (D-Fairfax) with a sniper rifle as she left her home, authorities said.
But defense lawyers dismissed the conversations as a “play act” and “simply a fleeting idea” hatched by “two damaged military veterans” who were fixated on “far-fetched, unrealistic scenarios.” Lemley is an Army veteran of the Iraq War, and Mathews is a former combat engineer in the Canadian armed forces reserves, the attorneys said.
“There is a huge chasm between speaking in the abstract about outrageous acts and actually engaging in such acts,” Lemley’s lawyer, Ned Smock, said in a sentencing memo filed in court. “The government utterly fails to bridge this chasm … Anyone who listened to the hundreds of hours of conversations between these defendants would struggle to discern any line of consistent thought, reasoning, or planning.”
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Mathews’s attorney, Joseph A. Balter, said each man was exercising his First Amendment right to engage in speech “that many would find repugnant.” He and Smock said that their clients were enticed into discussing violent attacks in Richmond by an undercover FBI agent and that the two were merely fantasizing aloud.
But Chuang said Thursday, “The court rejects the notion this was simply talk among friends.”
The discussions took place in a Delaware apartment where the FBI had secretly installed video and audio recorders. Citing the conversations, Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas P. Windom said in his sentencing memo that prosecutors have “ample evidence that the defendants intended” to commit acts of terrorism.
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Transcripts show the conversations were filled with racist and antisemitic rants, as Lemley and Mathews talked about crippling such public infrastructure as roads and power plants to provoke a White uprising. They spoke of setting up a camp in Virginia’s Shenandoah Forest from which to plan the government overthrow.
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Mathews, according to authorities, said: “Here’s the thing … You want to create … instability while the Virginia situation is happening … derail some rail lines … shut down the highways” and “kick off the economic collapse.”
The FBI said Lemley replied, “Virginia will be our day.”
In court Thursday, Mathews’s father, Glen Mathews, said his son grew up with “a strong moral compass,” but “somewhere along the way, something happened,” and he was radicalized. “The good thing is that the Pat I know is still there.”
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Elizabeth Malin, Lemley’s sister, said they suffered abuse as children and that her brother was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder serving in Iraq. “There is so much pain and regret in this room,” she told the judge.
Chuang said Lemley’s childhood and combat trauma helps “explain, though not excuse,” his descent into the Base’s extremist ideology. Considering that Lemley, in becoming a soldier, took an oath to defend the Constitution, the judge said, “in some ways” his crimes are “more grievous.”
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After the men were arrested Jan. 16, 2020, prosecutors said, the FBI searched the Delaware apartment and “located Base propaganda fliers, communications devices, and empty rifle cases.” They found bags containing “numerous Meals-Ready-to-Eat … and knives, and certain necessary items to build an assault rifle.” Authorities said the two had made bulk purchases of ammunition.
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Windom said Mathews illegally entered the United States in 2019 after a Canadian newspaper identified him as a member of the Base and police there began investigating him. Lemley and another Base member traveled to Michigan, picked up Mathews, Windom said.
In November that year, Lemley and Mathews moved into an apartment in Newark, Del., that the FBI later wired for audio and video. An undercover FBI agent posing as a member of the Base began visiting the two and also recorded them talking about violently disrupting the gun rights demonstration, authorities said.
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Defense lawyers alleged that the undercover agent’s mission was to focus the men’s attention of the forthcoming rally and lure them into discussing ideas for causing mayhem.
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Before the agent first showed up, Smock wrote, it “became clear” to the FBI that Lemley and Mathews “were packing and preparing to depart for a meeting of other Base members in Michigan and were not preparing to instigate violence at the Virginia rally.”
Balter wrote that the agent “arrived with a clear intent to pressure the defendants into developing a plan for Virginia.” He said the agent “managed to bait” the two men into discussing “imaginary plans” even though Lemley and Mathews “consistently asserted that they did not plan to attend” the Richmond demonstration.
Standing before the judge Thursday, waiting to be sentenced, Mathews said, “I want to go home so I can try to do my best to make amends.” Said Lemley, “I am grieving for my family.”