A Florida man who waged an on-line marketing and marketing and marketing campaign to terrorize and harass of us that adversarial his white supremacist ideology has been sentenced to greater than three years in jail
By
MICHAEL KUNZELMAN Related Press
August 31, 2020, 5: 53 PM
4 min learn
A Florida man who called himself “the Antifa hunter” as he waged an on-line marketing and marketing and marketing campaign to terrorize and harass people that adversarial his white supremacist ideology used to be sentenced to greater than three years in jail Monday.
Daniel McMahon, 32, of Brandon, Florida, pleaded guilty in April to using social media to threaten a Murky activist to deter the particular person from working for office in Charlottesville, Virginia. McMahon also admitted that he threatened to sexually assault the young autistic daughter of a girl who protested in opposition to white nationalists.
A federal think in Virginia sentenced McMahon to three years and 5 months in jail. McMahon declined an alternate to create a public assertion beforehand.
When FBI agents searched the house that McMahon shared with his of us, they seized his computer and several loaded guns from his mattress room. On his computer, investigators stumbled on folders stuffed with proof of his harassment campaigns and tokens of his obsession with racially motivated killings, prosecutors acknowledged.
Most of McMahon’s cyberstalking victims knew him as “Jack Corbin.” Below that pseudonym, he posted social media messages intended to deter a Murky activist, Don Gathers, from working for a seat on Charlottesville’s metropolis council. He called himself “the Antifa hunter,” a reference to anti-fascist, leftist militant activists who confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations.
McMahon accused Gathers of “attacking” a white supremacist group member who later pleaded guilty to attacking counterprotesters at the “Unite the Like minded” rally in Charlottesville in August 2017. McMahon called for using a “quantity of how” in opposition to Gathers, which authorities interpreted as a euphemism for violence.
The FBI notified Gathers of McMahon’s threats. Rather then kicking off his marketing and marketing and marketing campaign at a January 2019 occasion, Gathers presented he wouldn’t fling for office. “Hail Victory!” McMahon wrote in response.
After McMahon’s arrest, a girl from North Carolina called federal prosecutors to myth that he had threatened her and her daughter, a severely autistic minor, over Fb and tried to extort inner most data from her about one other counterprotester.
McMahon threatened to sexually assault the girl’s daughter “all within the carrier of his self-assigned ‘mission’ to build up your palms on and silence anybody who spoke out in opposition to white supremacy,” prosecutors wrote in a court docket filing.
“The defendant’s habits is reprehensible, and it served a inferior cause. And within the technique, his victims suffered accurate wound,” they added.
Prosecutors convey the contents of McMahon’s computer published his obsession with racially motivated violence and hatred of Murky people, including images of white supremacist James Fields plowing his car into a crowd of Charlottesville counterprotesters, killing a girl.
A folder with a racist slur for a title contained photos of pointless Murky males, including a lynching sufferer. McMahon also saved graphic images of Trayvon Martin after the Murky shrimp one used to be shot and killed by a neighborhood peep member in Florida in 2012, in step with prosecutors.
Other folders on McMahon’s computer contained inner most data about his targets, including photos of their young people. One target used to be a girl whose shrimp one had died, a tragedy that McMahon tried to use to extort data from her about antifascists, prosecutors acknowledged.
The FBI stumbled on 278 recordsdata with the phrase “owned” within the title, signaling that he had confused that sufferer to his pride. All suggested, prosecutors acknowledged, McMahon compiled 35 gigabytes of recordsdata that he could “weaponize” in opposition to his targets.
McMahon pleaded guilty to cyberstalking and bias-motivated interference with a candidate for optionally available office. U.S. District Solution to a choice Norman Moon wasn’t sure by sentencing guidelines that called for a penal complex timeframe starting from two years and 9 months to three years and 5 months. Prosecutors suggested basically the most.
Protection attorney Jessica Phillips requested the think to condemn McMahon to a year and a half of in jail and give him credit for time served since his Sept. 18, 2019, arrest.
Phillips acknowledged her consumer made “sorrowful picks” but is remorseful and took full responsibility for his crimes. She attributed McMahon’s behavior to an untreated mental health dysfunction, alcohol abuse and a “lack of social balance.”
“While he did now no longer realize the affect of his phrases at the time, he absolutely does now,” Phillips wrote in a court docket filing.
McMahon regarded as himself an web star praised by assorted white nationalists for his obsessive efforts to dig up inner most data about political enemies, his attorney acknowledged. Phillips argued that incarcerating McMahon would create him an easy target for white supremacists in jail and lead to a “reinforcement of his beliefs, now no longer a deprogramming.”
McMahon used to be unemployed when authorities arrested him. His mom, Roberta Ann Bartish, suggested investigators that her son exhibited about a of the same traits she had viewed frail to converse mass shooters, in step with a sheriff’s office detective.