A Huntington Beach man accused of helping establish a Southern California-based militant, white supremacist group has been extradited back to the United States from Romania to face federal charges for allegedly instigating violence at local political rallies.
Robert Paul Rundo, authorities say, is the founding member of the Rise Above Movement and the lead defendant among three men charged with recruiting and training others to commit violence at rallies in Huntington Beach, Berkeley and San Bernardino. He was flown to California on Tuesday evening, Aug. 1, and is in federal custody as he awaits trial, the United States Attorney’s Office announced Wednesday morning, Aug. 2.
The Rise Above Movement, prosecutors note, publicly describes itself as a “combat-ready, militant group of a new nationalist white supremacy and identity movement.” Federal prosecutors have previously described members as “serial rioters” with an anti-Semitic, racist ideology who train to attack those who hold contrary points of view.
The 33-year-old Rundo — along with Robert Boman of Torrance and Tyler Laube of Redondo Beach — is accused of attacking people at a March 2017 Huntington Beach rally held in support of then-President Donald Trump that turned into a violent melee at Bolsa Chica State Beach when counter-protestors were attacked.
The three are also accused of violently confronting people at a rally in Berkeley, and Rundo is further accused of being involved with a San Bernardino anti-Islamic-law rally in 2017 that included violence and acts of vandalism.
Rundo and at least one of the other men posted about their “violent acts” at the rallies on social media to help recruit prospective members to the Rise Above Movement, prosecutors say.
Rundo and his co-defendants were charged under the Anti-Riot Act of 1968.
In 2019, U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney threw out the charges, ruling that the Anti-Riot Act was too broad in regulating free speech. Carney said that the Rise Above Movement had a “hateful and toxic ideology” but determined that the government had “sufficient means at its disposal to prevent and punish such behavior without sacrificing the First Amendment.”
An appellate court partially agreed, finding that portions of the Anti-Riot Act intruded on protected speech.
But the appellate judges also reinstated the criminal charges against Rundo and his co-defendants. They determined that parts of the Anti-Riot Act are constitutional, including those focusing on “unprotected speech” and “unprotected conduct” concerning acts of violence “in furtherance of a riot.”
Charges against a fourth defendant, Aaron Eason of Anza, initially indicted alongside Rundo, Boman and Laube, were dismissed earlier this year, court records show.
It isn’t clear exactly when Rundo traveled to Romania, how long he was in the country or what he was doing there. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs and the FBI’s Legal Attache Office in Bucharest worked with Romanian officials to find, arrest and extradite Rundo.
Other members of the Rise Above Movement have previously been convicted in federal court, including four members who took part in the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia when counter-protestor Heather Heyer was killed and dozens of others injured.