After being extradited from Romania, a Huntington Beach man pleaded guilty to organizing and participating in a series of violent white supremacist rallies in California in the months leading up to the deadly “Unite the Right” protest in Charlotteville.
Robert Rundo, 34, admitted in a plea agreement that he participated in three rallies in 2017 as part of the Rise Above Movement, or RAM, a now-defunct group that federal prosecutors describe as a violent organization dedicated to white supremacy and white nationalism. Rundo and other members trained together for rallies and then stalked and attacked people at the political rallies, federal prosecutors said. He was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport in late October 2018, and the FBI has described him in the past as a co-founder and leader of RAM.
On Friday, he pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to violate the federal Anti-Riot Act.
“Mr. Rundo’s cowardly and unprovoked acts of violence were unjustly perpetrated against his victims, leaving the victims, their families, and our community torn apart by hatred,” Akil Davis, assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, said in a statement.
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Prosecutors say he will be sentenced on December 13.
A ProPublica investigative report found that Rundo stabbed a Hispanic man outside a New York City store in 2009. He settled the case and received a two-year prison sentence, of which he served 20 months.
The report was published in October 2017, following a series of demonstrations in California earlier that year.
A year later, in November 2018, a grand jury indicted him and three other Southern California suspects after his arrest.
In March 2021, Balkan Insight reported that Bosnian police were searching for Rundo as a wanted American fugitive who had entered Bosnia after being expelled from Serbia. After being on the run for nearly a year, he was extradited from Romania last year.
Court records show he has already served nearly two years in prison, so prosecutors previously agreed to recommend no more than two years. His guilty plea Friday follows a legal tug-of-war that has seen him jailed and released since the case began in 2018.
Earlier this year, a federal judge in Orange County has dropped charges against him for the second timearguing that he and his co-defendants faced selective prosecution while other groups did not.
“At the same time, the government has chosen not to prosecute far-left groups, such as Antifa, who attended the same protests and rallies and committed the same violent acts as those accused in this case, Robert Rundo and Robert Boman,” wrote U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney Carney.
“The government cannot prosecute RAM members like the defendants while ignoring violence committed by members of Antifa and related far-left groups because RAM has engaged in what the government and many consider to be offensive speech,” Carney wrote.
However, in July, the U.S. 9th Court of Appeals overturned that ruling.
At the time of Rundo’s arrest, the FBI described him as co-founder and leader of RAM, which is listed as a hate organization by the Southern Poverty Law Center and has been described as an “openly racist” street fighting club.
“The Rise Above Movement is a racist fight club based in Southern California that first came to prominence in the racist “alt-right” protest scene in 2017 and is often photographed engaging in bloody confrontations with protesters,” reads an online description from the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit legal advocacy organization and a leader in tracking hate groups in the U.S.
Rundo and others in the group posted messages on social media with phrases like #rightwingdeathsquad as they prepared to fight at rallies. He has pleaded guilty to his role in three rallies in California in 2017.
That March, Rundo tackled and punched a protester multiple times at a rally in Huntington Beach. He and others at RAM then posted photos and videos online celebrating their attacks, federal prosecutors said. The following month, he punched and kicked multiple people at a rally in Berkeley and again posted about it online.
ProPublica reported that Rundo was arrested on suspicion of assaulting an officer during the Berkeley protest, but prosecutors declined to file charges.
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The indictment, filed in January 2023, states that Rundo allegedly “committed, participated in, and aided and abetted one or more violent acts against individuals at the Berkeley Rally, including a Berkeley Police Department police officer.”
Later in 2017, in June, he attended another rally in San Bernardino, where prosecutors say he confronted and chased protesters.
Two months later, in August, a number of white nationalist and supremacist groups—including members of RAM—gathered at the “Unite the Right” rally. meeting in Charlottesville, Virginia.where a counter-protester named Heather Heyer was run over and killed. A self-proclaimed white supremacist later pleaded guilty to federal hate crime charges in her death after being convicted of murder.
Months later, in the spring of 2018, Rundo and several men charged in connection with the Charlottesville rally traveled to Europe to celebrate Adolf Hitler’s birthday and meet with members of other white supremacist extremist groups, according to an earlier criminal complaint filed in the case.
ProPublica’s investigative report, “Racist, Violent, Unpunished: A White Hate Group’s Campaign,” detailed alleged and convicted crimes by members of RAM, including Rundo. The report describes a 2009 incident in Queens, New York, in which Rundo confronted two Latino men in a store and, along with other men, chased the victims down the street outside.
He was accused of stabbing one of the men when they tripped and fell, allegedly in the chest, neck and other parts of the body, ProPublica reported. The charges were based on court records and an affidavit from an NYPD detective, who said it was all captured on surveillance video.
He was sentenced to two years in prison for gang violence through a plea agreement, ProPublica reported.
In the federal case in which he pleaded guilty, two other defendants have been charged: Robert Boman, 31, of Torrance, and Tyler Laube, 28, of Redondo Beach. Bowman has been charged with one federal count of conspiracy to violate the Anti-Riot Act and one count of rioting.
In October 2023, Laube pleaded guilty to one count of interfering with a federally protected right. He was fined $2,000 and sentenced to time already served in custody.
