Violent OC white supremacist group founder back in federal custody after brief release from lockup

The purported founder of a Southern California-based militant white supremacist group was re-arrested on Thursday — the same day that 9th Circuit Court of Appeals judges reversed his release from lockup.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney dismissed the criminal case Robert Rundo was facing, because, Carney determined, federal prosecutors engaged in “selective prosecution” by pursuing suspected “far-right, white supremacist nationalists” but not “Antifa and other extremist, far-left groups.”

The appellate judges early Thursday agreed to an emergency request by prosecutors blocking Rundo’s release from federal detention. But Rundo had already been let out late Wednesday, so the order came too late to prevent him from enjoying a brief respite from lockup.

Worried that Rundo was planning to flee the country, and believing he had already traveled to an area “near the United States-Mexico border,” federal prosecutors on Thursday afternoon filed a second emergency motion requesting an arrest warrant. Rundo was taken into federal custody by Thursday evening, Thom Mrozek, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, confirmed.

Read more: OC Register