Judge cites Antifa when rejecting prison for white supremacist’s former associate
Tyler Laube pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor five months before U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney dismissed the indictment against his neo-Nazi co-defendants.
A federal judge who believes the U.S. Department of Justice unconstitutionally prosecuted white supremacists for violence at political rallies said Thursday he knows “the government and others” will disagree with his decision to leniently sentence a man for punching a journalist in 2017.
Prosecutors wanted a year of probation and six months in prison for Tyler Laube, a former associate of Rise Above Movement founder and neo-Nazi Robert Rundo, while his lawyer asked for no prison and no probation.
During a 24-minute hearing on Thursday in Santa Ana, California, U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney credited Laube for 35 days already served in jail, fined him $2,000 and ordered him to be on probation for one year.
Carney’s 22-page memorandum said he has “no doubt” prosecutors’ opposition to a lighter sentence is “focusing entirely on Mr. Laube’s past white-supremacist beliefs and ignoring the violent conduct of Antifa and the similar groups.”
“Viewing Mr. Laube’s actions in context, it does not appear he intended to single out and target a journalist,” Carney wrote.
“Violence erupted at the rally. Mr. Laube did not start the violence. Indeed, he was slapped in the face twice before engaging in any violence,” the judge continued. “Once violence started, Mr. Laube and other RAM members reacted to the Antifa members that were harassing and physically attacking Trump supporters.”
Carney said he “cannot cast aside the Constitution and ignore the mitigating factors and sentencing objectives under Section 3353(a),” referring to the federal law governing sentencings.
“The Constitution and the laws of the United States apply to everyone,” the judge wrote. “We must never forget that if the political winds change in this country, and the new government decides to turn on those not sharing the new government’s views, it will be the rights and liberties guaranteed by the Constitution and the laws of the United States that will protect us.”
The judge quoted Robert Bolt’s 1960 play A Man for All Seasons: “Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.”
Laube signed his misdemeanor plea agreement in Sept. 25, 2023, five months before Carney dismissed charges against Rundo and Rise Above Movement member Robert Boman because the DOJ prosecuted them but not “far-left extremist groups" the judge said “engaged in the same violent acts.”
The case has a long history: In June 2019, Carney allowed Laube to withdraw his guilty plea for felony conspiracy after he dismissed Rundo and Boman’s charges on First Amendment grounds, but the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the indictment.
Given his previous decisions, Carney likely would have allowed Laube to withdraw his plea to misdemeanor interference with a federally protected right without bodily injury, too. But the U.S. Attorney’s Office also is appealing the judge’s February dismissal order to the 9th Circuit, which already has curtailed the judge’s ability to release Rundo from jail.
If Laube withdrew his plea and Carney dismissed his charges, he could end up in court again should the 9th Circuit reverse the latest dismissal as it did in 2020 with the first dismissal. Carney also is retiring at the end of May, so the case would go to another judge.
Because Laube stuck with his plea on Thursday, Carney had no choice but to impose a sentence.
Laube’s attorney appealed to the judge’s selective prosecution dismissal by referencing Antifa in his 25-page sentencing memo.
“Antifa’s loud and often violent deprivation of the speech and association of any group without their political beliefs motivated many young right wing activists,” according to the memo from John N. McNicholas in Redondo Beach. “At age 20, Tyler Laube, while overcoming drug addiction, decided that he would be one of those activists. He affiliated with a group of young men whose purpose was to protect the speech of event organizers and attendees from intended injury inflicted by Antifa.”
Laube, 27, did not mention Antifa when he spoke in court on Thursday, nor did he mention it in a March 14 letter to Judge Carney.
Instead, he said he takes “full responsibility for my actions on March 25, 2017.”
“I have had no ties to this group I was associated with since shortly after the Huntington beach rally. I have completely changed my life around. I am currently working full time and going to school for digital marketing,” Laube wrote. “I go to [Alcoholics Anonymous] meetings regularly. I’ve devoted my life to helping other people get sober by sharing the message of recovery.”
In court, Laube told Carney he was “very troubled, looking for guidance, looking to be a part of something.”
“That’s why I got involved in this thing to begin with,” Laube said. “I worked really hard to stay away from anything that could put me back into that lifestyle.”
He said he’s “constantly helping other people.”
“I know what it’s like to be in that lifestyle, and I want to help other people get out of it,” Laube said.
Carney ordered Laube not to associate Rise Above Movement members and other “any member of a white nationalist organization” as a condition of his probation.
“You’ve come a long way. ... Keep it up. Be careful who you associate with,” Carney told Laube.
‘He did not look like a reporter,’ lawyer says
Judge Carney did not discuss the details of his decision in court, but he said he wrote it “given the publicity surrounding this case, and then all the activity at the circuit.” He also had his clerk print copies for reporters.
“Activity at the circuit” refers to the 9th Circuit’s orders regarding Rundo, who left jail on Feb. 21 after Carney declined to stay the dismissal of his indictment while prosecutors appealed.
Rundo was arrested on Feb. 22 after a 9th Circuit panel temporarily stayed Carney’s Feb. 21 dismissal. Then on March 14, the same panel extended the stay for the duration of the appeal and said any future bail order for Rundo will be automatically stayed for 96 hours, “permitting the government to seek a stay pending review of the order.”
The order allows for Rundo to seek bail, which his lawyers have never done in the five years since he was charged. One of his lawyers, Deputy Federal Defender Julia Deixler, watched Laube’s sentencing from the gallery on Thursday.
Prosecutors recommended the low-end of the sentence range for Laube under U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, which was six to 12 months given his criminal history. He was on probation for armed robbery when he “repeatedly punched a journalist in the face” during the 2017 rally in Huntington Beach, according to the 10-page sentencing memo by Assistant U.S. Attorneys Kathrynne Seiden, Solomon Kim and Anna Boylan. The memo said Laube “became involved” in Rundo’s Rise Above Movement between January and April 2017.
“Defendant’s coconspirators maintained a RAM Twitter account through which they posted videos and photographs of RAM members, including defendant, training in hand-to-hand combat and assaulting people at political events with their faces partially obscured by skeleton or American flag masks,” according to the memo, which said Laube and his co-defendants carried signs to the rally “that read “Defend America” and “Da Goyim Know,” a phrase used by white supremacist extremists to refer to their knowledge of a purported Jewish conspiracy to control world affairs.”
The journalist Laube punched, Frank Tristan, was not injured. He did not attend the sentencing or submit a victim impact statement, but Los Angeles Times journalist Gustavo Arellano told Laube and McNicholas after the hearing that Tristan was his intern at the now-closed OC Weekly.
“He did not look like a reporter,” McNicholas told Arellano. McNicholas said Tristan was “supporting Antifa” at a “peaceful Make America Great Again rally” and he “got caught up in a very unfortunate issue where he was struck, not by my client but by someone else.”
“A melee ensued, and he jumped in,” McNicholas said of Laube. “Regrettable. Very regrettable. He should have never done it. He knows. That’s why he walked away. That’s why he never associated with those people again.”
Judge Carney recounted Tristan’s assault in his sentencing memo for Laube. First, he described “the high-level context for this case.”
“On the one hand is RAM, which indisputably represents hateful views and beliefs and whose members engaged in violence at political events. But on the other hand are far-left groups like Antifa, to which the government, at least as to the rallies leading to the charges in this case, has chosen to turn a blind eye even though they were the ones who incited the violence,” Carney wrote.
Carney said Laube reacted after he was slapped twice, but “none of that excuses Mr. Laube for the misdemeanor conduct to which he pleaded guilty.”
“It was wrong to punch a journalist who was not engaging in violence. Mr. Laube was not acting in self-defense or in defense of others when he punched the journalist,” the judge wrote. “But the scene was chaotic. Associates of far-left groups were known to commit violence against peaceful Trump supporters.”
He said Laube “may well have believed that he was acting in defense of others.”
“These circumstances are a significant mitigating factor for Mr. Laube’s offense, not an aggravating factor as the government so adamantly asserts,” Carney wrote.
Prosecutors said Laube’s “illegal conduct in this case was not a one-off incident; rather, defendant has amassed a significant number of criminal convictions, despite being only 27 years old.”
“Moreover, even defendant’s federal indictment in this case, or the brief period he spent in custody as a result, was not sufficient to deter him from quickly reverting to his illegal conduct,” according to the memo. “Just months after withdrawing his guilty plea in this case, defendant was arrested for driving under the influence, for which he was convicted.”
Carney called “most troubling” Laube’s conviction for being the getaway driver for an armed 7-Eleven robber. He also has convictions for “possessing a switchblade and resisting arrest,” and the judge said his criminal history is an “aggravating factor.”
“On the other hand, Mr. Laube’s personal history is clearly a mitigating factor. Mr. Laube never lived in a stable household with loving parents,” according to Carney’s memo. He detailed some of what Laube’s sentencing memo described, including that his father went to prison he was four years old for killing someone in a car crash after getting drunk at a strip club. His mother also consistently had relationship with abusive men and “also faced severe challenges with her mental health and struggled to provide for her children.”
“Mr. Laube’s grandmother once visited the family and found a four-year-old Mr. Laube alone in the streets and his then one-year-old half sister in an alleyway. Their mother was asleep in an apartment coming down from methamphetamine,”Carney wrote.
But recently, Laube “has taken affirmative steps to address his childhood trauma and start down a better path.”
“He has worked with therapists and networked with his Alcoholics Anonymous community. He no longer abuses substances. He has severed ties with RAM,” the memo continued.” He has maintained consistent employment, serves as a caretaker for his grandparents, and currently shares a residence with his fiancé, a registered nurse, whom he met in middle school.”
Carney said imprisoning Laube would not “better protect the public from further crimes” and would instead “threaten the substantial progress he has made.”
“Indeed, there is no indication Mr. Laube is currently engaged in any type of violent or dangerous conduct, and supervised release will mitigate the risk that he might,” the judge said.
Laube’s longtime friend David Cota said in a character reference letter that Laube is “now two years sober and is a complete different person from when we first met.”
“Before if it didn’t benefit him then he didn’t care , now he will go out of his way to make sure others are okay,” Cota wrote.
Laube’s aunt, Sandra Stevens, said in a letter that he “had a very unstable childhood” and was looking for parental guidance he didn’t have growing up. She said he now wants to become an electrician.
“Tyler also has a heart that cares about people. He had recognized he needed to change,” Stevens wrote. “He is a born leader and has a lot to give to his family and society.”
A woman attended Thursday’s hearing and told reporters she was happy with Judge Carney’s decision, but it may not have been Stevens. (This has been updated.)
Previous coverage:
Feb. 29: 9th Circuit rejects Rundo's release request amid another discharge order from Judge Carney
March 14: 9th Circuit stays future release orders for neo-Nazi Robert Rundo amid dismissal appeal
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FFS. You've got to be kidding me. There is no organization called Antifa. *facepalm* My father and grandfather were "Antifa" since they were in the Belgian resistance against the Nazis. Where did he get that the reporter was "supporting Antifa"? Sadly, there's nothing the 9th Circuit can do about this...