Earlier, by Charlottesville Survivor: Charlottesville 2017 Protestor Thomas Rousseau’s Arrest Shows U.S. Has Hostile Occupation Government—Not A Government Of Laws
On February 23, 2024, Thomas Rousseau became the 11th man to be belatedly arrested and charged with a felony in connection with the Unite the Right torch march of August 11, 2017. After being arrested at a traffic stop in Texas, he was released on bond and promptly made arrangements to turn himself in to the authorities in Albermarle County, Virginia. He appeared yesterday at a bond hearing and was immediately released on a personal recognizance bond. His next hearing is set for April 1, 2024.
The leader of the white nationalist crew Patriot Front is in a Texas jail, booked on intimidation charges linked to the Tiki Torch march in Charlottesvillehttps://t.co/r2CuLXT0iK
— TimDickinson.bsky.social (@7im) February 27, 2024
Rousseau, leader of the activist group Patriot Front, is one of the more high-profile arrestees to face charges for the torch march. Patriot Front’s bold marches with lines of orderly, khaki-clad and masked men carrying red, white, and blue flags featuring the group’s distinctive, neo-American iconography, have gained national much attention.
Racists and fascists march in Paducah
— ForwardKY (@ForwardKy) February 27, 2024
The Patriot Front did a flash demonstration in Paducah on Sunday, marching right by a Black church on the last Sunday of Black History Month.https://t.co/rTOf2qVW29
The group has been the subject of controversy on the Left and Right, sparking debates about whether they are “Nazis,” patriots, or something else. Some have even suggested that the group is not authentic but is in fact a federal counterintelligence operation.
Rousseau emerged from the McLellan County Jail after being bonded out on February 29th, donning a double-breasted blazer and his trademark cowboy hat before making a statement pledging to fight the charges. In a short video released on social media he declared, “I want to make it clear that at best these charges are a legal fiction, and at worst they are a malicious attack against the free rights of Americans to speak and assemble in the public space. It is my intention to make all of that right with a very zealous defense of not only my rights but the rights of all true born Americans to speak and assemble and exercise what rights we have remaining under a very unjust state.”
The unjust judicial system in Charlottesville has been reported on extensively by VDARE. Judge Claude Worrell, who accepted guilty pleas and sentenced several torch march defendants, was later found to have been personally in attendance with his family at a torch march counterprotest. The Commonwealth Attorney prosecuting the cases, Lawton Tufts, was likewise found to have extensive ties to local Antifa activists and Unite the Right counterprotesters. Worrell has since recused himself, and Tufts has been removed from one case, but other defendants are still fighting to have compromised members of the judiciary removed from their cases. Rousseau stood today before Judge Cheryl Higgins. He was prosecuted by Tufts and Jim Hingeley, the Soros-backed Commonwealth Attorney who ran for office on a pledge to hunt down the participants in the First Amendment–protected demonstration. In February 2023, Hingeley secured an unknown number of sealed indictments against torch march participants. Rousseau’s warrant was issued late last year. It is unknown how many other outstanding warrants are in effect.
Attorney Jason Van Dyke, who represented Rousseau in his Texas bond hearing, believes that the torch march felony cases are “extraordinarily weak, particularly with regards to Rousseau,” who was neither an organizer of the march nor involved in any of the scuffles that took place immediately thereafter. Aware that fellow defendant Augustus Invictus had been “punished with the process” by being unnecessarily allowed to languish in jail for a month awaiting extradition to Virginia, Van Dyke determined to fight for bond, noting that Rousseau has consistently appeared in court as expected for all legal matters pertaining to his activism. “He has no intention of running. He has never run.”
Patriot Front asks that donations be made to the Freedom of Expression Foundation, with a note that funds are designated for Rousseau’s case.
