A Florida man who refers to himself as “the Antifa hunter” will serve federal time after he orchestrated a racist social media campaign against Don Gathers, a Black Lives Matter activist in Charlottesville who had planned to run for a seat on the city council in 2019, but ultimately quit out of fear for his safety.
On Monday, during the hearing via video conference, Gathers, 61, can be heard telling the man that he hopes that he could forgive him one day for his action, the Associated Press reported.
“But today is not that day,” Gathers said. “I despise all that you and others like you represent.”
Daniel McMahon, 32, of Brandon, Fla., was sentenced to three years and five months in a federal penitentiary for cyberstalking and bias-motivated intimidating and interference with a candidate for elected office. And just a few months before cyber-attacking Gathers, he allegedly threatened to sexually assault the daughter of another activist who protested against white supremacists, reports add.
“This defendant weaponized social media to threaten and intimidate his perceived political enemies and propagate a violent white-supremacist ideology,” said U.S. Attorney Thomas T. Cullen of the Western District of Virginia in a news release. “Because his online activity crossed the boundary between protected First Amendment expression and unlawful threats and harassment, he will spend considerable time in federal prison.”
McMahon began his rant against Gathers in January 2019 after he announced that he was running for public office. Gathers serves as the co-founder of Charlottesville’s Black Lives Matter chapter and had also served on a committee devoted to removing Confederate statues following a white supremacist Charlottesville Unite the Right rally in 2017.
According to court documents, McMahon used Gab, a social media website filled with far-right users, to post racist slurs, referring to Gathers as a “terrorist” and advising him to end his campaign. He also used “a diversity of tactics” to stop Gathers from running, a phrase well-known by white racists as a euphemism for violence.
Gathers was notified of McMahon’s threats by the FBI before his campaign kickoff event on Jan 8. Authorities had been keeping the 32-year-old under surveillance since an investigation was launched into white supremacist activity at the Unite the Right rally.
McMahon posted “Hail victory!” on Gab upon learning that Gather eventually decided to no longer run for office.
In September 2019, the FBI arrested McMahon, charging him with causing Gathers to withdraw from the race. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Following his arrest, federal agents were contacted by a woman who revealed that she has also been attacked online by McMahon and that he even threatened to sexually assault her young daughter, who has autism.
He described in detail how he would sexually assault her child and implicated her with being in Antifa, via a series of discomforting messages. “You failed your daughter,” he wrote. “You chose Antifa, a terrorist group, over your own daughter.”
McMahon also uploaded the daughter’s picture on a racist social media page and searched for terms like “sex with autistic girls,” according to court documents.
“Only a deeply disturbed individual would do this, a monster,” the woman wrote in a statement read at McMahon’s sentencing hearing on Monday, the AP reported. “I will never feel completely safe about my child again.”
“There is seemingly nothing that Daniel McMahon will not do in the name of white supremacy,” she wrote.
McMahon will be subjected to three years of supervised release once he finishes serving his time behind bars.
“Americans have the right to run for office in this country without facing racially-bigoted threats of violence,” said Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband for the civil rights division of the Department of Justice in a news release. “Furthermore, no American should have to live with hateful threats of sexual violence for opposing white nationalism.”
During his statement given at McMahon’s sentencing hearing, Gathers informed him that white supremacists will be defeated.
“A new day, a different day, is coming,” Gathers said, according to the AP. “Like it or not, Black lives matter.”
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