White nationalist pleads guilty to harassing a black woman at Trump rally
The leader of a white nationalist group pleaded guilty on Wednesday to physical harassment of a black woman during a March rally for Donald Trump in Louisville.
Matthew Heimbach, chairman of the Traditionalist Worker Party, was ordered to have no contact with the victim and will be required to take anger management classes after having pleaded guilty to the amended charge of second-degree disorderly conduct.
Heimbach entered an Alford plea, which allows a defendant to plead guilty while maintaining their innocence but admitting that prosecutors have enough of an argument to convince a jury.
He was fined $145 and sentenced to 90 days in jail, though District Court Judge Stephanie Pearce Burkewaved said that she would wave the jail time if he could stay out of trouble and not re-offend in the next two years.
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During the rally in question, Heimbach screamed at Trump protester Kashiya Nwanguma and pushed her repeatedly in an attempt to get her out of the rally. His actions were caught on camera and quickly went viral, and Heimbach later stated that he felt he was acting in line with what Trump had stated in his own rallies.
“It seems pretty clear to me based on the other rallies and the rallies afterward that Mr. Trump had an expectation of deputizing the crowd to be able to help provide security as these disruptions were happening where there was violence against Trump supporters,” Heimbach said at a hearing in June in which he also stated that he had “no regrets” about his actions.
Heimbach is known as a white nationalist. The Southern Poverty Law Center describes him on their site: “Considered by many to be the face of a new generation of white nationalists, Matthew Heimbach founded a campus chapter of Youth for Western Civilization at Towson University in Maryland and later started the White Student Union there. He also has been a member of the neo-Confederate League of the South.”
