Six more Patriot Front members appear in Idaho court
KAYE THORNBRUGH | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 4 years, 1 month AGO
Image via AP.
Kaye Thornbrugh is a second-generation Kootenai County resident who has been with the Coeur d’Alene Press for six years. She primarily covers Kootenai County’s government, as well as law enforcement, the legal system and North Idaho College. | August 25, 2022 1:00 AM
COEUR d’ALENE — Six more members of the white nationalist hate group Patriot Front pleaded not guilty Monday in Coeur d’Alene to misdemeanor charges of conspiracy to riot.
The men are among the 31 Patriot Front members accused of planning to violently disrupt a Pride celebration on June 11 in Coeur d’Alene City Park.
Those who appeared before Judge Clark Peterson are Jared M. Boyce of Springville, Utah; Nathan D. Brenner of Louisville, Colo.; Colton M. Brown of Midvale, Utah; Mitchell F. Wagner of Florissant, Mo.; Graham J. Whitson of Haslet, Texas; and Robert B. Whitted of Conroe, Texas.
In a separate matter, Wagner is charged with felony first-degree property damage after he allegedly defaced a mural of famous Black Americans on a college campus near St. Louis last year.
A former Washington resident, Brown is allegedly one of a group of people who recorded themselves vandalizing an anti-hate mural in downtown Olympia, Wash. last October.
The News Tribune reported in July that Brown had been charged with the misdemeanor crime of aiding and abetting graffiti, along with fellow Patriot Front arrestee Spencer T. Simpson of Ellensburg.
Days after the mass arrest in Coeur d’Alene, Boyce’s mother, Karen Amsden, told The Daily Beast that she gave him an ultimatum: choose between Patriot Front and his family.
He chose to stick with Patriot Front, she said — so she told her 27-year-old son to get out of her house.
Founded after the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in 2017, Patriot Front’s manifesto reportedly calls for the formation of a white ethnostate in the United States.
Amsden said Boyce found the hate group online and got involved around 2018. From there, she said, he sank into white nationalism and even began denying the Holocaust.
“He’s so misguided and bought into all their rhetoric,” she said. “It just makes me sick.”
Police arrested the group June 11, after a tipster reported seeing a “little army” with metal shields and other gear piling into the back of a U-Haul truck.
Documents found with the group reportedly outlined a plan to form a column outside City Park and proceed inward, creating “an appropriate amount of confrontational dynamic.”
Rioting is generally a misdemeanor in Idaho. Conspiracy to riot is punishable by up to one year in jail, as well as by a $5,000 fine and up to two years of probation.
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