#Florida man known as ‘the Antifa hunter’ gets prison over racist threats

A Florida man who called himself “the Antifa hunter” was sentenced to three years and five months in federal prison on Monday for racially-motivated interference with an election and cyberstalking.

Daniel McMahon, 32, of Brandon, Fla., pleaded guilty in April to using social media to threaten black activist Don Gathers, so as to deter him from running for city council in Charlottesville, Virginia.

He also admitted that he threatened to sexually assault the young autistic daughter of a North Carolina woman who protested against white nationalists.

The two victims were targeted as part of an online terror and harassment campaign McMahon waged against people who opposed his white supremacist beliefs, federal prosecutors said.

“This defendant weaponized social media to threaten and intimidate his perceived political enemies and propagate a violent white-supremacist ideology,” said US Attorney Thomas T. Cullen of the Western District of Virginia.

The FBI found evidence of McMahon’s harassment campaigns on his computer, showing that he operated under several pseudonyms, including Jack Corbin, Pale Horse and Dakota Stone.

He also dubbed himself “the Antifa hunter,” in reference to the leftist protest movement opposing fascism and extreme right-wing ideology.

Under the name Jack Corbin, he posted messages on social media targeting Gathers. After the FBI notified Gathers of the threats, the activist announced he wouldn’t run for office, to which McMahon responded “Hail Victory!,” prosecutors said.

Following McMahon’s Sept. 2019 arrest, the North Carolina woman called federal prosecutors to report that McMahon had sent her hundreds of threatening messages on Facebook, including some detailing how he would sexually assault her daughter, a severely autistic minor, and that he’d tried to extort information about another counterprotester.

He also did a Google search for the term “sex with autistic girls” a day before his arrest, according to a court filing.

“Only a deeply disturbed individual would do this, a monster,” the woman wrote in a statement read at the sentencing hearing in Virginia.

“I will never feel completely safe about my child again.”

The woman’s statement said McMahon methodically “cultivated a culture of fear and chaos” in her community of anti-racist activists.

“There is seemingly nothing that Daniel McMahon will not do in the name of white supremacy,” she wrote.

All told, the FBI found 278 files on McMahon’s computer with the word “owned” in the title, signaling that he had targeted that victim to his satisfaction.

He compiled 35 gigabytes of data that he could “weaponize” against his targets — which included a woman whose child had died that McMahon attempted to extort for information about antifascists, prosecutors said.

The contents of his computer also revealed a disturbing obsession with racially motivated violence, including images of neo-Nazi James Fields ramming his car into people protesting the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer.

He also kept a folder of photos of dead black men, including a lynching victim, and had saved graphic images of Trayvon Martin, after the black Florida teenager was gunned down by neighborhood watch member George Zimmerman in 2012.

Defense attorney Jessica Phillips had asked for her client to receive a sentence of a year and a half in prison and credit for time served since his arrest, saying he made “bad choices” but is remorseful and took full responsibility for his crimes.

US District Judge Norman Moon instead imposed the maximum sentence on McMahon, calling his conduct “as egregious as it could be.”

“It may not have been physically violent, but it couldn’t have been more violent to one’s mental health or feeling of well-being,” the judge said.

With Post wires