‘Antifa hunter’ sentenced to three years in prison for threatening black activist and political candidate

A Florida man who referred to himself as the “antifa hunter” has been sentenced to three years in prison for carrying out a campaign to harass a black political candidate and an anti-racist activist.

Daniel McMahon of Brandon, Florida, plead guilty in April to one count of bias-motivated intimidation and one count of cyberstalking, after he threatened African American activist, Don Gathers, through a social media campaign that deterred him from running for office in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The 32-year-old also admitted to threatening to sexually assault the autistic daughter of an activist from North Carolina who had protested against White nationalists in the area, according to the Associated Press.

McMahon was sentenced in federal court in Virginia, where Mr Gathers had announced he was running for office, according to NBC News.

He was sentenced to three years and five months in prison by a federal judge, and declined to give a public statement.

Under the pseudonym, Jack Corbin, the 32-year-old posted social media messages that were intended to deter Mr Gathers from running for a seat on Charlottesville’s city council.

In court documents filed earlier this year, prosecutors wrote that McMahon began threatening the candidate after he had protested the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, in 2017.

The prosecutors said that they found pictures of James Fields, who was convicted of murdering Heather Heyer at the white supremacist rally in 2018, on McMahon’s computer.

In January 2019, as Mr Gathers was preparing to announce his candidacy for the city council, McMahon called the candidate a terrorist and the n-word, as part of a targeted social media campaign.

He wrote, under the pseudonym, that he was worried that Mr Gathers would “pull a Bill Cosby on multiple white women,” and called him the “the most dangerous violent antifa in the USA,” according to NBC.

McMahon referred to himself as the “antifa hunter” during the harassment, in reference to the anti-facist group Antifa, who confront white supremacists and neo-nazi’s at demonstrations and rallies.

The 32-year-old then issued Mr Gathers with a “formal warning,” and told the candidate that he had to pull out of the race, or a “diversity of tactics” would be used to end his political career.

When Mr Gathers withdrew from the race for the city council two days later, McMahon posted: “Hail Victory,” according to the court documents.

Following McMahon’s arrest in 2019, an anti-racist activist who has not been named, told the authorities that he threatened her and her autistic daughter in an attempt to get information about other protesters.

According to the court documents, the 32-year-old asked the activist if her daughter was a minor and then said he would “be very gentle with her.”

The activist replied: “What kind of a monster says those things?” and McMahon told her: “Maybe you should have put your daughter before your antifa terrorism?”

According to a court filing, the woman told the prosecutors: “Only a deeply disturbed individual would do this, a monster,” and added: “I will never feel completely safe about my child again.”

McMahon’s father, Paul McMahon, told the court last year that one of his son’s friends has been attacked in Charlottesville, and added that he was “doing a deep dive to try and find the people that were trying to obscure their identifies from law enforcement.”

On Monday, Mr Gathers said he prays he may forgive McMahon one day, but said: “today is not that day.”

He added: “I despise all that you and others like you represent.”