IT'S ALWAYS THE rIGHT:

A federal grand jury in Charlottesville has indicted Gerald Leonard Drake, 63, from Winchester, Va., for mailing threatening letters, stalking, and planting a pipe bomb at the Cedar Creek Battlefield in Middletown, Virginia during a Civil War reenactment event in 2017.  In the mailings sent to victims and two newspapers, Drake purported to be a member of Antifa and threatened harm, including referencing the Unite the Right riots in Charlottesville.

The indictment, which was unsealed following Drake's arrest today, charges him with fifteen criminal offenses including: mailing threatening communications, malicious use of explosives, possession of an unregistered destructive device, unlawful manufacture of a destructive device, use of explosives to commit a federal felony, and stalking. [...]

As detailed in the indictment, Drake belonged to a reenactment unit that participated in the annual reenactment at Cedar Creek Battlefield until he was removed from his unit in 2014.  In later years, Drake volunteered with the Cedar Creek Battlefield Foundation (CCBF), which is a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of history related to the Cedar Creek Battlefield and which hosts an annual reenactment attended by merchants, reenactors, and visitors. 

On September 23, 2017, a letter was received at the CCBF visitor center addressed to "Cedar Creek Battlefield people."  The envelope and its letter both bore a printed Antifa symbol depicting a black flag overlayed atop a red flag inside of a circle.  The letter claimed the reenactment event "clearly celebrates the war to keep African-Americans in chains," and warned the reenactment organizers that if the event was not cancelled, the trouble they would inflict on Cedar Creek Battlefield would make the riots that took place in Charlottesville in August look like "a Sunday picnic."

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