A Kentucky man who was caught driving around several neighborhoods in Ohio throwing propaganda flyers on the ground made a chilling admission in court.
William Bader admitted in court to leading a faction of the Ku Klux Klan and calls himself an ‘imperial wizard’ in the Trinity White Knights.
However wasn’t convicted in court because of the messages on his flyers. Since nearly all forms of speech are protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution, a judge actually convicted him on two littering charges and directing others in his group to also litter similar flyers, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported.
Police body camera footage showed the pieces of paper Bader threw out his car window in February said: ‘Leave now. Self deport. Avoid Detention. Americans On Guard. Help us Protect our Homeland.’
When municipal court Judge Bernie Bouchard confronted Bader in court and asked him how others might feel about his beliefs, the 47-year-old KKK devotee was unmoved and chillingly doubled down on his beliefs.
‘I grew up like this and nobody’s going to change me,’ said Bader, who then pointed to the judge, the prosecutor and the officers who gave him the littering tickets. ‘Not you, not you, not you.’
Bader was ordered to assume court costs and pay $100 per ticket, which will likely add up to about $700.
Hamilton County Sheriff’s deputies pulled Bader over early in the morning on February 23 after they got a call that a man was littering the flyers in Lincoln Heights, a suburb of Cincinnati.
William Bader, a self-professed ‘imperial wizard’ in the Trinity White Knights, a faction of the Ku Klux Klan, is seen on police body camera footage
During the stop, Bader admitted to officers that he was the one throwing the flyers out into towns all throughout Ohio, not just in Cincinnati
Members of the Lincoln Heights neighborhood watch tailed Bader in his car until officer Jacob Hornback showed up and stopped him outside a home in Lockland at around 3am.
Hornback’s body cam footage showed Bader admitting to throwing out some 4,000 flyers. Initially though, Bader argued he shouldn’t be ticketed because officers didn’t personally see him doing it.
Bader changed his tune once the officer explained that witnesses from Lockland saw him throwing out the flyers.
He said he distributed them in 16 towns along I-75 on the way to Cincinnati, which is nearly three hours away from Toledo, where he said he started his journey the night before.
‘It wasn’t just me,’ he was heard telling officers in the video. ‘There’s quite a few of us out tonight.’
Bader also admitted to ripping down a flag put up by community members that had the words: ‘Peace and Love.’
That flag had been displayed over the I-75 overpass where weeks earlier, a group of white supremacists showed up for a public demonstration.
A separate video from the neighborhood watch member showed an officer holding up that flag during the traffic stop of Bader.
‘[The officer] is trying to get me to go to jail… he took the flag that was hanging on the bridge that I took down,’ Bader said to Hornback.
Bader is pictured in a KKK ‘imperial officer’ uniform at a protest outside the South Carolina Statehouse in Columbia in July 2015
Bader and roughly two dozen others were demanding that the government building reverse its decision to take down the Confederate flag
At trial last week, Bader attempted to walk back all of his recorded statements detailing his precise role in the littering operation.
He called the court corrupt and claimed his fingerprints weren’t on the flyers. He added that he never threw them himself, but rather directed his fellow KKK members to do so.
Bader also testified that he was raised as member of the KKK since he was a young child.
In July 2015, Bader was photographed in a KKK ‘imperial officer’ uniform at a protest outside the South Carolina Statehouse in Columbia.
Bader and roughly two dozen others were demanding that the government building reverse its decision to take down the Confederate flag.
To show support for their cause, they were seen waving around Confederate flags on the steps of the building.
Counter-protestors were there as well and there were a number of arguments and skirmishes between the two sides, Al Jazeera reported at the time.
Taking down the Confederate flag was a monumental shift for South Carolina, since it was the first state to secede from the union.
Other southern states followed suit, leading to the Civil War, a four-year conflict that claimed the lives of nearly 600,000 Americans.
