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White nationalist in vice video is barred from Virginia

Christopher Cantwell, a self-described white nationalist who pepper-sprayed protesters during the demonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August, pleaded guilty to assault and battery Friday and has been barred from Virginia for five years, prosecutors said.

Some mocked him as the “crying Nazi” after he posted a video online in which he fights back tears while describing the aftermath of the demonstrations.

Now, he has been thrown out of Virginia after pleading guilty to two counts of assault and battery, and to violating the terms of his bond by referring to victims on social media and in a radio broadcast, prosecutors said in a statement.

Cantwell, who faced 12 months in jail for the crimes, had served 107 days. The rest of his sentence was suspended. Cantwell was ordered to leave Virginia within eight hours of the delivery of his sentence Friday, and not to make contact with the victims of his assault and battery crimes.

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“This outcome brings a measure of finality to the defendant’s dispersal of pepper spray nearly a year ago,” Robert Tracci, the Albemarle County commonwealth’s attorney, said in a statement Friday.

Reached by phone Saturday, Cantwell said he was not happy about the plea deal and he had confessed to crimes he did not commit instead of facing prosecution. He said he had returned to his home in New Hampshire and planned to travel around the country to meet with listeners of his podcast as well as network with other alt-right members.

Charlottesville continues to grapple with the deadly white nationalist rally in August. Cantwell’s charges stemmed from a march on the University of Virginia campus the night of Aug. 11. That march preceded the larger demonstrations the next day, when fights broke out between white nationalists and counterprotesters and a man drove through a crowd, killing a woman.

Nearly every city official who held power at the time has resigned or retired, but Charlottesville’s Confederate statues, whose planned removal by the city spawned the white nationalist protest, still remain, as do the local organizers who planned the rally.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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Mihir Zaveri © 2018 The New York Times

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