Jon Minadeo Jr., the leader of neo-Nazi group Goyim Defense League, was reportedly arrested on Friday evening. In Bibb County, Georgia, his group was allegedly live streaming when Minadeo was handcuffed and taken into a police car.
The charges are “pretty minor,” reports The Informant’s Nick Martin, with one listed as disorderly conduct and the other as “miscellaneous.” His bond is set at $910.
Minadeo, along with a handful of other GDL members, have recently adopted “sovereign citizen” tactics to escape legal dilemmas. The sovereign citizen movement is a far-right, anti-government extremist group who claim that the American government has no authority over them. Those involved with this movement say they can “divorce” themselves from the government.
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In a video posted on June 15 to Telegram, Minadeo and his GDL associate Colby “Ace” Alexander Frank explained how they would be skirting charges from a May 21 incident where the pair were arrested in Martin County, Florida.
“I actually submitted a jurisdictional challenge because I come in common law,” Frank said. He went on to say that “this is the difference between the all caps name that you’ll find on your birth certificate, on your driver’s license, on your credit cards, versus your lower case, Christian name.”
The pseudo-legal technique argues that any reference to humans written in all capital letters—as names are regularly stylized in most legal documents—are not a legal reference to them. Frank and Minadeo claim that these are “artificial entities” created by the government for “nefarious reasons.”
Minadeo has yet to confirm whether or not he will attempt to use this tactic to evade his new arrest in Georgia.
This is not the first time Minadeo has been arrested. Along with the recent arrest in Florida, in September 2022, Minadeo was arrested in Poland for posing with an antisemitic banner at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. He and one other suspect were caught after they illegally burst into the site but “escaped immediately” after taking photos of the messages on the banners.
“Greenblatt suck 6 million dicks,” read Minadeo’s message, referencing Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League.
Last year in October, the GDL made headlines when they displayed a banner over Los Angeles’ 405 interstate that read: “Kanye was right about the Jews” and “Honk if you know.” This came after Kanye West remarked that he was “going death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE.”
Minadeo has also been active in Florida. In February earlier this year, Minadeo was cited for littering as he distributed a handful of antisemitic flyers on cars throughout Palm Beach County.
After a string of more antisemitic incidents—like hanging more banners in Jacksonville—around Florida for the first half of the year, the police decided to step in. Volusia County Sheriff Mike Chitwood stated that “we are not going to tolerate this” before laying out a plan to take down GDL, who spent their days in the state declaring that “Hitler was right.”
It appears that Florida has received its wish to remove Minadeo and his GDL group as they now take on Georgia. After the news broke, GDL’s Twitter account shared a photo of Minadeo, saying he was “unbothered” and “flourishing.”
GDL members have been accused of stalking, aggravated assault, murder, terror threats, threatening public officials, and defacing a memorial for the Pulse nightclub shooting victims in Florida. Still, leader Minadeo claims to preach nonviolence.
