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TWP chief Matthew Heimbach arrested, top spokesman quits

Rachel Janik

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Matthew Heimbach, the leader of the Traditionalist Worker Party, is free on bond after being charged with strangulation and battery in southern Indiana.

In the wake of the arrest, the organization’s top spokesman and Heimbach’s father-in-law, Matthew Parrott, announced he was walking away from the group.

“I’m done. I’m out,” Parrott told the Southern Poverty Law Center on Tuesday. “SPLC has won. Matt Parrott is out of the game. Y’all have a nice life.”

Parrott declined to comment further on Heimbach’s arrest or his resignation.

But, on the alt-right social media platform Gab, Parrott appeared to distance himself from Heimbach and the TWP.

Parrott posted on March 9: “I have attempted to be a positive, uplifting, and unifying voice in the nationalist cause. At a certain point, even the most stubborn man must hold himself accountable to the fruit of his labor. My focus from here on out will be exclusively infrastructure and logistics.”

Details of what led to Heimbach’s arrest on felony charges were not immediately available, though a representative of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department confirmed they were related to domestic battery and strangulation. Online court records show the charges were filed Tuesday in Paoli, Indiana, about an hour northwest of Louisville, Kentucky.

Heimbach, 26, posted $1,000 bond and was released Tuesday. He did not answer calls to his cellphone and did not return questions sent by text message from the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Heimbach started the Traditionalist Worker Party in 2013 after graduating from Towson University. He and his father-in-law, Parrott, folded in Heimbach’s previous organization, the Traditionalist Youth Network, a new white nationalist organization cloaking itself in “traditionalism.”

The latest arrest puts Heimbach in jeopardy of going to jail for a prior incident.

Heimbach pleaded guilty in July 2017 to disorderly conduct in the assault of a protester at a 2016 campaign event for Donald Trump in Louisville, Kentucky.

Heimbach was fined $145 and sentenced to 90 days in jail after pleading guilty to disorderly conduct, a lesser charge. District Court Judge Stephanie Pearce Burke suspended the jail time so long as Heimbach avoids being charged with another offense in the next two years.

A probation hearing for Heimbach is set in Kentucky on June 1.

A federal civil lawsuit is pending against Heimbach, President Donald Trump and others stemming from the incident.

Heimbach’s arrest is the latest incident to rock the alt-right.

Over the weekend, Richard B. Spencer, head of the National Policy Institute, announced he would forgo any more campus speeches for now after a sparsely attended speech on March 5 at Michigan State University.

Heimbach and members of the TWP were outside the agricultural pavilion where Spencer spoke, at one point physically fighting with and throwing rocks at protestors. By the time the fights ended, more than two dozen people – protestors and Spencer supporters – were arrested.

In the days after the Michigan State fracas, Heimbach posted on Gab: “Our speaker spoke at ‘your’ campus. We picked your best fighters up and threw them around like rag dolls until the police stepped in to protect y’all, and we even captured your flag, f——,” TWP wrote.

Photo credit: Scott Olson/Getty Images