White supremacist leader sentenced for threatening Brooklyn journalist

April 22, 2024 Robert Abruzzese, Courthouse Editor

The U.S. Eastern District of New York’s Brooklyn courthouse. Brooklyn Eagle photo by Rob Abruzzese

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Following a failed attempt to scare a Brooklyn journalist, a 33-year-old online troll has been sentenced to 44 months in prison.

Nicholas Welker, the leader of the violent extremist group Feuerkrieg Division, has been sentenced to 44 months in prison after attempting to intimidate a Brooklyn journalist into silence through death threats.

Welker, who operated under the alias “King ov Wrath,” lost emotional control, unleashing his digital rage on the journalist for simply doing their job: specifically, directing threats towards them for reporting on his group’s Neo-Nazi activities, including their advocacy for violence against minorities and the LGBTQ+ community.

The sentencing, pronounced at the federal courthouse in Brooklyn by U.S. District Judge Pamela Chen, underscores a clear denouncement of Welker’s cowardly actions aimed at suppressing journalistic freedom. U.S. Attorney Breon Peace highlighted the severity of Welker’s attempts to silence the press, stating that Welker’s actions sought to enable continued violence by his group without scrutiny.

“Welker tried to silence a journalist from reporting on his white supremacist group so that his fellow extremists could continue to commit violence against racial, ethnic, and religious minorities and the LGBTQ+ community,” Peace said. “There were real victims of this crime — the journalist and his news media organization. Today’s sentence demonstrates that we will stand up for them and other journalists who bravely report on these violent hate groups.”

Court documents reveal Welker’s desperate attempts to scare the journalist. Welker referred to the journalist as a “Race Traitor” in a failed attempt at getting him to stop further reporting. The threats were disseminated publicly online and directly tweeted by FKD members.

The Eastern District of New York’s National Security and Cybercrime Section involved cooperative efforts from the FBI’s New York Joint Terrorism Task Force and international partners, including Estonia’s Internal Security Service, in order to stop the domestic terrorist.