Patrik Jordan Mathews

Patrik Jordan Mathews was a Canadian citizen and former combat engineer with the Canadian Armed Forces Reserves based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He joined The Base and became one of its most operationally significant members, combining military training in demolitions and combat engineering with an accelerationist ideology. After Canadian journalists and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) identified him as a Base member in August 2019, he fled across the U.S. border illegally and was sheltered by fellow Base members while planning violence. His arrest, prosecution, and sentencing in the District of Maryland became the highest-profile federal prosecution of The Base's 2020 arrest campaign.¹

Canadian Forces Unit

Mathews served as a master corporal with the 38 Combat Engineer Regiment, part of the 38 Canadian Brigade Group, based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The role required training in explosives, demolitions, and field fortification. The investigation confirmed he had "basic explosives training" as a function of the combat engineer trade. Combat engineers in the Canadian Armed Forces typically require at minimum a SECRET-level security clearance to perform their duties, and the Canadian Forces National Counter-Intelligence Unit (CFNIU) assessed the risk that his access to explosives training and any associated cleared material had been compromised.²

How Exposure Began and Canadian Investigation

The chain of events leading to Mathews's identification began with a routine border inspection: Canadian border agents stopped Mathews's vehicle at a Canada-U.S. border crossing in spring 2019 and found racist materials, then notified the RCMP and the CFNIU. Vice Canada journalist Ben Makuch subsequently identified Mathews through his online presence as a member of The Base and published the story in August 2019.³

The CFNIU produced two classified "information reports" in June and July 2019, before the Vice Canada story, documenting Mathews's alleged extremist ties and assessing him as a potential terrorist threat. This means the Canadian Forces were aware of Mathews as a security concern before media exposure. Following the Vice Canada report in August 2019, the Canadian Forces fast-tracked his administrative removal from the Reserve. Mathews disappeared almost immediately after the story published.

Three Canadian agencies and one American agency had overlapping equities in the case. The RCMP opened a missing persons investigation when Mathews disappeared in mid-August 2019, and conducted its own parallel extremism investigation. CSIS was involved in intelligence monitoring, though the specific scope is not confirmed in open sources. The FBI embedded an undercover agent in The Base for months during 2019-2020 and attended Base training camps alongside Mathews and Brian Mark Lemley Jr. in Georgia in November 2019. No extradition was needed because Mathews had entered the U.S. of his own volition and could be charged under U.S. law for conduct committed on U.S. soil.²

Canadian Background and Flight

Mathews was identified in Canadian press reports in August 2019 as a member of The Base, following an investigation by Vice Canada. After his identity became public, Mathews went absent and crossed illegally into the United States via a wooded area near the Manitoba-Minnesota border. William Garfield Bilbrough IV, a Base member from Maryland, drove to southern Michigan on August 30, 2019, to retrieve Mathews and transport him to the East Coast.⁴

Plotting and Arrest

Mathews and Brian Mark Lemley Jr., a U.S. Army veteran and Base member in Delaware, planned violence at the Virginia Citizens Defense League (VCDL) Lobby Day rally scheduled for January 20, 2020, in Richmond, Virginia, where tens of thousands of gun-rights activists were expected. In recorded conversations and encrypted messages reviewed by the FBI, the two discussed using the rally as an opportunity for mass violence, including discussion of a firearm to be used for "operations." They purchased over 1,500 rounds of ammunition at a Base training camp in Georgia in November 2019.

The FBI arrested Mathews and Lemley on January 16, 2020, four days before the rally.⁵

Prosecution and Sentence

Both defendants were charged in United States District Court for the District of Maryland, case 8:20-cr-00033-TDC, before U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang. Mathews pleaded guilty to charges including transporting a firearm in furtherance of a felony and being an illegal alien in possession of a firearm. Prosecutors successfully argued for application of a terrorism enhancement at sentencing under U.S.S.G. § 3A1.4, meaning the judge found that the offense was calculated to influence or affect government conduct through intimidation, coercion, or mass destruction.

Judge Chuang sentenced Mathews to nine years in federal prison on October 28, 2021, followed by three years of supervised release. Prosecutors had sought twenty-five years; defense counsel sought thirty-three months. Chuang described Mathews as presenting no remorse. The terrorism enhancement was described by legal commentary as significant precedent for applying the federal terrorism sentencing provision to racially motivated violent extremism cases. As of February 2022, Mathews was serving his sentence at United States Penitentiary, Terre Haute in Indiana, with a projected release date of September 16, 2027.⁶