The Trial Over 'Unite the Right'

the show. That's like an NPR shit right. I know people have been saying on the Twitch stream that I have a very soothing NPR style. Boy, you would be great. I would love to hear you uh talking in NPR about how it's it's rad that those those people broke the windows on those police cars or whatever. No, I can't be allowed in respectable spaces. I can't be allowed there. They let me talk on a panel at Harvard one time, and I accidentally said fuck in front of a bunch

of people. I mean, I assume Harvard students know a funk word or two. Speaking of funk words, there's a couple of funk words who are under trial, right now

for inciting mass violence that led to human death and suffering. Um, you wanna you want to give us the overview we're we're talking today about, you know, the Unite the Right rally and Charles Gill in two thousand seventeen that led to three deaths, one as the result of direct violence had their higher who was murdered murdered by the fascist James Field currently in prison for forever. Um, Yeah, forever

that you know, his trial concluded a while ago. Um, But there has been churning through the legal system, a

trial against Richard Spencer Jason Kessler, who was the main organizer. Um, can't well, there's other uh plaintiffs right, Oh, a lot of a lot of fascists about you know, all of the things that they did, the fact that they clearly intended this to be a violent uh riot assault whatever like, they wanted to have it be a fucking lynching essentially, and there's a lot of evidence, including things they said to each other about building armies to murder people. Um. Anyway, Molly,

you want to take it from here. I think I've introduced the situation. There's a trial going on. You have been listening to every day of it and covering it on Twitch very ably. UM, and so I just kind of wanted to catch up with you. You You also wrote an article in Slate with our friend Emily Gortchynsky about UM, what's like largely the jury selection of the trial. So I was wondering if you could just kind of give us an overview of what's happened so far if your

thoughts on it. Um. Yeah, that that seems that seems good. Yeah. So there's just right at the outset, this is a civil trial, right, This is not a criminal trial. No one's going to the No one's going to jail at the end of this. Some of the jail call it that the Who's goal. We call it the Who's goal in the show. That's the property, Okay, Um, some of them already in jail obviously, Like you said, James Fields is serving twenty nine life sentences to life. It's a

lot of life. So he was. He was charged in in Virginia State Court by the Commonwealth of Virginia. He was convicted at trial of first degree murder and several counts of aggravated malicious wounding. Um. He was. So that trial happened in he actually went to trial for that, but then he pleaded guilty in federal courts. He was charged in two separate courts for the same underlying events, and in federal court he pleaded guilty to twenty nine

federal hate crimes. Um he pleaded guilty to hate crimes. So there's no debate about whether these were hate crimes, right, and he pleaded guilty too. He pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty because a hate crime, murder is a

capital crime. So in this lawsuit, right, this this civil lawsuit against Deep Breath, Jason Kessler, Richard Spencer, Christopher Campbell, James alex Field, Gang Got America, Andrew England, Moonbase Holdings, Robert asmod Or, Ray Nathan to Ego, Elliott Klein, Identity Europea, Matthew Parrot, Matthew Hindbuch, Traditionalist Worker Party, Michael Hill, Michael Tubsley of the South, Jeff Scoop, Now that the National Socialist Movement Nationals Front, Augustus Invictus, Reternal Order of the

Alt Knights, Mike Kinevich, Loyal White Nights of the KKK East Coast Knights of the KKK East Coast Knights of the true Invisible Empire. Several of those parties have been dismissed from the suit. That's a lot, it's a lot of bad guys, right, Um, several of those parties have been dismissed from the suit. Augustus and Victus defaulted Pine dismission. That means the fact that he defaulted, Does that mean he was like, yes, right, he offered no defense, So

that's what that means. Yeah, I mean he's been dealing with a lot. What would he He's had some problems, he's been jails. He abducted his wife at gunpoint. Um. I think he's out of jail now, but he's had some personal problems. He's had some personal problems. So the underlying claim with the lawsuit is a section complaint a conspiracy to deprive people of civil rights. Um. This is ndamentally at it's at its core an anti clan statute. Right.

It was designed to disrupt clan organizing. Um. And that's kind of what it's being used for here. Right. This is so the lawsuit was brought by by nine plaintiffs who were harmed people who got hurt at the rally. Most of the plaintiffs were physically injured in the car attack, although not all of them, um, but these are people who are seeking damages, right like for all all the emotional weight, all the sort of social ramifications. Fundamentally, this

is a case about damages. So the jury is going to say, Okay, these people were harmed. Do we believe they were harmed by a conspiracy to commit acts of violence? Conspiracy to commit racially motivated accidents? Right, so all of those elements have to improve. And there was k guys want to do racial violence when they assaulted people? Yeah? Was their conspiracy? Was it motivated by racial animus? And

were overt acts of violence committed? And did those acts of violence harm these people in a way that entitles them to damages? That's all the jury has to decide. Right, should be an open shed case nowhere, but it does seem like kind of an open and shut case. It does, right So, because if there are people out thereho are not familiar with the events of that day, a lot of alt right groups, you know, overt neo Nazi organizations, the literal Clan, the literal American Nazi Party, like Neo

Confederate secession. David's duke was there. David Duke was there, David Duke, who Elliott Klein described as an ideological grandfather when he was asking other organizers that he can invite him. Um, these guys came together, they came to Charlottesville. They brawldened the streets, they beat people, They hit them with shields. A literal clan wizard fired his gun at a black band while screaming die N word. Well, now, okay, it

seems like you're reaching a bit to call that racially motivated. Well, that's something they're trying to litigate. So you're probably familiar with the video of DeAndre Harris being beaten nearly to death by mothers of several different hate groups. Right, So one of the guys that beat him was a tv a P member. One of them was a Lead of the South member, and they worked together to beat this young man nearly to death while he was lying on

the ground. And so that today they were talking about like, well, can we really say that was racially motivated? You know, can we really say can we really say? Yeah? Yeah, I think we can. I think we can. Um. You know, his mother has been on podcasts since his conviction. I'm referring to Jacob Goodwin, the t TPP member, the man who used a t w P riot shield provided to him by Matthew Heinbach to beat this young man. His mother goes on Nazi podcast still to describe how her

son is a martyr for the white cause. There's no ambiguity, But where are you getting racially motivated from that moment? Right? Like, there's a there's a picture of her with her arm around her son. Her son's like seven feet tall. He's a giant boy to get her arm around her, large adults and he's wearing a T shirt with a giant picture of George Lincoln Rockwell on it. Ah, you love the deep cuts, so you know. And Billy Roper's Christmas party, Yeah,

another another Nazi. Right, So there's not a lot of ambiguity here for the average person, but so you know, like you were saying, Emily and I wrote about jury selection, jury selection is um so corporate seedings are generally speaking open to the public. Anyone can go to their local courthouse and you can sit through a trial. You can sit through the war deer process, you can see how a jury gets chosen. You can go trial hopping, get wasted,

re entertainment. As long as you say quietly, they can't make you leave. It's like a library's very discouraging because the whole point is to picturs who have never encountered reality. You pick people who don't have any opinions, right, because you want them to be able to be impartial. And the best way to picture your jury is going to be impartial is to pay people who don't have any opinions.

And if you don't have any opinions on whether or not it's good for Nazis to beat people in the streets, I would say that in and of itself as an opinion that you already have right the ability do not have an opinion about that. The jury selection took three days because they had to go through this process of speaking to each juror individually. Usually they'll they'll do it in batches where they ask questions of people in batches, um.

But this was so sensitive they didn't want to taint the jury pool, so they did it one by one. So it took three days, UM, and they chose jurors who didn't have opinions about the existence of racism in the United States. Okay, that seems unbiased. Again, it's this thing you keep seeing where it's like, well, we can't let people have a bias, so it has to be people who have never heard of white supremacy, which is like, then that's a bias in favor of white supremacy. But

of course that's the default of the system. It's like that's the tear, right, Like you stick white supremacy on the scale and you tear it, but then you add aware nous of white supremacy and suddenly there's weight on it.

You know. It's sorry, it's very fresh, I know, you know, it's frustrating, and yeah, I shouldn't frustrating to sit through listening to them to ask people, you know, because they they had to fill out a questionnaire ahead of time so so they can sort of sift through obvious knows um.

And one of the questions was, you know, how do you feel about how concerned are you about these different kinds of prejudice, you know, prejudice against black people, prejudice against Hispanic people, prejudice against Jewish people, are prejudice against white people, And a lot of people indicated that they were very concerned about anti white racism and a lot of jurors were asked follow up questions about like, well,

why aren't you more concerned about anti white racism. Why did you say you don't care about that because it's not real. Yeah, because I've never seen it in my entire life. Um, but okay, but we seated a jury. We did see the jury, and there were you know, there's always concerned in a case like this that you just won't be able to get an impartial jury. But we got it could be worse, right, it could be worse. Um. There is a guy on the jury who said that in high school he was the victim of a racially

motivated attack by by a Samoan person. Um, because they didn't like white people. M hmm, I wonder what that person was doing. Slash say, black people who believe that they have a right to exist without being subjected to racism not impartial, can't be on the jury. But a white guy who says he was the victim of a hate crime because someone didn't like Howley's God. So people talking about like I don't like it when folks not from my island come here and function up and make

it expensive. Yeah, it's anti white racist. He was living in incredible, incredible, So you know, it could be a worster, it could be a worse jury, but it's not ideal. Um god, where did we go from there? It's been it's been a little bit of a blur. Um. So, Cantwell and Spencer don't have lawyers, right? Well? Yeah, okay, so right because can't Well can't can't Well is for people who aren't aware can't Well is representing himself, and

tell correct me if I'm wrong here. But he started by acknowledging the old saying that a person who represents themselves as a fool as a lawyer, but then said, but I'm not a fool in this case. Yeah, he said, you may have heard this, but that's not true here. That's not the case here. Unbelievable. And I didn't even stay in a Holiday and Express last night. Oh my god. Really he seriously made a Holiday and Express joke while

he was oh my god. But the follow up, the follow up was, but I did stay in the Central Virginia Regional Jail because that is where he stays. Yeah, I mean, because he's he's in prison for sexually or not for for harassing and threatening and blackmailing another Nazi, right, yeah, yeah. He was transported here from the federal prison and Mary in Illinois, where he is a guest until next Christmas.

Um so he had filed motion is to exclude the fact that he's currently incarcerated, as is his right right late like if you are a yeah, yeah, absolutely involved in a you know, in a criminal case or in a in a simple case, it is it is your right to have the jury not see you in a jumpsuit. And I respect that, I think perfectly absolutely. Yeah. So he went to great links to make sure that the jury would never see him in cuffs, that the marshals wouldn't bring him in in irons, that he would change

before the jury arrived at the coronels. All very reasonable and no one's going to get to talk about it, but he brought it up in his own opening statement. I'm here from prison. I'm here from prison. By the way, I'm in prison for the other crimes I committed. But they're not related to these crimes. They're not related to these crimes except to the extent that he's unable to shut the funk up. He's only in prison because he emailed the FBI or recording him him doing the crime

that he's in prison for. He's he's really a very cunning man. But I think, you know so, as much as those crimes aren't relevant to this case, I think it is very relevant to his trial strategy, right, that he has this belief that all the things he did that were wrong they were right. Actually, he just needs to explain to us why he did them and then we'll understand. Right, he's in prison because he tried to talk his way out of a thing that he did

that was wrong by telling everyone that he did do it. Yes, I did it because I had to. You didn't have to make an extortionate threat to rape another man's wife in front of their children. You didn't actually have to do that. Yeah, that's really I mean I would I might argue, and perhaps I'm an extremist, but there's no situation in which you would ever have to do that. Nobody made you email the FBI about how you did that, but you did. Actually I would have told you that

was a bad idea. I mean, there's there's some snarky stuff in some in some of the affidavits about how like he called the Keen Police Department trying to tattletale on other people so often that they were tired of taking his calls. Unbelievable. What an amazing man like he's he's a piece of ship, but he is legitimately an incredib person. I mean if he wrote this, no one

would believe it. Right, This is so heavy handed, it's so goofy, Like when he was paying Elmer in guns his law he paid his lawyer in guns, and then he ran out of guns and had his lawyer stopped working for him. Yeah, he he doesn't have a lawyer anymore because he ran out of guns to pawn. Although I guess he can't anymore because now he's a convicted I gotta say, running out of guns to pawn for your lawyer, it's pretty cocked. He even had to sell the bucket of loose bullets he used to keep us

a prop on his desk, I mean, really devastating stuff. Um, so he doesn't you're you're down to the brad, You're down to the rails when you're two with that really the bottom of the barrel. So he's proceeding pro sae, which, unfortunately, unfortunately for everyone involved, means he gets to talk a lot a lot, a lot, a lot, which means he

gets to cross examine his own witnesses. Right. So the first two witnesses the plaintiffs put on were two of their plaintiffs, right, two young people who were injured in these events. The first witness they put on Natalie its the UV, a student who had her skull fractured in the car attack. Um. She had to learn how to walk again, she had to see a neurologist to retrain her eyes to track movement. I mean, she was very badly injured. Um. And so she testified at length about

the damage that was done to her. Because again, this is a case about damages. So the jury needs to learn who is this person, what happened to them, what did it cost them physically, mentally, emotionally, financially um, Because what they're gonna be asked to do is to put a dollar amount on it. So they had to meet her and hear about her injuries, um, and hear about

her motivation for being there. Um. You know, she's a young queer Latino woman as she's the first college student in her family, and she's a very impressive young woman, and she was very composed of the stand um. As awful as the content was. Um. But then every single one of the defendants gets to cross examine her. Richard Spencer gets to cross examine her. Christopher camp Well gets to cross exam and her. James Klennich, who took the case.

He's Kessler, Demigo and Identity Europea's lawyer, James Klenicch. She's an Ohio based attorney who said on the record that he took this case with the express purpose of opposing Jewish influence. Great great Klenich gets to cross examined her. Matt Heimbuck's new lawyer, Josh Smith used to be the campaign spokesman for Paul Neilon, wasn't endorsed by Trump at one point in his run for Congress, and as also

just a straight up Nazi who's repeatedly threatened to murder you. Yeah. Yeah, One time he spent all day posting pictures of a deer that he said that he named after me. He said, I named this dear Molly. You know, he's been all days stalking at posting pictures of it, posting pictures of this gun um. And then he posted a picture of the dear stage like a lynching. And then he spelled my name out in its entrails and posted pictures of that. So you're just like a really normal guy. Paul Neilan,

which totally completely with it. Um Camp, his campaign spokesperson when he ran for Congress, was the Holocaust denying um former Jew Josh Smith. Josh Smith was born Daniel Nussbaum. He changed his name to hide his Jewish past. Oh, that is an old story among the Nazis. I mean, we talked about the guy who invented uh sea monkeys. But yeah, it's basically the same case. And you know who else hides there? I okay, Um, this was meant to be an ad plug. Normally Sophie would jump in

and stop me from doing that. None of these advertis none of these advertisers are plaintiffs in the current case that you're covering. That's a guarantee, that is, that is an absolute promise. David Duke is not about to sell you dick pills. No, no, no, although he could use them. We're back, Um, all right, Molly, sorry, please continue? Where where are we? I got distracted thinking about David Duke

trying to sill you dig pills. Yeah, that's not good for anybody, right, so everybody gets a cross examine the witness. Josh Smith is himbox new lawyer. Um. Colennach used to be a lot of these guys lawyers, and then he sort of dropped them over time as they became uncooperative. They are all these motions to withdraw. Lenach slowly dropped

clients over the last two years. Um. He dropped cant Well as a client because cant Well wouldn't stop posting about hurting Roberta Kaplan, who's the lead counsel for the plaintiffs. ROBERTA Kaplan, Femish, famous Jewish lesbian lawyer. You know, she was on the US v. Windsor the I'm losing it, absolutely losing it. The Supreme Court case that gave us gay marriage right. Roberta Kaplan brought us gay marriage essentially. So she you know, famous Jewish lesbian that is a

well known portion of her identity. And kett Well kept posting um anti Semitic remarks about her, and finally Klennach was like, you're making it really hard to be your lawyer, and you don't pay me. Um and Kleins dropped Heimbach as a client in because Heimbuch just stopped answering his calls. Great smart people. Yeah. So Matt Parrot, who's Matt Heimbach's father in law, but also the husband of the woman that he was sleeping. This complicated. There's a chart. There's

a chart. Matt Heimbuch and Matt Parrot, um founders of the Traditional Worker Party, best friends for a long time. Filler's wives, big problems, big problems for them. The Night of Wrong Wives, the Knight of the Wrong Wives. So Matt Parrot was technically Matt Heimbach's father in law during the time period which Heimbach was fucking Parrot's wife. Very classy people. Not a great situation. So they lost their lawyer. Um Parrot very publicly told all Traditionalist Worker Party members

to destroy evidence. So we knew that, right that was on the record from the beginning that Matt or it was like, hey, everyone in t t PP, if you did any crimes, delete it right, delete your social media, delete your pictures. Like we weren't there, right, that's a crime. That's a crime. That is a crime, right there. But an interesting thing that we learned to date, but I

don't think we did know before. Um in November, so they played a recording of a conversation between Matt Heimbuch and Christopher Cantwell, And this was during examination of Heimbuch, and Heimbuch was on the stand. Um, and they're talking about like, you know, you didn't produce discovery. You said you lost your phone, this, that and the other. You know,

after you beat your wife, she threw away your phone. Um. So he said, I couldn't turn over my social media accounts because my wife deleted them because we had an argument about me taking out the trash, right, Like, we had this domestic dispute about the trash, and she deleted all my accounts, so I couldn't turn them over. Um. Well, today we found out that he told cant Well in ten so a year after the lawsuit was filed. When a lawsuit was filed against you, you have a legal

obligation to not do things like this. He told can't Well that after a conversation with his lawyer, on the advice of his lawyer, he deleted those accounts. Oh oh, there's just a record of him criming. Yeah, that's a crime, and it also a crime for his lawyer to have advised him to do that. Great. Um again, that's there's no direct evidence who told him to do that. But we do have a recording of him saying a lawyer told him to So that's not great. That's not a

good situation. Is he going to get charged with anything or that? I am curious. You know, I'm not a lawyer. Just for everyone listening, I'm not a lawyer. I didn't go to law school. I didn't even finish undergrad I'm not a lawyer. Um, but I have listened to a lawyers. But I am I am curious. What with what frequency can perjury charges be sought in a civil case? Right, it's still under oath, it is still perjury, But how

common is that to be pursued because they're perjuring. Yeah, they're for sure perjuring, just doing the thing the right always does, which is trust that the law will never actually come after them for their many crimes. And there's there's a good chance they'll be right, you know, Like Hinmbuch said, you know when he was asked, have you ever provided security for Richard Spencer? And he said no, Okay, well there's like a hundred pictures of you doing that

at multiple events. Um. You know, they're claiming they don't know each other, like here's all these pictures of you guys hanging out. Um, God, where else are we? Um? Yeah, I'm curious, you know one thing that kind of especially because of the written house thing. And we're actually we'll be talking to lawyer tomorrow night about or tomorrow about the written house thing. Um. Every cool person shares the

same lawyer. Uh um. But yeah, because that, I'm kind of curious, what what is your what since do you get of this judge? There's no good judges, there's no good judges. But it could be Yeah, I mean, I'm not saying, but how is it could be? It could be a lot worse. You know, Trump appointed a shipload of federal judges pretty recently. Judgment is eighty five years old. He's a Clinton Appointee's a Clinton appointee, so it's could be worse. He's been on the bench, you know since

I was an elementary school. Um. And he's very old, and he doesn't he has it's a little bit hard of hearing, but he's not stupid. Um. And there's a lot of people, I think we are really frustrated with some of the things he's allowing to happen. He's he's really allowing these these pro sed defendants to sort of run rough shot over the procedure. But you know, like I said before we started recording, it's really hard to apply.

I get like the your sense of how things are supposed to work doesn't really apply lie in court, right, there's a very rigid, sort of outdated set of rules and procedures, and they don't feel right. They don't feel logical or reasonable or fair. But there is a specific way that it works, and it is hard to watch, especially if you've never seen it before. And because of the emotionally fraught nature of this, it's particularly frustrating to be to be listening on this line and saying, like,

why are they allowed to do this to this witness? Well, legally you can cross examine your witnesses, even if you are the person who hurt them. It's not a good system, but it is how it works. Um. But he's um. And I also think there's there's concern about appellate issues, there's concern about mistrial, and so they're really going out of their way not to give anyone any excuse to say, well,

this was not fair to me. They're gonna say it anyway, but they they're really letting them have a long leash in a way that feels very bad, but at the same time I can kind of understand it. Yeah, I wish they hadn't done so much Holocaust denial, like on on the road, that would be good. They put an expert on today, who's um Dr Debrah Lipstad, who's an expert in Holocaust denial, to sort of talk about what

the Holocaust is. I guess in case the jury doesn't know. God, that's bleak, I mean, that's sucking bleak because they chose this jury based on them never having heard of Jews. You know, it's a bunch of like middle aged people from Green County who have never met a Jewish person. So they had to put on a professor to say, okay, when he says gas the K words, we're talking about gas chambers. Gas chambers from the Holocaust. They didn't start

out with gas chambers. They started with mass shootings. But it was too messy. I mean she was literally recounting sort of the evolution from the Ensans group and you know, shootings in the fields to the because of the gas chambers. Like we had to talk all the way through it, um because it seems unnecessary, but again for the jury,

it might be necessary. And so when Kasmador Robert don't want to take anything for granted, you know, yeah, right, and you really have to sort of lay out these connections, right, because the idea is you have to prove a conspiracy, and you have to prove the conspiracy was racially motivated. UM. And so when asma door is the racist wizard name that UM Robert Ray uses when he writes for the Daily Stormer. When Asmador keeps saying, We're going to gas the K words, everyone knows what I mean when I

say that, right, yes, yeah, okay, UM. You know he keeps saying, you know, the plan is to gas the K words, you know, g T, K R W N UM guess the K words race war. Now he keeps saying, he keeps saying, keeps saying it. And then the Torch March, he Pepper sprays a bunch of people, which he is currently a fugitive of justice for UM. He's UM, he's

wanted for felony in Almarrale County. He's missing UM. So he says he's going to do it, then he does it, and then afterwards he's on video saying, yeah, I guessed half a dozen k words, so you can see from A to B to C. And then we have this expert saying, Okay, what he's saying is a direct reference to the Holocaust. Right. UM, it's like he's like you said, it's pretty open and shut. It's pretty straightforward A tow B two c. Um. You know we have these discord leaks, um,

if you want to browse them. They're on Unicorn Riot and almost immediately after the rally, Unicorn Riot had these discord leaks. UM. The entire server, the Charlesville two point oh server where they planned this out, where they're in the discord saying yeah, it's gonna be so great. We're gonna do just so much violence. We're gonna we're gonna hur people, We're gonna bring shields, we're gonna bring base really explicitly talking about the plan, making jokes about hitting

people with cars. Um, now the entire discord will be admitted. UM, it has been authenticated. They received another copy of it via subpoena directly from discord. It's real. It's evidence. UM, as much as can't well doesn't like that, but more than that, UM, we have you know, some first person authentication.

We heard deposition testimony from Elliott Klein's ex girlfriend, Um, the woman that he was living with in seventeen so in the summer seen he was living with this woman that he had just met and entered into a romantic relationship with. Um. She has since left the movement. She has a lot of regret about her involvement in that

time period. And you know, there's little people have a lot of mixed feelings about what it means to leave the movement, what it means to a tone, Is it possible to redeem yourself for having been a part of something like that. We don't have to litigate that, but we do have to well, we do have to recognize that her testimony is damning. I mean, this is not this is not Elliott Klein putting on a show in public.

This is not Elliott Klein posturing for his friends. This is Eli at home in bed with his girlfriend talking about his fantasies of killing all the Jews. UM, and her testimony was pretty harmful. Um, you wouldn't think, yeah, it's not great. You know, really you have to wonder

how the jury is taking this right. These people who have no concept or context for this for years yea hours of this woman sort of near tears talking about how her boyfriend said that he was going to put her in a breeding camp once they had the ethno state. Uh not nice, really not nice stuff. Um. And she also tested you know, we have the messages from the discord where people are posting memes and jokes about hitting protesters, but Samantha testified that at private parties at Richard Spencer's

house in the summer. Of these private parties with the organizers of the event at Richard Spencer's apartment, people explicitly discussed the legality of hitting people with their cars. This is not random people in the discord that Richards could say, Oh, I don't know him, I never met him, I never

posted in discord. This is somebody sitting on your couch Richard. Um. Yeah, And you know, Samantha said that during that time period, um Kleient was building an army for Richard, and Kesler texted Spencer something similar, right that, where We'll build an army, my liege fucking dorcass ship. But when one fun surprise from Samantha was that during that time period Klein was you know, planning to provide his militia in the form

of a Dennity Europa. Right, at least these street troops he was going to provide to Spencer to build the movement, but that when the time came, he always knew that he would kill Richard to take control. These people are all such fucking it's a shame that what they actually are is deniable assets for the most dangerous folks, you know, the fucking, the fucking Bannon types, because if if all of the fascists were this dumb, I wouldn't be so worried.

And it's hard, it's hard to walk the line between, you know, really getting a kick out of some of these moments where you're genuinely funny, right, but you remember, like, these people are very dangerous. These people are responsible for a death. These people. It's this emotional whiplash, right of the plaintiffs getting on and saying, yes, my life was ruined.

I still have nightmares, I still have to go to physical therapy, and then can't well getting up there and asking Heimbach if he's a federal agent, Yah, right, like I think. So, we've only seen one of the defendants on the stand so far, but I have a strong feeling Can't Well is going to use every opportunity that he has his frenemies under oath to ask them if they snitched on him. Yeah, that's that's going to be pretty funny. It's gonna be great. You gotta laugh. Sometimes

life's too hard. That Can't Well is really using this. I think you know, he has nothing to lose, right, This is a case of damages. He has no money for them to take. He has thirty thou dollars in credit card debt and his car got repossessed once he went to prison. He has nothing for them to take. The only person he knows who did have anything is Ian Freeman, who's currently facing federal charges force of complicated bitcoin money laundering scam through a fake church. Um, so

he doesn't even have any friends to help him. That's an interesting case, but I don't have time for it now. But he has he has nothing for them to take. He's already a felon. He can't have a gun anymore. I think he's just using this as an opportunity, as a platform to get his message out there and to harm the people he thinks harmed him. So every chance he gets he's trying to force witnesses to ducks people, right.

He asked one of the plaintiffs, Devin Willis, when another young man who was was injured at the torch march, a plaintiff in this case, he asked him he forced him to name the names of the non parties who were also counter demonstrating at the statue. These people's names have not been on the record. They you know, judge made him do that, made him do that. That's up.

And you know you could if you were, I don't know, a complete baby brained idiot, you could say, well, you know that maybe there was a legal reason that he needed those names, which not, and we know there's not because he tried to do it again today. Um, there was a non party witness, a young woman who lived in one of the dorm rooms right by the rotunda. They're called the lawn rooms, the prestigious opportunity. Only super high achievers get to live in those beautiful historic law rooms.

So she lived right near where the torch mark was happening, and she heard it and she went outside and she looked at it. Um, she's not a party to the suit. She has no knowledge of these people or what happened.

She just saw this thing happen, and she testified to that um and he tried to you know, she had made some passing remark that she had heard from another student that maybe there would be a thing on campus, right that they knew about the rally the next day, but like, I don't know, maybe these guys will try and come here, just like be on your toes right, not anything specific. She was not. She's not an activist, she's not. She didn't know anything right, and so he

was grilled her, tell me who told you that? Tell me who told you that? How did you know that? And he said, on the record, direct quote, I want to know who infiltrated our communications. So he's trying to use this this moment where he has someone under oath to extract information about who snitched. He wants to know who infiltrated their secret communications, which is him admitting their secret communications that weren't turned over in discovery, which wasn't

smart of him to do. But he's using this process to get names of people who he can harass. And we know that's what they're doing because while he was getting these names from that other witness, you know, the names of the people at the statue. Jason Kessler, the lead defendant, right that, the defendant whose name is on the lawsuit, the lead organizer of the rally, is posting all this time. He's posting through it, posting through it. If you had a good lawyer, he would tell you

not to post through your own conspiracy trial. Um, so whal Cantwell is extracting these names from this poor young man. Kessler's posting them. He's posting their pictures and their legal names and describing their involvement, these people who are not party to this lawsuit. And there's no way to interpret that other than as as a vehicle for harassment. Yeah, there's I think there will be. There will be collateral damage of this lawsuit, but I hope that it does

um have the intended deterrent effect. Right, Um, sorry, I've been talking at length for a while, but just insummation, insummation. I think inside the courtroom, this is a case about damages. Right. The judge is very clear that like, stop talking about broader societal impact. You can't tell the jury about that. That's not relevant to this case. This, legally speaking, is a case about did this thing happen. Were these people hurt by it? What is the dollar amount of their pain?

Legally speaking? That's it. But outside the courtroom, this is about deterrence, right, This is about setting a precedent that if you do this, if you plan a rally knowing that the people who come to your rally will hurt people because you told them that's the goal. Right. Even if you're not the one who swings the stick, even if you're not the one pressing the accelerator, you are

responsible and you can be held accountable. Not as an important message, Yeah, we will, like your life will be ruined if you participate in this ship that even if you don't have anything for us to take, we will put a garnishment on you that will follow you to the fucking grave. Yep. And I think, yeah, that's that's I would agree what I think is important here. Um, Molly, I think that's that's everything. For now. We're still how much how much longer do we have to go through this?

The court watch him a jig. Well, it's scheduled for four weeks, it's been one and a half. And there was there was some some anxiety and handwringing about how maybe four weeks won't cut it. Yeah, Jesus, So I'm regretting my decision to actively live tweets. So like I'm transcribing in real time for eight hours a day. It happens your fingers are using a laptop. Are you doing it on a phone. I'm doing it on a laptop,

thank God. So because of COVID, um, no one can go into the courthouse because there's so many parties in this case, and there's the plague, and one can go into the courthouse except for there's there's a press room where fifteen people who got preapproved by a federal court can go and sit and look at a monitor. Um, but I'm sitting at home. I'm comfy at home, So I'm okank God, yeah, that would be And I was.

I was disappointed. You know, I kind of wanted to see I love to see you love the courtroom ambiance. But I'll be honest work, I'm way less worried about getting stabbed here at home. That is true. That is true. People are less likely to get stabbed at home or more likely one of the two. Um, I don't know. Tell us in the comments where you think people are most likely to get stabbed. Uh and um, Molly, thank you so much. Thank you both for what you're doing

and for coming on the show. Is there anywhere the listeners can find slash support you? Would you like people to mail you knives? What? Oh? Mail me knives? Yeah, but not as a threat, like as a fun thing, fun knives for fun. I did get a large machete in the mail the other day, and before I saw the little gift note, I was confused. Oh good, Okay, I'm glad you're getting a Yeah. Yeah, my my friendship is a sheep farmer in North Carolina sent me a

large blade. Uh no, but so if you're interested in reading moment by moment live transcription of people screaming Holocaust denial at a federal judge, Um, you can check me out on Twitter. That's at Socialist dog Mom. That's what happens when you make a little joke with your friends, when you have five followers, and and then you end up using it professionally and national news repeatedly. I don't. Then people are posting your mug shot making fun of

your bullshit mug shot. You look great, but bullshit. Nobody looks good after they get left in a hot van like a dog. Yeah, that's true. Well, Molly, that's gonna be the end of the episode. So why don't we, Why don't we sing a song and and and roll out? Hopefully not the song that Heimbuch included in his Christmas letter to James Fields in prison. Oh god, that must have been really special. Jeez, I'll have to look that up.

I did come across in my um my browsing through Fascist Telegram the other week an entire album, dozens of songs that we're all Nazi covers of Blink one eight two's entire discography, everything, everything, And they called it, of course, they called it Blink like obviously of course, I don't I don't even know, like, I don't even know like how to talk about that. It was just the thing

that I found. Do you know hampt Install, the guy who studies malicious Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he's got a particular fascination with white power app Oh god, yeah, it's never any good, although there was a there is a fun in one of the h Bomber Guy videos. He found finds this flat earth Nazi who has a wrap. That's amazing. Alright, partial, I'm partial to can't well as distracts. Yeah, God, Chris Camp, Well, well, thank you, Molly, and uh off

we go into the wild blue yonder. I'm gonna go smoke some legal weed and fall asleep, face down, hopefully not thinking about this trial. I Am not going to smoke some legal weed because that's federally a crime. Molly, have a good day, Molly. Thank you all for listening. It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com, or check us out on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool Zone Meda dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.