November 9, 2021 • 42 mins
We talk with Molly Conger, a Charlottesville journalist, over the ongoing legal battle over the 2017 Unite the Right rally.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome back to it could happen here the show that
is only introduced competently when either someone besides me is
the one hosting the episode, or when I have a
guest that I feel embarrassed about being incompetent in front
of and and this is this is the latter case,
because today I'm talking with uh, my friend and admired colleague,
(00:29):
Molly Conjure. Molly, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me.
I got to do that like a professional. Welcome to
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
(00:49):
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
(01:10):
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
(01:31):
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
(01:55):
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,
(02:18):
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
(02:38):
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
(03:00):
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
(03:23):
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
(03:44):
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
(04:05):
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.
(04:29):
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
(04:53):
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
(05:15):
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
(05:36):
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
(05:58):
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
(06:20):
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
(06:43):
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
(07:04):
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,
(07:28):
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,
(07:49):
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,
(08:12):
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,
(08:37):
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
(08:57):
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
(09:20):
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
(09:40):
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.
(10:02):
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
(10:24):
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.
(10:50):
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
(11:14):
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
(11:35):
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,
(11:59):
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
(12:25):
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.
(12:49):
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
(13:10):
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.
(13:30):
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
(13:51):
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
(14:13):
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.
(14:34):
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
(14:56):
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
(15:17):
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,
(15:38):
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
(16:00):
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
(16:21):
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
(16:41):
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.
(17:02):
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
(17:25):
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
(17:45):
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.
(18:06):
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
(18:26):
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.
(18:56):
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.
(19:16):
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,
(19:40):
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
(20:03):
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
(20:25):
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.
(20:50):
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.
(21:11):
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
(21:31):
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,
(21:53):
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,
(22:17):
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
(22:37):
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,
(22:59):
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
(23:20):
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
(23:43):
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
(24:08):
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,
(24:30):
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.
(24:55):
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
(25:17):
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
(25:39):
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
(26:02):
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
(26:25):
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.
(26:46):
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,
(27:07):
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
(27:28):
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
(27:50):
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
(28:11):
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,
(28:37):
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,
(28:57):
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
(29:17):
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
(29:37):
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
(29:59):
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,
(30:20):
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,
(30:41):
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
(31:06):
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
(31:27):
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,
(31:49):
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
(32:09):
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
(32:30):
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
(32:52):
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.
(33:13):
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
(33:36):
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
(33:56):
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,
(34:17):
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,
(34:38):
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
(34:58):
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
(35:21):
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
(35:42):
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,
(36:03):
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
(36:23):
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
(36:45):
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
(37:05):
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
(37:26):
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
(37:47):
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,
(38:09):
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
(38:31):
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
(38:52):
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
(39:13):
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,
(39:35):
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
(40:00):
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.
(40:23):
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
(40:45):
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
(41:07):
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
(41:28):
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
(41:50):
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.
Welcome back to it could happen here the show that
is only introduced competently when either someone besides me is
the one hosting the episode, or when I have a
guest that I feel embarrassed about being incompetent in front
of and and this is this is the latter case,
because today I'm talking with uh, my friend and admired colleague,
(00:29):
Molly Conjure. Molly, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me.
I got to do that like a professional. Welcome to
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
(00:49):
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
(01:10):
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
(01:31):
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
(01:55):
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,
(02:18):
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
(02:38):
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
(03:00):
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
(03:23):
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
(03:44):
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
(04:05):
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.
(04:29):
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
(04:53):
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
(05:15):
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
(05:36):
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
(05:58):
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
(06:20):
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
(06:43):
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
(07:04):
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,
(07:28):
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,
(07:49):
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,
(08:12):
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,
(08:37):
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
(08:57):
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
(09:20):
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
(09:40):
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.
(10:02):
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
(10:24):
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.
(10:50):
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
(11:14):
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
(11:35):
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,
(11:59):
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
(12:25):
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.
(12:49):
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
(13:10):
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.
(13:30):
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
(13:51):
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
(14:13):
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.
(14:34):
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
(14:56):
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
(15:17):
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,
(15:38):
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
(16:00):
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
(16:21):
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
(16:41):
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.
(17:02):
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
(17:25):
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
(17:45):
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.
(18:06):
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
(18:26):
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.
(18:56):
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.
(19:16):
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,
(19:40):
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
(20:03):
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
(20:25):
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.
(20:50):
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.
(21:11):
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
(21:31):
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,
(21:53):
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,
(22:17):
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
(22:37):
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,
(22:59):
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
(23:20):
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
(23:43):
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
(24:08):
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,
(24:30):
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.
(24:55):
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
(25:17):
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
(25:39):
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
(26:02):
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
(26:25):
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.
(26:46):
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,
(27:07):
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
(27:28):
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
(27:50):
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
(28:11):
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,
(28:37):
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,
(28:57):
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
(29:17):
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
(29:37):
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
(29:59):
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,
(30:20):
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,
(30:41):
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
(31:06):
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
(31:27):
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,
(31:49):
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
(32:09):
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
(32:30):
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
(32:52):
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.
(33:13):
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
(33:36):
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
(33:56):
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,
(34:17):
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,
(34:38):
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
(34:58):
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
(35:21):
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
(35:42):
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,
(36:03):
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
(36:23):
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
(36:45):
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
(37:05):
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
(37:26):
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
(37:47):
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,
(38:09):
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
(38:31):
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
(38:52):
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
(39:13):
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,
(39:35):
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
(40:00):
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.
(40:23):
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
(40:45):
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
(41:07):
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
(41:28):
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
(41:50):
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.
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Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.