December 18, 2025 • 42 mins
Augustus Invictus has finally been suspended by the Florida Bar for his felony conviction for participating in a nazi torch march in 2017. But when will he actually serve his jail sentence?
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Hello everyone, and welcome to the last full length non
rerun episode of twenty twenty five. This won't be the
last thing on your feed this year, but it is
the last regular episode until we pick back up in January.
It's been a hodgepodge sort of month this month, but
(00:28):
I think we're going to hit the ground running in
twenty twenty six with some stories you'll really get a
kick out of. Today's episode is another one that isn't
quite in the classic We're Little Guy's format, but it
is about a guy a lot of you have been
asking me about. Look, it's the end of the year.
(00:49):
It's dark at four in the afternoon, but it's too
cold to convince my dogs to go for a walk
with me. Back when I had an office job, I
could get away with pretending to look busy at my
desk for the last week or so before any major holiday.
The problem with the job I have now is that
you guys would definitely notice if I spent the week
(01:11):
goofing off online and then quickly switching to a big
spreadsheet on my monitor if somebody walked by. It's okay, though,
I like you guys a lot more than I liked
anybody who ever looked over my shoulder at an office,
so I'll do my best for you. I had planned
on doing a sort of reverse weird little guy thing
(01:31):
for the holidays. You know, I was gonna write an
episode about a guy who is definitely a little odd,
but like in a good way. But you know by
now that I've never not once in my life sat
down and written the thing I had in mind before
I started. So that's not what this is. I didn't
even start working on that. I'm not bound to this
(01:54):
seasonal cycle. I can tell you a nice story about
a different kind of guy some other time. We can
have moments of joy anytime of year. Instead, today I'm
going to keep my promise from last week and tell
you a little bit more about the other man who
lost his job the same day Tyler Dikes did. Back
in October. Last week we were talking about Tyler Dikes.
(02:23):
He's running for Congress in South Carolina, hoping to win
the seat Nancy Mace's leaving. But before that, he was
one of the nearly sixteen hundred people who received a
presidential pardon for their actions on January sixth, twenty twenty one,
and before that will it was mostly Nazi stuff, And
(02:45):
in last week's episode, I opened with a funny little synchronicity.
Tyler Diykes's campaign launched shortly after he tweeted on October
twenty second that he'd just been fired from another job.
That was something that keeps happening to him because people
won't stop calling him a Nazi, due in part to
(03:07):
all the times he's been photographed in public giving Nazi salutes.
And that same day, October twenty second, the Florida Supreme
Court filed an order giving Augustus soul and Victus thirty
days to offload all of his clients before his license
to practice law was suspended. But by the time I
(03:28):
finished picking apart the congressional candidate's conspiracy theory podcast appearances,
I had run out of time and we never got
to the second guy. And I paired those two seemingly
unconnected stories because they started in the same place. They're
both still living with the consequences of a trip they
took to Charlottesville in August of twenty seventeen. It might
(03:54):
seem like a strange preoccupation to you listener, how often
a story that's winding its way in and out of
side stories. We'll wind up here. I'm sure you've noticed
comes up a lot, even if it's only in passing.
Almost every one of these stories has some thread that
(04:17):
connects it to Charlottesville, something that connects it to the
Unite the Right rally here in August of twenty seventeen.
If you hadn't noticed it before, I'm sure you will now.
It's always there. Gerald Drake, the Confederate reenactor who went
to prison for threatening his former friends. He got the
(04:39):
idea to pretend the bomb threats were from Antifa because
he saw pictures of protesters in Black Bloc on the
news after Unite the Right. Those fake grassroots marchigainst. Sharia
rallies were organized by many of the same men who
were planning the Unite the Right rally later that same summer.
The featured speaker at the American Freedom Party conference earlier
(05:02):
this year were both men who had led their respective
organizations on the ground here in Charlottesville in twenty seventeen.
At a twenty eighteen Brightbart News town hall, the man
asking Anne Coulter about white genocide was the leader of
a group that organized Unite the right over and over
(05:24):
and over again. In all of these seemingly unrelated places
and times. These stories are all connected, and it's not
a coincidence. Part of that, to be fair, is that
I live here. My own interest in figuring out how
(05:46):
someone ends up marching in the streets at a Nazi
rally started here. It was these guys in particular that
sparked my interest in understanding the concept of the weird
little guy as I write about them today. I have
spent years reconstructing those events and trying to understand the
(06:07):
men who marched here. That then led to a need
to understand the groups they came with, which led to
a need to understand where those groups came from and
what preceded them. And it's been one long rabbit hole
that I haven't dug myself back out of for more
than eight years. So that's definitely part of why it
comes up so often. It is what I know best.
(06:31):
But truthfully, everything is connected, and that rally in twenty
seventeen is a central node. It comes up all the
time because everyone was there. It was the largest and
most violent public gathering of white supremacists in the United
States in decades. It was a pivotal moment in our
(06:55):
collective understanding of political violence, and it didn't come out
of nowhere. Every story I write about the present has
a very clear relationship to that day, because the guy
was probably there. But even in stories about the distant past,
it's there, like the ghost of Nazi rallies yet to come.
(07:21):
Just recently, I spent two months writing about the men
whose lives intersected with the death of American Nazi Party
leader George Lincoln Rockwell. Those stories mostly took place in
the nineteen sixties, but that weekend in August fifty years
later kept Elboyan's way into the story. That kind of
(07:41):
white power march owed quite a bit to Rockwell, just
in terms of the ideological lineage of that kind of event,
but it's more than that. Some of his old friends
were actually there. Decades after Rockwell's death, the man who
still keeps the Nazis' ashes in a white urn on
a swastika shrine drove halfway across the country to be here,
(08:05):
and he'd told reporters that Rockwell would have been pleased
to see it. So while it is a funny coincidence
that Tyler Diykes and Augustus Invictus both became unemployable on
October twenty second, twenty twenty five. It's not a coincidence
that they both attended the rally in twenty seventeen and
(08:27):
back in twenty seventeen. Tyler Dykes was just part of
the crowd. He was some teenage nobody. Augustus Invictus, on
the other hand, was here as a headline speaker. He
had been part of the core group of organizers and
was at the time a member of a group called
the Fraternal Order of Alt Knights, which was a short
(08:51):
lived subset of proud boys who were particularly committed to
engaging in violence. And the night before the main event
to take place, they were both in the crowd lining
up for the tiki torch march at the University of Virginia.
There were hundreds of them there that night, torches in hand,
(09:12):
chanting as they marched through the university grounds and then
encircled a small group of counter protesters at the base
of the Thomas Jefferson Statue. But I've told you that
(09:42):
part of the story before. This is an update. Of
the hundreds of torch marchers, only twelve were ever charged
under the Virginia law that makes intimidating someone with a
burning object of felony. Tyler Dykes and Augustus and Vici
were two of those unlucky twelve. Of those twelve, five
(10:05):
pleaded guilty without taking it to trial. Tyler Dykes, of course,
along with Colton Fears and his brother William Fears, and
a pair of gigantic redheads from Texas named Billy Williams
and will Smith. Another four took plea agreements that reduced
their charge to misdemeanor disorderly conduct, Ryan Roy, Jamie Troutman, Dallas, Medina,
(10:30):
and Patriot Front founder Thomas Rousseau. One of the twelve
got lucky. Jacob Dix took his chances at trial, and
the out of town's special prosecutor handling his case fumbled
it so badly that jurors who watched video footage of
the crime couldn't reach a verdict and it ended in
(10:52):
a mistrial. Augustus and Victus and a former marine named
Vassilios Pistols were both convicted at trial. And I think
I will come back to some of these cases down
the road, but today we're just talking about Invictus. As
far as trials go, this one was as close to
(11:14):
a slam dunk as I've ever seen. The charge requires
that the defendant burned an object, that they did it
in a public place, that their intent was to intimidate someone,
and that the way they went about it would make
a reasonable person afraid of death or bodily injury. In
(11:35):
this case, the defendant himself provided the best piece of evidence,
a thirty minute video that he live streamed from his
phone during the march.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
Now we all live here at University of Virginia at
the Torchlight Rally, high energy, as you can tell, high tea,
very high tea.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Today.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
We all got our tour on. Somebody forgot the pitchforks
at home, so all we got is torches. So we'll
flip the camera around. You got antipo up there on
the hill.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
The video starts in the field where the crowd assembled,
and it follows the march through the university grounds. The
narrator is in good spirits for much of it. He's
laughing as the men around him are working themselves into
a frenzy. And for most of the march there are
these isolated verbal encounters with individual people they pass on
(12:38):
their route, but the campus is pretty empty. But as
the march reaches the top of the stairs at the
rotunda and begins to walk back down the steps into
the plaza on the other side, the marchers know they
aren't alone anymore.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
It's like a Disney l where he gets in the ride.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
That way.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
That's Augustus and Victus. Just as the counter protesters and
the plaza come into view, he says, it's like a
Disney ride. He's comparing this to the moment on a
roller coaster where you're at the top of the hill
looking down and you feel that rush of excitement knowing
you're about to get to the best part of the ride.
(13:46):
And the other voice, the one telling those counter protesters
to look out, telling them they're outnumbered, that's Daniel Borden.
He was never charged for this night, but he would
eventually serve a few years in prison for the violent
assault he committed the next morning. And as the video continues,
(14:07):
the marchers fill the little plaza. You can see the
crowd consciously and intentionally form a ring around the statue,
around the people who are now trapped at its base.
It wasn't an accident, it wasn't organic it was the plan.
(14:29):
You can hear Richard Spencer's bodyguard directing the marchers standing
right next to Invictus.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Why why, Hi, why drop on this way, Block the
eyes off, fill it in, block them off, trap them
(14:57):
and after the rally Augustus Invictus may no secret of
how he felt about it.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
He loved it, no regrets.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
So you know, the torchlight route, it was gorgeous, It
was beautiful. The entire thing was an aesthetic and I
regret nothing about it. It was perfectly done, It was
falsely executed, and I would do it again.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
So, like I said, kind of a slam dunk starts
by joking about how he has to make do with
a torch because he doesn't have a pitchfork, marching with
a crowd chanting explicitly racist, xenophobic, and anti Semitic slogans
all along the route, seeing the counter protesters already standing
in that public place, and making the conscious choice to
(15:47):
surround them, continuing to hold that line as other members
of the crowd engage in violence against the people you've trapped,
ratifying the actions and the intent after the fact by
saying you have no regrets, and you do it again.
Testimony from one of those trapped counter protesters who says
he feared for his life that night. It's pretty clear cut,
(16:10):
and the jury thought so too. Augustus Invictus was convicted
by a jury on that felony charge in Virginia in
(16:31):
October of twenty twenty four. Coincidentally, it was the same
week that Tyler Dykes reported to federal prison to begin
serving his sentence for his January sixth conviction. But Augustus
and Victus did not report to jail. He didn't have to.
He had been out on bond since his arrest in
(16:52):
the summer of twenty twenty three, and he was allowed
to return home again after his conviction in January of
twenty twenty The judge sentenced him to five years, but
suspended the majority of that time, ordering him to serve
just nine months and two weeks in the local jail.
But again, he didn't go to jail. He went home.
(17:18):
It's not that unusual to allow a defendant to delay
their report date. It gives them a little bit of
time to get their affairs in order. You don't get
remanded directly into custody in most cases if you're out
on bond already at the time of sentencing. There's not
much harm in letting you go home that day, and
(17:38):
his attorney made it very clear from the moment the
verdict was in that they planned to appeal, so it
was no surprise when they asked for an appeal bond,
which the judge granted, allowing him to continue to kick
out that report date while he was appealing his conviction.
So all year checked in from time to time. I
(18:01):
just added it to my mental list of dozens of
other ongoing little matters that I check in on when
I'm sitting at my computer. The sentencing order was finally
entered in March, followed by the defense filings for their
appeal to the State Court of Appeals, and he remained
out on bond, and he kept practicing law. Despite rules
(18:25):
governing the practice of law in Florida that specify no
uncertain terms that suspension from the bar is automatic and
immediate following a felony conviction, it didn't happen. The months
dragged on. The appellate courts moved pretty slowly, but there
was no indication that the Florida Bar intended to enforce
(18:47):
their own rules. He continued practicing law for over a
year after his conviction at trial. Again, the rules regulating
the Florida Bar are remarkably straightforward on this subject, which
isn't always a given from a rule book written by lawyers.
(19:07):
If a lawyer in Florida is convicted of a felony,
they are suspended from the bar immediately and automatically, even
if they're appealing. The Conviction Rule three to seven point two,
sub Section J says the suspension will remain in effect
during any appeal of the determination or judgment of guilt
(19:30):
of a felony offense in the criminal proceeding. But I
guess someone of the bar was feeling generous because he
was still practicing law. Just weeks after his own felony conviction.
He was in federal court at the sentencing hearing of
one of his clients, a January sixth defendant named Anna Letchnowski.
(19:52):
Based on available records, it's not clear how much of
her forty five day sentence she ever served. The President's
pardons came not long after this. Augustus and Victus worked
on Lichnowski's case as co counsul with his own lawyer.
That's a confusing arrangement. Let me explain. She was indicted
(20:15):
on January sixth charges in the summer of twenty twenty three,
not long after Augustus. In Victus's own arrest here in Virginia.
He then hired a Maryland attorney named Terrell Roberts to
work on his criminal case, and a few weeks later
they were both hired by Miss Lichnowski in her case. Now,
(20:37):
Invictus isn't a member of the bar in DC Federal Court,
and he hadn't shown any particular interest in j six
cases before this, but it wasn't Terrell roberts first January
sixth case, And given Invictus's apparently pretty dire financial situation,
(20:58):
it kind of looks like he may have been paying
his own lawyer by providing legal assistance on one of
his other cases. But that's just me spitballing. I can't
prove that. In the two years between his arrest and
June of twenty twenty three and his suspension from the
bar in October of twenty twenty five, he had a
(21:19):
small but steady case load. Aside from the January sixth
cases he worked with his own lawyer, he had a
handful of clients with domestic violence charges, a few divorce cases,
a dui case, pretty typical stuff. Perhaps there were others,
but I don't have access to any fancy legal databases.
(21:42):
I just love wasting my own time enough that I
checked in with half the county court clerks in the
state of Florida, according to statements he offered the court here.
Some of those clients were referred to him through his
volunteer work with his church. Obviously I couldn't tell you
which case, as he worked pro bono, but it does
(22:02):
seem to be true that at least some of these
clients he's represented in the last two years were unconnected
to white nationalist political causes, and that's noteworthy. I mean,
today isn't the day we get all the way into it?
Do you have my word? I'll cover the whole story eventually,
but his career as an attorney has been a real
(22:26):
roller coaster. After graduating from law school in twenty eleven,
he passed the bar in several states in twenty twelve
and was eventually admitted to practice in Massachusetts, Illinois, New York,
and Florida. He was just shy of thirty, a proud
father of four married and settling in as a defense
(22:47):
attorney at his father's law firm outside of Orlando. By
twenty thirteen, he was divorced. That spring, he dropped all
of his clients and quit his job at his dad's law.
He sent a letter to some of his former law
school classmates announcing that he was a powerful, successful genius,
(23:08):
but he'd grown bored of society and was going to
leave it behind. And that's not an exaggeration. So many
people got this letter, and the letter was so fucking
weird that it was published in full and roundly mocked.
In an article by Elie Mastahl on the blog Above
the Law, the letter is addressed to the gray world
(23:33):
of man. He's boastful, He's accomplished everything a man could
dream of. He's better than you, and he wants you
to know that. It reads, in part, witness Yee, the
glory of my life. At twenty nine years of age,
I have four children, each of whom should be the
(23:54):
envy of every parent in the world. I have attained
a baccalaureate degree in philosophy with honorsained a doctorate in
law cum laude. I have acquired licenses in the profession
of law in the states of New York, Illinois, and Florida.
I am scheduled to acquire two more such licenses in
North Carolina and Massachusetts. I am editor in chief of
(24:14):
a poetry journal. I run an independent publishing company. I
have opened my own law office in downtown Orlando. I
am an MBA candidate, and I have accomplished a few
other things that will remain off the record for now.
I am of genius, intellect and cultured, well educated and creative,
well mannered and refined. I am God's gift to humankind
(24:36):
where the English language is concerned. I also happen to
have a basic knowledge of Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, and Italian.
I am musical and artistic. I am athletic and possessed
of militant self discipline. I am many other things. I
have a Cadillac and a poodle, multiple computers, and a
personal library. I live in an apartment downtown right across
(24:58):
the street from the courthouse. I have been to Paris
and Vancouver, to Cairo and Dubrovnik, to Mexico City and Syracusa.
I dress better than all of you, pronounce my words perfectly,
and have a winning professional handshake. I am everything you
ever wanted to be. I mean, can you argue with that?
(25:21):
A Cadillac and a poodle and an apartment. But he's
sick of it. He's so sick of this world, and
the world makes him sick. He has nothing but contempt
for it. He renounces his law license, his diplomas, his Catholicism,
his citizenship, and all of his material possessions. He wants
(25:43):
none of it. He's walking away, and he ends the
letter with this, hear, ye, my final words in peacetime.
I have prophesied for years that I was born for
a great war. If I did not witness the coming
of the Second American Civil War, I would begin it myself.
(26:05):
Mark well, that day is fast coming upon you. On
the new moon of May, I shall disappear into the wilderness.
I will return bearing revolution, or I will not return
at all. War be unto the ends of the earth.
Augustus Stulenvictus or Land of Florida, USA, twentieth of April
(26:27):
twenty thirteen. Some of the people who got this letter
emailed it to a funny blog about news in the
(26:48):
legal profession, but some of them called the FBI. According
to his self published memoir about this time in his life.
He then drove out to the mountains and Carolina wrote
a goodbye letter to his family, which he left in
his car, hoping whoever found the abandoned vehicle would drop
it into a mailbox for him. He then spent several
(27:11):
months hitchhiking across the country before returning home and resuming
the life he'd just so dramatically renounced. He went back
to being a lawyer from twenty fourteen until twenty seventeen,
and then he publicly announced that he was retiring from
law to focus on politics. And by politics he meant
(27:31):
both his run for US Senate as well as a
punishing schedule of headlining white supremacist rallies all over the country.
A year later, though, in twenty eighteen, he announced that
he was unretiring from law to focus on taking clients
he referred to as political dissidents. He wanted to be
a movement lawyer, and he tried. He took on a
(27:56):
couple of cases and he'd lost them all, but he
made a good public show of being the hard rights
go to guy for legal advice. He ghost wrote lawsuits
for Nazis who were angry at the city of Charlottesville.
He sent a cease and desist letter to a journalist
on behalf of members of Adam Waffen, and he founded
a nonprofit that solicited donations for members of the Rise
(28:18):
Above movement who faced federal charges for beating counter protesters
at several rallies in twenty seventeen, And like I said,
I don't think you won a single case. By twenty twenty,
he was dealing with his own problems. His father was
arrested for sex trafficking. He was arrested for domestic violence,
(28:41):
although the jury could not convict him at trial because
the victim failed to appear. I think of him primarily
as a movement lawyer, but that was really such a
brief period of his life. Financial affidavits he filed in
various cases of his own during this time period show
(29:01):
he was reporting just one thousand dollars a month in
income from his law office, And after twenty twenty, a
surprising number of the cases I can find him working
on are just divorce and domestic violence cases against guys.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
He knows.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
He's not trying to fight for white civil rights at
the Supreme Court. He's just trying to make his own
child support payments when he was arrested on the charge
out of Virginia. In June of twenty twenty three, he
filed a motion on behalf of one of his divorce
clients from jail, requesting a modification of the case schedule.
(29:40):
The first few paragraphs of the motion are pretty standard.
You know, we need more time to conduct these depositions,
We need more time for discovery. Both parties are comfortable
extending the deadline. And then, almost as an afterthought, he
adds quote respondent's counsel was arrested and detained on false
charges in relation to a Virginia political rally and is
(30:02):
currently an Orange County awaiting extradition to Virginia. Respondent's counsel
anticipates being released by the end of July. That motion
was granted, and he was indeed out on bond by
the end of July twenty twenty three, but not before
he missed a hearing in a domestic violence case against
(30:23):
one of his other clients. That particular client must not
have been too upset that his lawyer didn't show him
to court, because that man, after being convicted of strangulation
and witness tampering, hired Augustus and Victus again, this time
to represent him in a movement case. Jason Brown was
(30:44):
one of four members of the anti Semitic group, the
Goham Defense League, who were arrested for hanging swastika banners
from a highway overpass near Orlando. One of those four defendants,
Amanda Rains, cut her losses and pled guilty. The the
other three are still hoping to depose Governor Ron DeSantis
as part of their case. They feel the state of
(31:07):
Florida is being unconstitutionally unfair to Nazis. Aside from those
Goham Defense League cases, though, he wasn't really trying to
bolster his reputation as a movement lawyer by taking on
high profile white rights cases anymore. Being a movement lawyer
(31:27):
got him a lot of attention, but you can't pay
your rent if you only take movement cases. And based
on a brief suspension of his driver's license, he was
getting behind on child support. Shortly after his arrest, he
was working on one other white civil rights case. He
(31:48):
had a client who felt he'd been fired from his
job as a baggage handler for American Airlines. Simply for
being white. But in Victus messed up the paperwork and
missed a deadline to correct it the appeal, so it
was dismissed a technicality, I guess, But I think even
if he'd filed the paperwork correctly, the Eleventh Circuit would
(32:11):
not have ruled in their favor. I mean, first of all,
the client hadn't sought the proper administrative remedy through his
union and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. But even if
you set all of that aside, even if everything had
been done correctly procedurally, I think the whole situation had
less to do with anti white racism and more to
(32:31):
do with the fact that you can't refer to your
black coworker using the N word in the work group chat.
So that case was dismissed. And these swastika banner cases
were moving pretty slowly and Augustus and Victus seemed mostly
focused on his own problems. There was an ongoing battle
in the court with his second ex wife, a custody
(32:53):
battle in New Jersey with a different woman, his own
lawsuit against various Florida law enforcement agencies alleging a conspiracy
against him, his own lawsuit against that woman in New Jersey,
his lawsuit against a different woman that he had a
sexual relationship with during his marriage, His attempts to get
his computer back from a police evidence locker because he
(33:15):
was using it in the living room at his dad's
house when that house got raided the day his father
was arrested for sex trafficking. I mean, he had a
lot going on. Even one of those divorce cases he
was working on was a little bit personal. He took
great offense when opposing counsel accused him of having a
romantic relationship with his client, but if you read the
(33:38):
filings closely, he doesn't actually deny it. But he also
doesn't mention that in addition to being her divorce lawyer,
he features prominently in her upcoming wedding as the groom.
So he's busy focusing on his own problems, which is
(34:03):
why I was so surprised to see his name on
a brand new lawsuit filed in June of twenty twenty five.
That lawsuit was the subject of an episode of this
show back in June. The complaint is, I mean, you
can listen to the episode, but this short version is
it is consistent with the kinds of legal work I've
(34:24):
seen from him in the past. Right, he doesn't win cases,
But in Enrique Tario, Ethan Norden, Zachary Real, Dominic Pozzola,
and Joe Biggs want the United States government to pay
the Proud Boys one hundred million dollars as an apology
for being so mean to them about the whole sedition thing.
(34:45):
It's a stupid lawsuit, but we live in stupid times,
so there is a non zero chance that the government
will simply nod and agree to a settlement that puts
millions of dollars into the hands of the leadership of
an extremist organization. The betting odds are on that specifically,
but I imagine the kind of cut of that settlement
(35:05):
their lawyer would get made it a pretty attractive gamble. Unfortunately,
for Augustus and Victus, he'll never see a dime of
any potential payout to the Proud Boys, at least, not
anything official, nothing on the books as far as attorney's fees.
He was initially removed from the case back in June
(35:26):
when the judge noticed that he wasn't allowed to practice
in the federal court after his conviction, but He was
inexplicably able to get himself readmitted to the bar in
the Middle District of Florida a month later, but that
victory was short lived. He was finally formally suspended from
practicing in the state of Florida in October, and he
(35:49):
was forced to withdraw representation from all of his active cases,
including this one. The Florida bar finally made their move
in October after the Virginia Court of Appeals dismissed his
appeal in his criminal case. I didn't bother asking the
State Court of Appeals for a copy because I have
(36:09):
a pretty good idea what arguments they intended to use
on appeal based on the hours and hours of rambling
about what I sat through before the trial. I'm curious, though,
how the appellate judge would have responded to the powerful
argument that a lit torch is not a burning object.
(36:31):
I wonder if they planned to put on their PowerPoint
presentation about transitive verbs again. I found it tremendously unconvincing
in pre trial hearings, but unfortunately for every one, the
appeal wasn't even heard. The Virginia Court of Appeals did
not end up weighing in on whether or not a
wall of flames is free speech under the First Amendment,
(36:55):
or whether something that is on fire can be legally
said to be burning. Hearings on this matter before the
trial culminated in the prosecution putting the local fire marshal
on the stand to offer his expert opinion on whether
something that was previously on fire could be called burnt.
(37:16):
The fire marshal said yes for the record, but we
never did get a semi auititian, a linguist, a physicist,
or a poet to weigh in under oath on the
nature of fire. Ultimately, the appeal was filed improperly, something
of a theme in looking at a decade of Augustus
and Victus's practice of law. He and his attorney failed
(37:40):
to get their paperwork into the court on time, which
is an automatic dismissal. A subsequent petition for rehearing was
promptly denied, and there's no indication on the record that
he filed a petition for rehearing on bunk or a
petition to the State Supreme Court, And at this point
any deadline for those filings would have passed. So if
(38:01):
you're just looking at the State Court of Appeals case
management system online. This case is over, so I'm not
sure what he might have been referring to when he
told a judge in Florida last month that he still
expects to prevail in his appeal sometime in the spring
of twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
What appeal.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
I can't imagine that telling an outright lie to the
court is something you would do if your goal is
to avoid permanent disbarment. So maybe he's still got a
trick up his sleeve in the appeal. The Court of
Appeals doesn't have the best online docket, so I guess
it's possible that there's something there that I just don't see.
(38:46):
The automatic dismissal for missing a deadline is a bit harsh,
so maybe that's the point of contention. Maybe there is
some process for appealing that decision in particular. It is
unclear to me, and I did ask several practicing attorneys
in Virginia and they couldn't tell me either, So I'll
(39:07):
just keep waiting. Augustus in Victus is due back in
court in Albemarle County, Virginia in February of twenty twenty
six for a hearing that if there's any sanity to
this process should result in the judge setting a date
for him to begin serving his sentence. Even if he
does find a way to get a second bite at
the Apple and the State Court of Appeals, there's no
(39:29):
reason the County Court should continue to extend that appeal Pond,
considering the appeal has been dead since October. He's lucky
enough to have gotten the hearing scheduled so many months out.
The court granted his request to schedule it after January ninth.
He was so insistent about that, not just in January
(39:51):
or in February. It had to be after January ninth.
And he didn't say why. I'm not sure why he
wouldn't just tell the judge he couldn't afford to miss
his own wedding. When he does finally begin his nine
and a half month sentence, he can expect to serve
about six months of it, typically, assuming he doesn't have
(40:12):
any conduct violations. For now, at least, he's still out
on bond and he can't practice law. With the wedding
just weeks away, it's probably too late to warn his
wife to be that Lake Rose makes great enameled cast iron,
but their stainless steel pots are really nothing special. You're
(40:34):
just paying for the brand you should have registered for
the old clad if you ask me. Then again, if
you'd ask me, I probably would have advised against most
of what's going on here. With jail on the horizon
and his career in shambles, Perhaps he too will pivot
(40:55):
to politics now that he has nothing else to do,
and it wouldn't actually be his first time. But I'll
save the story of his Senate campaign for another day.
His suspension from the bar was an update I couldn't
let pass us by without telling you about it affects
that proud boy lawsuit that there was a whole episode about.
(41:16):
But this is just a tiny peek into the life
of a very weird little guy. And if I don't
end up writing at least a couple of episodes about him,
I'll have wasted all those hours I spent tracking down
a physical copy of the novel he self published under
a pseudonym back when he still thought he was a
very powerful wizard. Next year, I promise weird little guys
(41:58):
to see production of Polsone Me and iHeartRadio. It's researched,
written and recorded by me. Molly Coner. Our executive producers
are Sophie Lichtman and Robert Evans. The show is edited
by the wildly talented Rory Gaikan. The theme music was
composed by Brad Dickard. You can email me at Ridle
Guys Podcast at gmail dot com. I will definitely read it,
but I probably won't answer it. It's nothing personal. You
(42:19):
can exchange conspiracy theories about the show with other listeners
on the Weird Little Guys subreddit. Just don't post anything
that's going to make you one of my Weird Little
Guys
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Hello everyone, and welcome to the last full length non
rerun episode of twenty twenty five. This won't be the
last thing on your feed this year, but it is
the last regular episode until we pick back up in January.
It's been a hodgepodge sort of month this month, but
(00:28):
I think we're going to hit the ground running in
twenty twenty six with some stories you'll really get a
kick out of. Today's episode is another one that isn't
quite in the classic We're Little Guy's format, but it
is about a guy a lot of you have been
asking me about. Look, it's the end of the year.
(00:49):
It's dark at four in the afternoon, but it's too
cold to convince my dogs to go for a walk
with me. Back when I had an office job, I
could get away with pretending to look busy at my
desk for the last week or so before any major holiday.
The problem with the job I have now is that
you guys would definitely notice if I spent the week
(01:11):
goofing off online and then quickly switching to a big
spreadsheet on my monitor if somebody walked by. It's okay, though,
I like you guys a lot more than I liked
anybody who ever looked over my shoulder at an office,
so I'll do my best for you. I had planned
on doing a sort of reverse weird little guy thing
(01:31):
for the holidays. You know, I was gonna write an
episode about a guy who is definitely a little odd,
but like in a good way. But you know by
now that I've never not once in my life sat
down and written the thing I had in mind before
I started. So that's not what this is. I didn't
even start working on that. I'm not bound to this
(01:54):
seasonal cycle. I can tell you a nice story about
a different kind of guy some other time. We can
have moments of joy anytime of year. Instead, today I'm
going to keep my promise from last week and tell
you a little bit more about the other man who
lost his job the same day Tyler Dikes did. Back
in October. Last week we were talking about Tyler Dikes.
(02:23):
He's running for Congress in South Carolina, hoping to win
the seat Nancy Mace's leaving. But before that, he was
one of the nearly sixteen hundred people who received a
presidential pardon for their actions on January sixth, twenty twenty one,
and before that will it was mostly Nazi stuff, And
(02:45):
in last week's episode, I opened with a funny little synchronicity.
Tyler Diykes's campaign launched shortly after he tweeted on October
twenty second that he'd just been fired from another job.
That was something that keeps happening to him because people
won't stop calling him a Nazi, due in part to
(03:07):
all the times he's been photographed in public giving Nazi salutes.
And that same day, October twenty second, the Florida Supreme
Court filed an order giving Augustus soul and Victus thirty
days to offload all of his clients before his license
to practice law was suspended. But by the time I
(03:28):
finished picking apart the congressional candidate's conspiracy theory podcast appearances,
I had run out of time and we never got
to the second guy. And I paired those two seemingly
unconnected stories because they started in the same place. They're
both still living with the consequences of a trip they
took to Charlottesville in August of twenty seventeen. It might
(03:54):
seem like a strange preoccupation to you listener, how often
a story that's winding its way in and out of
side stories. We'll wind up here. I'm sure you've noticed
comes up a lot, even if it's only in passing.
Almost every one of these stories has some thread that
(04:17):
connects it to Charlottesville, something that connects it to the
Unite the Right rally here in August of twenty seventeen.
If you hadn't noticed it before, I'm sure you will now.
It's always there. Gerald Drake, the Confederate reenactor who went
to prison for threatening his former friends. He got the
(04:39):
idea to pretend the bomb threats were from Antifa because
he saw pictures of protesters in Black Bloc on the
news after Unite the Right. Those fake grassroots marchigainst. Sharia
rallies were organized by many of the same men who
were planning the Unite the Right rally later that same summer.
The featured speaker at the American Freedom Party conference earlier
(05:02):
this year were both men who had led their respective
organizations on the ground here in Charlottesville in twenty seventeen.
At a twenty eighteen Brightbart News town hall, the man
asking Anne Coulter about white genocide was the leader of
a group that organized Unite the right over and over
(05:24):
and over again. In all of these seemingly unrelated places
and times. These stories are all connected, and it's not
a coincidence. Part of that, to be fair, is that
I live here. My own interest in figuring out how
(05:46):
someone ends up marching in the streets at a Nazi
rally started here. It was these guys in particular that
sparked my interest in understanding the concept of the weird
little guy as I write about them today. I have
spent years reconstructing those events and trying to understand the
(06:07):
men who marched here. That then led to a need
to understand the groups they came with, which led to
a need to understand where those groups came from and
what preceded them. And it's been one long rabbit hole
that I haven't dug myself back out of for more
than eight years. So that's definitely part of why it
comes up so often. It is what I know best.
(06:31):
But truthfully, everything is connected, and that rally in twenty
seventeen is a central node. It comes up all the
time because everyone was there. It was the largest and
most violent public gathering of white supremacists in the United
States in decades. It was a pivotal moment in our
(06:55):
collective understanding of political violence, and it didn't come out
of nowhere. Every story I write about the present has
a very clear relationship to that day, because the guy
was probably there. But even in stories about the distant past,
it's there, like the ghost of Nazi rallies yet to come.
(07:21):
Just recently, I spent two months writing about the men
whose lives intersected with the death of American Nazi Party
leader George Lincoln Rockwell. Those stories mostly took place in
the nineteen sixties, but that weekend in August fifty years
later kept Elboyan's way into the story. That kind of
(07:41):
white power march owed quite a bit to Rockwell, just
in terms of the ideological lineage of that kind of event,
but it's more than that. Some of his old friends
were actually there. Decades after Rockwell's death, the man who
still keeps the Nazis' ashes in a white urn on
a swastika shrine drove halfway across the country to be here,
(08:05):
and he'd told reporters that Rockwell would have been pleased
to see it. So while it is a funny coincidence
that Tyler Diykes and Augustus Invictus both became unemployable on
October twenty second, twenty twenty five. It's not a coincidence
that they both attended the rally in twenty seventeen and
(08:27):
back in twenty seventeen. Tyler Dykes was just part of
the crowd. He was some teenage nobody. Augustus Invictus, on
the other hand, was here as a headline speaker. He
had been part of the core group of organizers and
was at the time a member of a group called
the Fraternal Order of Alt Knights, which was a short
(08:51):
lived subset of proud boys who were particularly committed to
engaging in violence. And the night before the main event
to take place, they were both in the crowd lining
up for the tiki torch march at the University of Virginia.
There were hundreds of them there that night, torches in hand,
(09:12):
chanting as they marched through the university grounds and then
encircled a small group of counter protesters at the base
of the Thomas Jefferson Statue. But I've told you that
(09:42):
part of the story before. This is an update. Of
the hundreds of torch marchers, only twelve were ever charged
under the Virginia law that makes intimidating someone with a
burning object of felony. Tyler Dykes and Augustus and Vici
were two of those unlucky twelve. Of those twelve, five
(10:05):
pleaded guilty without taking it to trial. Tyler Dykes, of course,
along with Colton Fears and his brother William Fears, and
a pair of gigantic redheads from Texas named Billy Williams
and will Smith. Another four took plea agreements that reduced
their charge to misdemeanor disorderly conduct, Ryan Roy, Jamie Troutman, Dallas, Medina,
(10:30):
and Patriot Front founder Thomas Rousseau. One of the twelve
got lucky. Jacob Dix took his chances at trial, and
the out of town's special prosecutor handling his case fumbled
it so badly that jurors who watched video footage of
the crime couldn't reach a verdict and it ended in
(10:52):
a mistrial. Augustus and Victus and a former marine named
Vassilios Pistols were both convicted at trial. And I think
I will come back to some of these cases down
the road, but today we're just talking about Invictus. As
far as trials go, this one was as close to
(11:14):
a slam dunk as I've ever seen. The charge requires
that the defendant burned an object, that they did it
in a public place, that their intent was to intimidate someone,
and that the way they went about it would make
a reasonable person afraid of death or bodily injury. In
(11:35):
this case, the defendant himself provided the best piece of evidence,
a thirty minute video that he live streamed from his
phone during the march.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
Now we all live here at University of Virginia at
the Torchlight Rally, high energy, as you can tell, high tea,
very high tea.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Today.
Speaker 3 (11:59):
We all got our tour on. Somebody forgot the pitchforks
at home, so all we got is torches. So we'll
flip the camera around. You got antipo up there on
the hill.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
The video starts in the field where the crowd assembled,
and it follows the march through the university grounds. The
narrator is in good spirits for much of it. He's
laughing as the men around him are working themselves into
a frenzy. And for most of the march there are
these isolated verbal encounters with individual people they pass on
(12:38):
their route, but the campus is pretty empty. But as
the march reaches the top of the stairs at the
rotunda and begins to walk back down the steps into
the plaza on the other side, the marchers know they
aren't alone anymore.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
It's like a Disney l where he gets in the ride.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
That way.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
That's Augustus and Victus. Just as the counter protesters and
the plaza come into view, he says, it's like a
Disney ride. He's comparing this to the moment on a
roller coaster where you're at the top of the hill
looking down and you feel that rush of excitement knowing
you're about to get to the best part of the ride.
(13:46):
And the other voice, the one telling those counter protesters
to look out, telling them they're outnumbered, that's Daniel Borden.
He was never charged for this night, but he would
eventually serve a few years in prison for the violent
assault he committed the next morning. And as the video continues,
(14:07):
the marchers fill the little plaza. You can see the
crowd consciously and intentionally form a ring around the statue,
around the people who are now trapped at its base.
It wasn't an accident, it wasn't organic it was the plan.
(14:29):
You can hear Richard Spencer's bodyguard directing the marchers standing
right next to Invictus.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
Why why, Hi, why drop on this way, Block the
eyes off, fill it in, block them off, trap them
(14:57):
and after the rally Augustus Invictus may no secret of
how he felt about it.
Speaker 2 (15:02):
He loved it, no regrets.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
So you know, the torchlight route, it was gorgeous, It
was beautiful. The entire thing was an aesthetic and I
regret nothing about it. It was perfectly done, It was
falsely executed, and I would do it again.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
So, like I said, kind of a slam dunk starts
by joking about how he has to make do with
a torch because he doesn't have a pitchfork, marching with
a crowd chanting explicitly racist, xenophobic, and anti Semitic slogans
all along the route, seeing the counter protesters already standing
in that public place, and making the conscious choice to
(15:47):
surround them, continuing to hold that line as other members
of the crowd engage in violence against the people you've trapped,
ratifying the actions and the intent after the fact by
saying you have no regrets, and you do it again.
Testimony from one of those trapped counter protesters who says
he feared for his life that night. It's pretty clear cut,
(16:10):
and the jury thought so too. Augustus Invictus was convicted
by a jury on that felony charge in Virginia in
(16:31):
October of twenty twenty four. Coincidentally, it was the same
week that Tyler Dykes reported to federal prison to begin
serving his sentence for his January sixth conviction. But Augustus
and Victus did not report to jail. He didn't have to.
He had been out on bond since his arrest in
(16:52):
the summer of twenty twenty three, and he was allowed
to return home again after his conviction in January of
twenty twenty The judge sentenced him to five years, but
suspended the majority of that time, ordering him to serve
just nine months and two weeks in the local jail.
But again, he didn't go to jail. He went home.
(17:18):
It's not that unusual to allow a defendant to delay
their report date. It gives them a little bit of
time to get their affairs in order. You don't get
remanded directly into custody in most cases if you're out
on bond already at the time of sentencing. There's not
much harm in letting you go home that day, and
(17:38):
his attorney made it very clear from the moment the
verdict was in that they planned to appeal, so it
was no surprise when they asked for an appeal bond,
which the judge granted, allowing him to continue to kick
out that report date while he was appealing his conviction.
So all year checked in from time to time. I
(18:01):
just added it to my mental list of dozens of
other ongoing little matters that I check in on when
I'm sitting at my computer. The sentencing order was finally
entered in March, followed by the defense filings for their
appeal to the State Court of Appeals, and he remained
out on bond, and he kept practicing law. Despite rules
(18:25):
governing the practice of law in Florida that specify no
uncertain terms that suspension from the bar is automatic and
immediate following a felony conviction, it didn't happen. The months
dragged on. The appellate courts moved pretty slowly, but there
was no indication that the Florida Bar intended to enforce
(18:47):
their own rules. He continued practicing law for over a
year after his conviction at trial. Again, the rules regulating
the Florida Bar are remarkably straightforward on this subject, which
isn't always a given from a rule book written by lawyers.
(19:07):
If a lawyer in Florida is convicted of a felony,
they are suspended from the bar immediately and automatically, even
if they're appealing. The Conviction Rule three to seven point two,
sub Section J says the suspension will remain in effect
during any appeal of the determination or judgment of guilt
(19:30):
of a felony offense in the criminal proceeding. But I
guess someone of the bar was feeling generous because he
was still practicing law. Just weeks after his own felony conviction.
He was in federal court at the sentencing hearing of
one of his clients, a January sixth defendant named Anna Letchnowski.
(19:52):
Based on available records, it's not clear how much of
her forty five day sentence she ever served. The President's
pardons came not long after this. Augustus and Victus worked
on Lichnowski's case as co counsul with his own lawyer.
That's a confusing arrangement. Let me explain. She was indicted
(20:15):
on January sixth charges in the summer of twenty twenty three,
not long after Augustus. In Victus's own arrest here in Virginia.
He then hired a Maryland attorney named Terrell Roberts to
work on his criminal case, and a few weeks later
they were both hired by Miss Lichnowski in her case. Now,
(20:37):
Invictus isn't a member of the bar in DC Federal Court,
and he hadn't shown any particular interest in j six
cases before this, but it wasn't Terrell roberts first January
sixth case, And given Invictus's apparently pretty dire financial situation,
(20:58):
it kind of looks like he may have been paying
his own lawyer by providing legal assistance on one of
his other cases. But that's just me spitballing. I can't
prove that. In the two years between his arrest and
June of twenty twenty three and his suspension from the
bar in October of twenty twenty five, he had a
(21:19):
small but steady case load. Aside from the January sixth
cases he worked with his own lawyer, he had a
handful of clients with domestic violence charges, a few divorce cases,
a dui case, pretty typical stuff. Perhaps there were others,
but I don't have access to any fancy legal databases.
(21:42):
I just love wasting my own time enough that I
checked in with half the county court clerks in the
state of Florida, according to statements he offered the court here.
Some of those clients were referred to him through his
volunteer work with his church. Obviously I couldn't tell you
which case, as he worked pro bono, but it does
(22:02):
seem to be true that at least some of these
clients he's represented in the last two years were unconnected
to white nationalist political causes, and that's noteworthy. I mean,
today isn't the day we get all the way into it?
Do you have my word? I'll cover the whole story eventually,
but his career as an attorney has been a real
(22:26):
roller coaster. After graduating from law school in twenty eleven,
he passed the bar in several states in twenty twelve
and was eventually admitted to practice in Massachusetts, Illinois, New York,
and Florida. He was just shy of thirty, a proud
father of four married and settling in as a defense
(22:47):
attorney at his father's law firm outside of Orlando. By
twenty thirteen, he was divorced. That spring, he dropped all
of his clients and quit his job at his dad's law.
He sent a letter to some of his former law
school classmates announcing that he was a powerful, successful genius,
(23:08):
but he'd grown bored of society and was going to
leave it behind. And that's not an exaggeration. So many
people got this letter, and the letter was so fucking
weird that it was published in full and roundly mocked.
In an article by Elie Mastahl on the blog Above
the Law, the letter is addressed to the gray world
(23:33):
of man. He's boastful, He's accomplished everything a man could
dream of. He's better than you, and he wants you
to know that. It reads, in part, witness Yee, the
glory of my life. At twenty nine years of age,
I have four children, each of whom should be the
(23:54):
envy of every parent in the world. I have attained
a baccalaureate degree in philosophy with honorsained a doctorate in
law cum laude. I have acquired licenses in the profession
of law in the states of New York, Illinois, and Florida.
I am scheduled to acquire two more such licenses in
North Carolina and Massachusetts. I am editor in chief of
(24:14):
a poetry journal. I run an independent publishing company. I
have opened my own law office in downtown Orlando. I
am an MBA candidate, and I have accomplished a few
other things that will remain off the record for now.
I am of genius, intellect and cultured, well educated and creative,
well mannered and refined. I am God's gift to humankind
(24:36):
where the English language is concerned. I also happen to
have a basic knowledge of Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, and Italian.
I am musical and artistic. I am athletic and possessed
of militant self discipline. I am many other things. I
have a Cadillac and a poodle, multiple computers, and a
personal library. I live in an apartment downtown right across
(24:58):
the street from the courthouse. I have been to Paris
and Vancouver, to Cairo and Dubrovnik, to Mexico City and Syracusa.
I dress better than all of you, pronounce my words perfectly,
and have a winning professional handshake. I am everything you
ever wanted to be. I mean, can you argue with that?
(25:21):
A Cadillac and a poodle and an apartment. But he's
sick of it. He's so sick of this world, and
the world makes him sick. He has nothing but contempt
for it. He renounces his law license, his diplomas, his Catholicism,
his citizenship, and all of his material possessions. He wants
(25:43):
none of it. He's walking away, and he ends the
letter with this, hear, ye, my final words in peacetime.
I have prophesied for years that I was born for
a great war. If I did not witness the coming
of the Second American Civil War, I would begin it myself.
(26:05):
Mark well, that day is fast coming upon you. On
the new moon of May, I shall disappear into the wilderness.
I will return bearing revolution, or I will not return
at all. War be unto the ends of the earth.
Augustus Stulenvictus or Land of Florida, USA, twentieth of April
(26:27):
twenty thirteen. Some of the people who got this letter
emailed it to a funny blog about news in the
(26:48):
legal profession, but some of them called the FBI. According
to his self published memoir about this time in his life.
He then drove out to the mountains and Carolina wrote
a goodbye letter to his family, which he left in
his car, hoping whoever found the abandoned vehicle would drop
it into a mailbox for him. He then spent several
(27:11):
months hitchhiking across the country before returning home and resuming
the life he'd just so dramatically renounced. He went back
to being a lawyer from twenty fourteen until twenty seventeen,
and then he publicly announced that he was retiring from
law to focus on politics. And by politics he meant
(27:31):
both his run for US Senate as well as a
punishing schedule of headlining white supremacist rallies all over the country.
A year later, though, in twenty eighteen, he announced that
he was unretiring from law to focus on taking clients
he referred to as political dissidents. He wanted to be
a movement lawyer, and he tried. He took on a
(27:56):
couple of cases and he'd lost them all, but he
made a good public show of being the hard rights
go to guy for legal advice. He ghost wrote lawsuits
for Nazis who were angry at the city of Charlottesville.
He sent a cease and desist letter to a journalist
on behalf of members of Adam Waffen, and he founded
a nonprofit that solicited donations for members of the Rise
(28:18):
Above movement who faced federal charges for beating counter protesters
at several rallies in twenty seventeen, And like I said,
I don't think you won a single case. By twenty twenty,
he was dealing with his own problems. His father was
arrested for sex trafficking. He was arrested for domestic violence,
(28:41):
although the jury could not convict him at trial because
the victim failed to appear. I think of him primarily
as a movement lawyer, but that was really such a
brief period of his life. Financial affidavits he filed in
various cases of his own during this time period show
(29:01):
he was reporting just one thousand dollars a month in
income from his law office, And after twenty twenty, a
surprising number of the cases I can find him working
on are just divorce and domestic violence cases against guys.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
He knows.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
He's not trying to fight for white civil rights at
the Supreme Court. He's just trying to make his own
child support payments when he was arrested on the charge
out of Virginia. In June of twenty twenty three, he
filed a motion on behalf of one of his divorce
clients from jail, requesting a modification of the case schedule.
(29:40):
The first few paragraphs of the motion are pretty standard.
You know, we need more time to conduct these depositions,
We need more time for discovery. Both parties are comfortable
extending the deadline. And then, almost as an afterthought, he
adds quote respondent's counsel was arrested and detained on false
charges in relation to a Virginia political rally and is
(30:02):
currently an Orange County awaiting extradition to Virginia. Respondent's counsel
anticipates being released by the end of July. That motion
was granted, and he was indeed out on bond by
the end of July twenty twenty three, but not before
he missed a hearing in a domestic violence case against
(30:23):
one of his other clients. That particular client must not
have been too upset that his lawyer didn't show him
to court, because that man, after being convicted of strangulation
and witness tampering, hired Augustus and Victus again, this time
to represent him in a movement case. Jason Brown was
(30:44):
one of four members of the anti Semitic group, the
Goham Defense League, who were arrested for hanging swastika banners
from a highway overpass near Orlando. One of those four defendants,
Amanda Rains, cut her losses and pled guilty. The the
other three are still hoping to depose Governor Ron DeSantis
as part of their case. They feel the state of
(31:07):
Florida is being unconstitutionally unfair to Nazis. Aside from those
Goham Defense League cases, though, he wasn't really trying to
bolster his reputation as a movement lawyer by taking on
high profile white rights cases anymore. Being a movement lawyer
(31:27):
got him a lot of attention, but you can't pay
your rent if you only take movement cases. And based
on a brief suspension of his driver's license, he was
getting behind on child support. Shortly after his arrest, he
was working on one other white civil rights case. He
(31:48):
had a client who felt he'd been fired from his
job as a baggage handler for American Airlines. Simply for
being white. But in Victus messed up the paperwork and
missed a deadline to correct it the appeal, so it
was dismissed a technicality, I guess, But I think even
if he'd filed the paperwork correctly, the Eleventh Circuit would
(32:11):
not have ruled in their favor. I mean, first of all,
the client hadn't sought the proper administrative remedy through his
union and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. But even if
you set all of that aside, even if everything had
been done correctly procedurally, I think the whole situation had
less to do with anti white racism and more to
(32:31):
do with the fact that you can't refer to your
black coworker using the N word in the work group chat.
So that case was dismissed. And these swastika banner cases
were moving pretty slowly and Augustus and Victus seemed mostly
focused on his own problems. There was an ongoing battle
in the court with his second ex wife, a custody
(32:53):
battle in New Jersey with a different woman, his own
lawsuit against various Florida law enforcement agencies alleging a conspiracy
against him, his own lawsuit against that woman in New Jersey,
his lawsuit against a different woman that he had a
sexual relationship with during his marriage, His attempts to get
his computer back from a police evidence locker because he
(33:15):
was using it in the living room at his dad's
house when that house got raided the day his father
was arrested for sex trafficking. I mean, he had a
lot going on. Even one of those divorce cases he
was working on was a little bit personal. He took
great offense when opposing counsel accused him of having a
romantic relationship with his client, but if you read the
(33:38):
filings closely, he doesn't actually deny it. But he also
doesn't mention that in addition to being her divorce lawyer,
he features prominently in her upcoming wedding as the groom.
So he's busy focusing on his own problems, which is
(34:03):
why I was so surprised to see his name on
a brand new lawsuit filed in June of twenty twenty five.
That lawsuit was the subject of an episode of this
show back in June. The complaint is, I mean, you
can listen to the episode, but this short version is
it is consistent with the kinds of legal work I've
(34:24):
seen from him in the past. Right, he doesn't win cases,
But in Enrique Tario, Ethan Norden, Zachary Real, Dominic Pozzola,
and Joe Biggs want the United States government to pay
the Proud Boys one hundred million dollars as an apology
for being so mean to them about the whole sedition thing.
(34:45):
It's a stupid lawsuit, but we live in stupid times,
so there is a non zero chance that the government
will simply nod and agree to a settlement that puts
millions of dollars into the hands of the leadership of
an extremist organization. The betting odds are on that specifically,
but I imagine the kind of cut of that settlement
(35:05):
their lawyer would get made it a pretty attractive gamble. Unfortunately,
for Augustus and Victus, he'll never see a dime of
any potential payout to the Proud Boys, at least, not
anything official, nothing on the books as far as attorney's fees.
He was initially removed from the case back in June
(35:26):
when the judge noticed that he wasn't allowed to practice
in the federal court after his conviction, but He was
inexplicably able to get himself readmitted to the bar in
the Middle District of Florida a month later, but that
victory was short lived. He was finally formally suspended from
practicing in the state of Florida in October, and he
(35:49):
was forced to withdraw representation from all of his active cases,
including this one. The Florida bar finally made their move
in October after the Virginia Court of Appeals dismissed his
appeal in his criminal case. I didn't bother asking the
State Court of Appeals for a copy because I have
(36:09):
a pretty good idea what arguments they intended to use
on appeal based on the hours and hours of rambling
about what I sat through before the trial. I'm curious, though,
how the appellate judge would have responded to the powerful
argument that a lit torch is not a burning object.
(36:31):
I wonder if they planned to put on their PowerPoint
presentation about transitive verbs again. I found it tremendously unconvincing
in pre trial hearings, but unfortunately for every one, the
appeal wasn't even heard. The Virginia Court of Appeals did
not end up weighing in on whether or not a
wall of flames is free speech under the First Amendment,
(36:55):
or whether something that is on fire can be legally
said to be burning. Hearings on this matter before the
trial culminated in the prosecution putting the local fire marshal
on the stand to offer his expert opinion on whether
something that was previously on fire could be called burnt.
(37:16):
The fire marshal said yes for the record, but we
never did get a semi auititian, a linguist, a physicist,
or a poet to weigh in under oath on the
nature of fire. Ultimately, the appeal was filed improperly, something
of a theme in looking at a decade of Augustus
and Victus's practice of law. He and his attorney failed
(37:40):
to get their paperwork into the court on time, which
is an automatic dismissal. A subsequent petition for rehearing was
promptly denied, and there's no indication on the record that
he filed a petition for rehearing on bunk or a
petition to the State Supreme Court, And at this point
any deadline for those filings would have passed. So if
(38:01):
you're just looking at the State Court of Appeals case
management system online. This case is over, so I'm not
sure what he might have been referring to when he
told a judge in Florida last month that he still
expects to prevail in his appeal sometime in the spring
of twenty twenty six.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
What appeal.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
I can't imagine that telling an outright lie to the
court is something you would do if your goal is
to avoid permanent disbarment. So maybe he's still got a
trick up his sleeve in the appeal. The Court of
Appeals doesn't have the best online docket, so I guess
it's possible that there's something there that I just don't see.
(38:46):
The automatic dismissal for missing a deadline is a bit harsh,
so maybe that's the point of contention. Maybe there is
some process for appealing that decision in particular. It is
unclear to me, and I did ask several practicing attorneys
in Virginia and they couldn't tell me either, So I'll
(39:07):
just keep waiting. Augustus in Victus is due back in
court in Albemarle County, Virginia in February of twenty twenty
six for a hearing that if there's any sanity to
this process should result in the judge setting a date
for him to begin serving his sentence. Even if he
does find a way to get a second bite at
the Apple and the State Court of Appeals, there's no
(39:29):
reason the County Court should continue to extend that appeal Pond,
considering the appeal has been dead since October. He's lucky
enough to have gotten the hearing scheduled so many months out.
The court granted his request to schedule it after January ninth.
He was so insistent about that, not just in January
(39:51):
or in February. It had to be after January ninth.
And he didn't say why. I'm not sure why he
wouldn't just tell the judge he couldn't afford to miss
his own wedding. When he does finally begin his nine
and a half month sentence, he can expect to serve
about six months of it, typically, assuming he doesn't have
(40:12):
any conduct violations. For now, at least, he's still out
on bond and he can't practice law. With the wedding
just weeks away, it's probably too late to warn his
wife to be that Lake Rose makes great enameled cast iron,
but their stainless steel pots are really nothing special. You're
(40:34):
just paying for the brand you should have registered for
the old clad if you ask me. Then again, if
you'd ask me, I probably would have advised against most
of what's going on here. With jail on the horizon
and his career in shambles, Perhaps he too will pivot
(40:55):
to politics now that he has nothing else to do,
and it wouldn't actually be his first time. But I'll
save the story of his Senate campaign for another day.
His suspension from the bar was an update I couldn't
let pass us by without telling you about it affects
that proud boy lawsuit that there was a whole episode about.
(41:16):
But this is just a tiny peek into the life
of a very weird little guy. And if I don't
end up writing at least a couple of episodes about him,
I'll have wasted all those hours I spent tracking down
a physical copy of the novel he self published under
a pseudonym back when he still thought he was a
very powerful wizard. Next year, I promise weird little guys
(41:58):
to see production of Polsone Me and iHeartRadio. It's researched,
written and recorded by me. Molly Coner. Our executive producers
are Sophie Lichtman and Robert Evans. The show is edited
by the wildly talented Rory Gaikan. The theme music was
composed by Brad Dickard. You can email me at Ridle
Guys Podcast at gmail dot com. I will definitely read it,
but I probably won't answer it. It's nothing personal. You
(42:19):
can exchange conspiracy theories about the show with other listeners
on the Weird Little Guys subreddit. Just don't post anything
that's going to make you one of my Weird Little
Guys
Host
Molly Conger
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Betrayal: Weekly
Betrayal Weekly is back for a brand new season. Every Thursday, Betrayal Weekly shares first-hand accounts of broken trust, shocking deceptions, and the trail of destruction they leave behind. Hosted by Andrea Gunning, this weekly ongoing series digs into real-life stories of betrayal and the aftermath. From stories of double lives to dark discoveries, these are cautionary tales and accounts of resilience against all odds. From the producers of the critically acclaimed Betrayal series, Betrayal Weekly drops new episodes every Thursday. Please join our Substack for additional exclusive content, curated book recommendations and community discussions. Sign up FREE by clicking this link Beyond Betrayal Substack. Join our community dedicated to truth, resilience and healing. Your voice matters! Be a part of our Betrayal journey on Substack. And make sure to check out Seasons 1-4 of Betrayal, along with Betrayal Weekly Season 1.