It Could Happen Here - The Trial Over 'Unite the Right'

Episode Date: November 9, 2021

We talk with Molly Conger, a Charlottesville journalist, over the ongoing legal battle over the 2017 Unite the Right rally. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 this is the latter case because today I'm talking with my friend and admired colleague 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 voice. You do. You would be great. I would love to hear you talking in NPR about how it's rad that those people broke the windows on those police cars or whatever. No, I can't be allowed in respectable spaces. I can't be allowed there. They let me talk on a panel at Harvard one time

and I accidentally said fuck in front of a bunch of people. I mean, I assume Harvard students know a fuck word or two. They know that one. Speaking of fuck words, there's a couple of fuck words who are under trial right now for inciting mass violence that led to human death and suffering. You want to you want to give us the overview? We're talking today about, you know, the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017

that led to three deaths. One is the result of direct violence. Heather Heyer, who was murdered, murdered by the fascist James Field, currently in prison for forever. Yeah, forever. Yeah, forever. That, you know, his trial concluded a while ago, but there has been churning through the legal system,

a trial against Richard Spencer, Jason Kessler, who was the main organizer, Cantwell. There's other plaintiffs, right? Oh, goodness gracious yeah a lot of a lot of fascists about you know all of the things that they did the fact that they clearly intended this to be a violent 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 uh molly you want to take it from here i think i've introduced the situation there's a trial going on you have been listening to every day of it and covering it on twitch very ably um and so i just kind of wanted to catch up with you you also wrote an article in slate with our friend emily Gorchinsky about what's like largely the jury

selection of the trial. So I was wondering if you could just kind of give us an overview of what's happened so far, if your thoughts on it. Yeah, that seems good. Yeah. So just right at the outset, this is a civil trial, right? This is not a criminal trial. No one's going to jail at the end of this. Some of them are already in jail. The what's that the who's gal we call it the who's gal on the show that's the proper term who's yeah okay um some of them are already in jail obviously like you said james fields is serving 29 life sentences that's a lot of life that's a lot of life so he was he was charged in in virginia state court by the commonwealth of virginia he was convicted at trial of first degree murder and several counts of aggravated malicious

wounding um he was so that trial happened in 2018 he actually went to trial for that um but then he pleaded guilty in federal courts he was charged in two separate courts um for the same underlying events and in federal court he pleaded guilty to 29 federal hate crimes. He pleaded guilty to hate crimes. So there's no debate about whether these were hate crimes, right? Yeah. And he pleaded guilty to avoid the death penalty because a hate crime murder is a capital crime. So in this lawsuit, right, this civil lawsuit against Deep Breath, Jason kessler richard spencer christopher campbell

james alex field vanguard america andrew england moonbase holdings robert asmador ray nathan domigo elliot klein uh identity europa matthew parent matthew heimbach uh traditionalist worker party michael hill michael tubbs league of the south jeff scoop now the national socialist movement nationalist front augustus olin victus returnal order of the alt knights uh mike pinevich loyal white knights of the kkk east coast knights of the kkk east coast knights of the alt-knights, Mike Pinovich, loyal white knights 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?

Several of those parties have been dismissed from the suit. Augustus Invictus defaulted. Pinovich got dismissed early on. Does that mean – the fact that he defaulted, does that mean he was like, yes? Right. He offered no defense yeah is that 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 in and out of jail right he abducted his wife at gunpoint um i think

he's out of jail now um but he's had some personal problems he's had some personal problems yeah so the the underlying claim of the lawsuit is a um section 1985 complaint a conspiracy to deprive He's had some personal problems. It's a party to the suit. So the lawsuit was brought by nine plaintiffs who were harmed, people who got hurt at the rally. Most of the plaintiffs were physically injured in the car attack, although not all of them. But these are people who are seeking damages, right? Like for all the emotional weight, all the sort of social ramifications, fundamentally this is a case about damages. So the jury is going to say, okay, these people were harmed. Do we believe they were harmed by a conspiracy to commit acts of violence?

Conspiracy to commit racially motivated acts of violence, right? So all of those elements have to be proved. Did the KKK guys want to do racial violence when they assaulted people? Was there a conspiracy? Was it motivated by racial animus? And were overt acts of violence committed? And did those acts of violence harm these people in a way that entitles them to damages? That's all the jury has to decide. Should be an open-shut case. Not a lot, no way. But it does seem like kind of an open and shut case. It does, right? So I guess if there are people out there who are not familiar with the events of that day,

a lot of alt-right groups, you know, overt neo-Nazi organizations, the literal Klan, the literal American Nazi Party, like neo-Confederate secessionist groups. David Duke was there. David Duke was there. David Duke, who Elliot Klein described as an ideological grandfather when he was asking other organizers if he can invite him. These guys came together. They came to Charlottesville. They brawled in the streets. They beat people. They hit them with shields. A literal Klan wizard fired his gun at a black man while screaming, die, N-word. Well, now, OK, it seems like you're reaching a bit to call that racially motivated well that's something they're trying to litigate now right so amazing you're probably familiar with the video of deandre harris being beaten nearly to death by members of several

different hate groups right so one of the guys that beat him was a tdvp member one of them was a league of the south member and they worked together to beat this young man nearly to death while he was lying on the ground. And so that today they were talking about like, well, can we really say that was racially motivated? You know, can we really say? Can we really say? Yeah. Yeah, I think we can. I think we can. You know, his mother has been on podcasts since his conviction. I'm referring to Jacob Goodwin, the TWP member, the man who used a TWP riot shield provided to him by Matthew Heimbach to beat this young man. His mother goes on Nazi podcasts still to describe how her son is a martyr for the white cause. So there's no ambiguity. But where are you getting racially motivated from that, mom?

Right. Like there's a picture of her with her arm around her son. Her son is like seven feet tall. He's a giant boy. She's got her arm around her large adult son, and he's wearing a T-shirt with a giant picture of George Lincoln Rockwell on it. Ah. Ah. You love the deep cuts.

So, you know, at Billy Roper's Christmas party. Yeah. 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 court proceedings 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 voir dire process you can see how a jury gets chosen. You can go trial hopping,

get wasted, you know? Free entertainment. As long as you sit quietly, they can't make you leave. That's right. It's like a library. It's very discouraging because the whole point is to pick jurors who've never encountered reality. You pick people who don't have any opinions, right? Because you want them to be able to be impartial. And the best way to make sure your jury is going to be impartial is to pick 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 is an opinion that you already have, right? The ability to not have an opinion about that. So jury selection took three days because they had to go through this process of speaking

to each juror individually. Usually they'll do it in batches where they ask questions of people in batches. 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. And they chose jurors who didn't have opinions about the existence of racism in the United States. OK, that seems unbiased. Again, it's this thing you keep seeing where it's like, well, we can't let people have a bias. So it has to be people who have never heard of white supremacy, which is like, well, 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 awareness of white supremacy and suddenly there's weight on it you know it's sorry it's very frustrating i know you know it's frustrating i mean yeah i shouldn't it was frustrating to sit sit through listening

to them to ask people you know because they had to fill out a questionnaire ahead of time so you so they can sort of sift through obvious no's. And one of the questions was, you know, how do you feel about, you know, how concerned are you about these different kinds of prejudice? You know, prejudice against Black people, prejudice against Hispanic people, prejudice against Jewish people, or 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. Oh, good. 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? Well, because it's not real. Yeah, because I've never seen it in my entire life. But, okay. But we seated a jury. We did seat a jury. And there's always concern 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.

There is a guy on the jury who said that in high school he was the victim of a racially motivated attack by a Samoan person because they didn't like white people. I wonder what that person was doing slash saying black people who believe that they have a right to exist without being subjected to racism not impartial can't be on the jury uh but a white guy who says he was the victim of a hate crime because someone didn't like howley's jury he's on the jury god so people talking about like i don't like it when folks not from my island come here and fuck shit up and make it expensive yeah that's anti-white racism he was living in hawaii incredible incredible so you know it could be a worse 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. So Cantwell and Spencer don't have lawyers.

Right. Well, yeah. OK. Oh, right. Because Cantwell Cantwell is for people who aren't aware, Cantwell is representing himself. And correct me if I'm wrong here, but he started by acknowledging the old saying that a person who represents themselves has a fool as a lawyer, but then said, but I'm not a fool in this case. 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. And unbelievable, just incredible. And I didn't even stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night.

Oh my God, really? He seriously made a Holiday Inn Express joke while he was on, 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's staying. Yeah, I mean, because he's in prison for sexually or not for harassing and threatening and blackmailing another Nazi, right? Yeah, yeah. He was transported here from the federal prison in Marion, Illinois, where he is a guest until next Christmas. So he had filed motions to exclude the fact that he's currently incarcerated, as is his

right, right? Like if you are a. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I don't think that's bad. In a criminal case or in a civil case, it is your right to have the jury not see you in a jumpsuit. And I respect that. I think that's good.

That's important. Yeah. So he went to great lengths to make sure that the jury not see you in a jumpsuit. And I respect that. I think that's good. That's important. Yeah. So he went to great lengths 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 courthouse. All very reasonable. And no one was going to get to talk about it. But he brought it up in his own opening statement. He told them, hey, 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 fuck up. He's only in prison because he emailed the FBI or recording him doing the crime that he's in prison for. He's really a very cunning man. But I think, you know, so as much as those crimes aren't relevant to this case, I think it is very relevant to his trial strategy, right? That he has this belief that all the things he did that were wrong,

they were right. Actually, he just needs to explain to us why he did them and then we'll understand, right? He's in prison because he tried to talk his way out of a thing that he did that was wrong by telling everyone that he did do it. Yes, I did it because I had to. You didn't have to make an extortionate threat to rape another man's wife in front of their children.

You didn't actually have to do that. Yeah, that's really I mean, I would I might argue and perhaps I'm an extremist, but there's no situation in which you would ever have to do that. Nobody made you email the FBI about how you did that. Yeah. But you did. I think the FBI would have told you that was a bad idea. I mean, there's some snarky stuff in some of the affidavits about how, like, he called the Keene Police Department trying to tattletale on other people so often that they were tired

of taking his calls. Unbelievable. What an amazing man. tattletale on other people so often that they were tired of taking his calls unbelievable what an amazing man like he's he's piece of shit but he is legitimately an incredible person i mean if you 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 yeah his law he paid his lawyer in guns and then he ran out of guns and had to his lawyer stopped working for him yeah he doesn't have a guns and then he ran out of guns and his lawyer stopped working for him. Yeah, so he doesn't have a lawyer anymore because he ran out of guns to pawn.

Unbelievable. Although I guess he can't anymore because now he's a convicted felon. Also, I gotta say, running out of guns to pawn for your lawyer, it's pretty cucked. He even had to sell the bucket of loose bullets he used to keep as a prop on his desk. I mean, really devastating stuff. You're down to the rails when you're doing that. Really the bottom of the barrel. So he's proceeding pro se, which unfortunately, unfortunately for everyone involved, means he gets to talk a lot.

A lot, a lot, a lot. Which means he gets to cross-examine his own witnesses, right? So the first two witnesses the plaintiffs put on were two of their plaintiffs, right? Two young people who were injured in these events. The first witness they put on, Natalie, is a UVA student who had her skull fractured in the car attack. She had to learn how to walk again. She had to see a neurologist to retrain her eyes to track movement

i mean she was very badly injured um and so she testified at length about the damage that was done to her because again this is a case about damages so the jury needs to learn who is this person what happened to them what did it cost them physically mentally emotionally financially um because what they're going to be asked to do is to put a dollar amount on it. So they had to meet her and hear about her injuries and hear about her motivation for being there. You know, she's a young queer Latina woman. She's the first college student in her family. You know, she's a very impressive young woman. And she was very composed on the stand as awful as the content was. But then every single one of the defendants gets to cross-examine her. Richard Spencer gets to cross-examine her.

Christopher Cantwell gets to cross-examine her. James Kalenich, who took the case. He's Kessler, D'Amigo, and Identity Europa's lawyer, James Kalenich. He'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. Kalenich gets to cross-examine her.

Matt Heimbach's new lawyer, Josh Smith, used to be the campaign spokesman for Paul Nealon. Paul Nealon was endorsed by Trump at one point in his run for Congress and is 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 deer Molly. You know, he spent all day posting pictures of a deer that he said that he named after me he said i named this deer molly you know he spent all day stalking it posting pictures of it posting pictures of his gun um and then he posted a picture of the deer staged like a lynching and then he spelled my name out in its entrails and posted pictures of that so you're just like a really normal guy paul Nealon. Yeah. Totally, completely with it. His campaign spokesperson when he ran for Congress was the Holocaust denying former Jew, Josh Smith. Josh Smith was born Daniel Nussbaum. He changed his name to hide his Jewish past. Oh, wow.

That is an old story among the Nazis. It's fascinating. We talked about the guy who invented sea monkeys. But yeah, it's basically the same case. And you know who else hides their identity? No. Okay. This was meant to be an ad plug.

Normally, Sophie would jump in and stop me from doing that. None of these advertisers. None of these advertisers are plaintiffs in the current case that you're covering. That's a guarantee. That is an absolute promise. David Duke is not about to sell you dick pills. No, no, no.

Although, he could use them. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America.

From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

We're back. All right, Molly. Sorry. Please continue. God, where were we? I got distracted thinking about David Duke trying to sell you dick pills. Yeah, that's not good for anybody. Right. So everybody gets to cross-examine the witness. Josh Smith is Heimbach's new lawyer. Kalenich

used to be a lot of these guys' lawyers. And then he sort of dropped them over time as they became uncooperative. There were all these motions to withdraw. Yeah. Kalenich used to be a lot of these guys' lawyers. And then he sort of dropped them over time as they became uncooperative. There were all these motions to withdraw. Kalenich slowly dropped clients over the last two years. He dropped Cantwell as a client because Cantwell wouldn't stop posting about hurting Roberta Kaplan. Right. Who's the lead counsel for the plaintiffs. Roberta Kaplan, famous jewish lesbian lawyer you know she was um on the uh usv windsor the the i'm losing it absolutely losing it the supreme court case

that gave us gay marriage right roberta caplan brought us gay marriage essentially yeah so she you know famous jewish lesbian that is a well-known portion of her identity and can't well kept posting um anti-semitic remarks about. And finally Kalenich was like, you're making it really hard to be your lawyer and you don't pay me. Um, and Kalenich dropped Heimbach as a client in 2019 because Heimbach just stopped answering his calls. Um,

great. Smart people. Yeah. So Matt Parrott, who's Matt Heimbach's father-in-law, but also the husband of the woman that he was sleeping with. This is complicated. There's a chart. There's a chart. Matt Heimbach and Matt Parrott, founders of the traditionalist worker party, best friends for a long time, fuck each other's wives, big problems, big problems for them. Yeah, the night of wrong wives.

The night of the wrong wives. So Matt Parrott was technically Matt Heimbach's father-in-law during the time period which Heimbach was fucking Parrott's wife. Very classy people. Not a great situation. So they lost their lawyer. Parrott 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 Parrot was like, hey, everyone in TWP, if you did any crimes, delete it. Right.

Delete your social media, delete your pictures. Like we weren't there. Right. Yeah. That's a crime. That's a crime. That is a crime. That is a crime right there.

But an interesting thing that we learned today that I don't think we did know before, in November 2018, so they played a recording of a conversation between Matt Heimbach and Christopher Cantwell. And this was during examination of Heimbach. So Heimbach was on the stand, and they're talking about, like, you know, you didn't produce Discovery. You said you lost your phone, this, that, and the other. You know, after you beat your wife, she threw away your phone. 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. Well, today we found out that he told Cantwell in 2018, so a year after the lawsuit was filed, when a lawsuit is filed against you, you have a legal obligation to not do things like this.

He told Cantwell that after a conversation with his lawyer, on the advice of his lawyer, he deleted those accounts. Oh. Oh, great. So there's just a record of him criming yeah that's a crime yeah it's 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 gonna get charged with anything for 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 lot of lawyers and but i am i am curious what with what frequency can perjury charges be sought in a civil case, right?

Yeah. It's still under oath. Like, it is still perjury. But how common is that to be pursued? Because they're perjuring. Yeah, they're for sure perjuring. They're perjuring. They're 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 a good chance they'll be right. You know, like Heimbach said, you know, when he was asked, have you ever provided security for Richard Spencer? And he said, no. Well, there's like 100 pictures of you doing that at multiple events. You know, they're claiming they don't know each other. Like, here's all these pictures of you guys hanging out. God, where else are we um yeah i'm curious i you know one thing that kind of especially because of the written house thing and we're actually we'll be talking to a mutual lawyer tomorrow night about or tomorrow

about the written house thing um every cool person shares the same lawyer. But yeah, because of that, I'm kind of curious, what sense do you get of this judge? There's no good judges. There's no good judges, but it could be worse. Yeah, I mean, I'm not saying like, yeah, but how is it? It could be a lot worse. You know, Trump appointed a shitload of federal judges pretty recently. Judge Moon is 85 years old.

He's a Clinton appointee. He's a Clinton appointee. So it could be worse. Could be worse. He's been on the bench, you know, since I was in elementary school. And he's very old. And he's a little bit hard of hearing but he's not stupid um and there's a lot of people i think who are really frustrated with some of the things he's allowing to happen

he's he's really allowing these these pro se defendants uh to sort of run roughshod over the procedure but you know like i said before we started recording it's really hard to apply. Your sense of how things are supposed to work doesn't really apply in court, right? There's a very rigid, sort of outdated set of rules and procedures, and they don't feel right. They don't feel logical or reasonable or fair, but there is a specific way that it works, and it is hard to watch, especially if you've never seen it before. And because of the emotionally fraught nature of this it's particularly frustrating to be to be listening on this line and saying like why are they allowed to do this to this witness well legally you can

cross-examine your witnesses even if you are the person who hurt them it's not a good system but it is how it works um but he's um and i also think there is there's concern about appellate issues there's concern about mistrial and so they're really going out of their way not to give anyone any excuse to say well this was not fair to me they're gonna say it anyway but they they're really letting them have a long leash in a way that feels very bad but at the same time i couldn't kind of understand it yeah um i wish they hadn't done so much holocaust denial like on on the record yeah that would be good um they put an expert on today who's um dr deborah libstadt 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 oh that's bleak oh my goodness that's

fucking bleak because they chose this jury based on them never having heard of jews you know my god yeah it's a bunch of like middle-aged people from green county who have never met a jewish person so they had to put on a professor to say okay when he says gas the k words we're talking about gas chambers gas chambers from the holocaust they didn't start out with gas chambers they started with mass shootings but it was too messy i mean she was literally recounting sort of the evolution from the ensigns group and you know shootings in the fields to the cuts of the gas chambers like we we had to talk all the way through it um because it seems unnecessary but again for the for the jury, it might be necessary.

And so when Asmodor, Robert Ray... You don't want to take anything for granted, you know? Yeah. Right. And you really have to sort of lay out these connections, right? Because the idea is you have to prove a conspiracy and you have to prove the conspiracy was racially motivated. And so when Asmodor is the racist wizard name

that Robert Ray uses when he writes for the Daily Stormer, when Asmodor keeps saying, we're going to gas the K-words, everyone knows what I mean when I say that, right? Yes. Yeah. Okay. He keeps saying, you know, the plan is to gas the K-words, you know, GTKRWN, gas the K-words race war now. He keeps saying, he keeps saying, he keeps saying it. And then the Torch March, he pepper saying keep saying it and 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

felonies in almerald county he's missing um so he says he's gonna do it then he does it and then afterwards he's on video saying yeah i gassed 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 yeah right um it like he's like you said it's pretty open and shut it's pretty straightforward a to b to c um you know we have these discord leaks um if you want to browse them they're on unicorn riot and almost immediately after the rally unicorn riot had these discord leaks um the entire server the charlesville 2.0 server where they planned this out where they're in the discord saying yeah it's going to be so great we're going to do so much

violence we're going to we're going to hurt people we're going to bring shields we're going to bring base really explicitly talking about the plan making jokes about hitting people with cars um now the entire discord will be admitted. It has been authenticated. They received another copy of it via subpoena directly from Discord. It's real. It's evidence, as much as Cantwell doesn't like that. But more than that, we have, you know, some first-person authentication.

We heard deposition testimony from Elliot Klein's ex-girlfriend, the woman that he was living with in 2017. So in the summer of 2017, he was living with this woman that he had just met and entered into a romantic relationship with. She has since left the movement. She has a lot of regret about her involvement in that time period. People have a lot of mixed feelings about what it means to leave the movement what it means to atone is it possible to redeem yourself for having been a part of something like that uh we don't have to litigate that no but we do have to place but yeah well we do have to recognize that her testimony is damning yeah i mean this is not this is not elliot klein putting on a show in public this is not

elliot klein posturing for his friends this is eli at home in bed with his girlfriend talking about his fantasies of killing all the jews um and her testimony was pretty harmful yeah um you would 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. Who haven't been living and breathing this for years, yeah. 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 ethnostate. Not nice. No. Really not nice stuff. We have the messages from the Discord where people are posting memes and jokes about hitting protesters.

But Samantha testified that at private parties at Richard Spencer's house in the summer of 2017, 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 richard could say oh i don't know him i never met him i never posted in discord this is somebody sitting on your couch richard yeah um yeah and you know samantha said that during that time period, Klein was building an army for Richard. And Kessler texted Spencer something similar, right? That we'll build an army in my liege. Fucking dork ass shit. But one fun surprise from Samantha was that during that time period, Klein was, you know, planning to provide his militia in the form of Identity Europa, right?

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

It's hard to walk the line between, you know, really getting a kick out of some of these moments where it is genuinely funny. Right. But then you remember like, these people are very dangerous. These people are responsible for 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 Cantwell getting up there and asking Heimbach if he's a federal agent. Yeah. Right.

Like, I think, so we've only seen one of the defendants on the stand so far, but I have a strong feeling Cantwell is going to use every opportunity that he has his frenemies under oath to ask them if they snitched on him.

Yeah, that's going to be pretty funny. It's going to be great. You got to laugh sometimes. Life's too hard. life's too hard. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

But Cantwell is really using this, I think, you know, he has nothing to lose, right? This is a case of our damages. He has no money for them to take. He has $30,000 in credit card debt and his car got repossessed once he went to prison. He has nothing for them to take the only person he knows who did have anything is ian freeman who's currently facing federal charges for some sort 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 um yeah but he so he has nothing for them to take he's already a felon he can't have

a gun anymore i think he's just using this as an opportunity as a platform to get his message out there and to harm the people he thinks harmed him so every chance he gets he's trying to force witnesses to dox people right he asked one of the plaintiffs um devin willis another young man who was injured at the torch march a plaintiff in this he asked him, he forced him to name the names of the non-parties who were also counter-demonstrating at the statue. These people's names have not been on the record. They, you know, some of them. The judge made him do that? Made him do that.

That's fucked up. And, you know, you could, if you were, I don't know, a complete baby-brained idiot, you could say, well, you know, that maybe there was a legal reason that he needed those names. There's not. And we know there's not because he tried to do it again today. 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. It's a prestigious opportunity. Only super high achievers get to live in those beautiful historic lawn rooms it's a prestigious opportunity only super high achievers get to live in those beautiful historic lawn rooms so she lived right near where the torch march was happening and she heard it and

she went outside and she looked at it um she's not a party to the suit she has no knowledge of these people or what happened she just saw this thing happen and she testified to that and he tried to you know she had made some passing remark that she'd heard from another student that maybe there would be a thing on campus, right? That they knew about the rally the next day, but like, I don't know, maybe these guys will try and come here, just like be on your toes, right? Not anything specific. She was not, she's not an activist. She's not, she didn't know anything, right? And so he was, grilled her. Tell me who told you that. Tell me who told you that. me who told you that how did you know that and he said on the record direct quote i want to know who infiltrated our communications

so he's trying to use this this moment where he has someone under oath to extract information about who snitched he wants to know who infiltrated their secret communications which is him admitting there were secret communications that weren't turned over in discovery, which wasn't smart of him to do. But he's using this process to get names of people who he can harass. And we know that's what they're doing because while he was getting these names from that other witness, you know, the names of the people at the statue, Jason Kessler, the lead defendant, right, the defendant whose name is on the lawsuit, the lead organizer of the rally, is posting all this time. He's posting through it, posting through it.

If you had a good lawyer, he would tell you not to post through your own conspiracy trial. So while 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 a vehicle for harassment. Yeah. I think there will be collateral damage of this lawsuit,

but I hope that it does have the intended deterrent effect, right? Sorry, I've been talking at length for a while, but just in summation, in summation, I think, inside the courtroom, this is a case about damages, right? The judge is very clear that like, stop talking about broader societal impact. You can't tell the jury about that. That's not relevant to this case.

This legally speaking is a case about, did this thing happen? Were these people hurt by it? What is the dollar amount of their pain? Legally speaking, that's it. But outside the courtroom, this is about deterrence, right? This is about setting a precedent that if you do this, if you plan a rally, knowing that the people who come to your rally will hurt people because you told them that's the goal, right? Even if you're not the one who swings the stick, even if you're not the one pressing the accelerator, you are responsible and you can be held accountable.

Yeah. And that is an important message. Yeah, we will, like, your life will be ruined if you participate in this shit. That even if you don't have anything for us to take, we will put a garnishment on you that will follow you to the fucking grave. Yep.

Yep. And I think, yeah, that's, I would agree what I think is important here. Molly, I think that's that's everything for now. We're still how much longer do we have to go through this? The court? What's your magic? Well, it's scheduled for four weeks. It's been one and a half. And there was there was some some anxiety and hand wring about how maybe four weeks won't cut it. Yeah, Jesus. So, I'm regretting my decision to actively live tweet. So, like, I'm transcribing in real time for eight hours a day.

Yeah, everything that happens. Oh, your fingers. Are you using a laptop or are you doing it on a phone? I'm doing it on a laptop. Thank God. So, because of COVID, no one can go into the courthouse because there's so many parties in this case and there's the plague and no one can go into the courthouse except for there's a press room where 15 people who got pre-approved by a federal court can go and sit and look at a monitor.

But I'm sitting at home. I'm comfy at home. So I'm using my computer. Thank God. Yeah, that would be and i was i was disappointed you know i kind of wanted to see i love to see i love the courtroom ambiance but i'll be honest i hate this yeah i'm way less worried about getting stabbed here at home that is true that is true people are less likely to get stabbed at home or more likely one of the two um i don't know uh tell us in the comments where you think people are most likely to get stabbed at home or more likely one of the two um i don't know uh 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 uh and for coming on the show is there anywhere the listeners can

find slash support you uh would you like people to mail you knives? What? Oh, mail me knives. Yeah, but not as a threat, like as a fun thing. Fun knives for fun. I did get a large machete in the mail the other day, and before I saw the little gift note, I was confused. Oh, good. Okay, I'm glad you're getting gift machetes. Yeah, yeah. My friend Shep, a sheep farmer in North Carolina,

sent me a large blade. Thanks, Shep. Yeah, good. No, but so if you're interested in reading moment-by-moment live transcription of people screaming Holocaust denial at a federal judge,

you can check me out on Twitter. That's at socialistdogmom. That's what happens when you make a little joke with your friends when you have five followers. And then you end up using it professionally. Yeah. That's at socialist dog mom. Then you become national news repeatedly.

I know. Then people are posting your mugshot, making fun of your username. I know. Your bullshit mugshot. You look great, but it's bullshit. I look fine. Nobody looks good after they get left in a hot van like a dog. Yeah, that's true.

Well, Molly, that's going to be the end of the episode. It is. Why don't we sing a song and roll out? Hopefully not the song that Heimbach included in his Christmas letter to James Fields in prison. Oh, God, that must have been really special. Ah, jeez, I'll have to look that up. I did come across in my browsing through Fascist Telegram the other week an entire album,

dozens of songs that were all Nazi covers of Blink-182's entire discography everything everything and they called it of course they called it blink 1488 like of course they did of course they did it was i don't i don't even know like i i i don't even know like how to talk about that it was just a thing that i found do you know hampton stall the the guy who studies malicious oh yeah yeah yeah yeah he's got a particular fascination with white power rap oh god yeah it's never any good although there was a there is a fun in one of the h bomber guy videos he found finds this flat earth nazi who has a rap that's amazing. I'm partial to Cantwell's diss tracks.

Yeah. God, Chris Cantwell. Well, thank you, Molly. And off we go into the wild blue yonder. I'm going to go smoke some legal weed and fall asleep face down, hopefully not thinking about this trial. I am not going to smoke some legal weed

because that's federally a crime, Molly. All right. 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, coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of right. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.