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Nazis’ Lawyers Accuse Charlottesville Victims of Being Communist Sympathizers in Sixth Day of Wild Trial
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Virginia — As the second witness in the landmark lawsuit against white nationalist organizers of the 2017 Unite the Right rally took the stand on Monday, defendants sought to discredit the victims of violence that engulfed the city in August 2017 by attempting to make strained connections to violent left-wing counter-protesters and communists.
During jury selection, several prospective jurors expressed negative opinions about “antifa,” revealing how deeply right-wing conspiracy theories falsely portraying left-wing, antiracist activists as uniformly violent have become entrenched since the election of Donald Trump. Lawyers for the plaintiffs were able to get several of the prospective jurors with the most extreme views of “antifa” struck.
Defense counsel began cross-examination of Devin Willis, a plaintiff who was an 18-year-old African-American student at the University of Virginia in August 2017, on Monday morning. Willis and fellow plaintiff Natalie Romero, who testified on Oct. 29, were the only people of color among a group of counter-protesters who were surrounded by a torch-bearing mob as they linked arms around the statue of Thomas Jefferson on the University of Virginia campus on Aug. 11, 2017.
White nationalists in the mob yelled, “Go back to where you came from,” made monkey noises at them, and hurled lit torches at their feet.
A member of the Black Student Alliance at the University of Virginia, Willis helped organize a respite area in nearby McGuffey Park, where antiracist counter-protesters could find food and water, listen to poetry or take time for meditation, during the day of the Unite the Right rally on Aug. 12, 2017.
Defendants questioned him about the language in a press release announcing the project by asking him to distinguish between “nonviolent civil protest” and “direct action.” Through cross-examination, the defendants attempted to cast the respite effort in a sinister light by highlighting the fact that Willis also went to what was then Emancipation Park and stood with a group of people who attempted to block the white nationalists from traversing the street.
Richard Spencer, the one-time figurehead of the alt-right movement, asked Willis if his intention of maintaining a “safe space” at McGuffey Park would “have included blocking people from traveling to a permitted rally.”
“I don’t think so,” Willis replied. “The first thing is the safe space was in McGuffey Park. I think what you’re referring to took place somewhere else.”
But Willis also rejected the defendants’ attempt to characterize his participation in the blockade as “direct action,” instead describing it as “a symbolic gesture,” similar to when he joined counter-protesters to surround the Jefferson statue the previous evening.
“That’s why there was space left to walk around,” he added.
Bryan Jones, counsel for the two League of the South defendants, used his cross-examination of Willis to attempt to undermine the plaintiffs’ characterization of themselves as peaceful counter-protesters. Jones presented images of the counter-protesters blocking Market Street adjacent to Emancipation Park that included at least two individuals holding sticks or flagpoles. Others in the line were wearing red bandannas, which Jones suggested in his cross-examination were indicative of support for communism.
Willis acknowledged on the stand that he joined what Jones called “this human barricade” on at least two occasions.
During direct examination, Willis had testified that he had witnessed people using sticks and poles as weapons to hit people near Emancipation Park. When Jones showed Willis a photo of person who appeared to be a counter-protester in the human chain holding a flagpole, Willis acknowledged that it was consistent with, as Jones worded it, “the type of weapons you saw used during the confrontation and conflict that day.”
Willis also identified co-plaintiff Romero in a photograph of people on the line.
Jones referenced Romero’s earlier testimony when she said that white nationalists spit at her and threw her against a police car next to Emancipation Park on the morning of Aug. 12. She testified that she couldn’t understand why they assaulted her because there was plenty of room to go around her.
“If someone were to say that Natalie was only standing on the side of the road, that would be incorrect, wouldn’t it?” Jones asked.
“I don’t think that invalidates the other thing she said,” Willis responded.
Jones also questioned Willis about red bandannas worn by people in the line blocking Market Street.
“You didn’t realize that there were communist supporters?” Jones asked.
“I wasn’t really paying much attention to that,” Willis replied.
Jones’s questioning also sought to shift blame for the violence from the defendants to members of law enforcement, who stood on the sideline as hand-to-hand combat raged on the Market Street on the morning of Aug. 12, before declaring the event an unlawful assembly and ordering people to leave.
Jones contrasted the police handling of Unite the Right with their response to a rally a month earlier by the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Willis agreed with Jones that the Klan rally was relatively uneventful and that there was a significant police presence at the earlier rally, in comparison with Unite the Right. In contrast to Unite the Right, during the Klan rally, police kept the two groups separated.
“Could it be that one of the reasons you experienced violence at the August rally is that you were standing with other counter-protesters blocking a roadway, but in July you didn’t do that?” Jones asked.
Willis responded: “I don’t think standing in the roadway is an invitation to be attacked, but you could say that, yes.”
Before the trial started, Jones had unsuccessfully sought to introduce the 220-page Heaphy Report, an independent review of the breakdown of order during the Unite the Right rally that was commissioned by the former city manager, into evidence in entirety.
The Heaphy Report concluded that the city of Charlottesville failed to protect both free expression and public safety on Aug. 12, 2017.
“The city was unable to protect the right of free expression and facilitate the permit holder’s offensive speech,” the report said. “This represents a failure of one of government’s core functions — the protection of fundamental rights. Law enforcement also failed to maintain order and protect citizens from harm, injury and death.”
Timothy Heaphy, the lead author of the report, is a former US attorney for the Western District of Virginia who was recently hired as chief investigative counsel for the US House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the US Capitol.
The plaintiffs have argued that the Unite the Right organizers sought to use the report “as a central pillar in their defense at trial” in an effort “to shift the blame of their racially motivated violence onto others.”
Judge Moon turned down the defendants’ request, ruling the report inadmissible as hearsay.
The defendants are likely to sharpen questions about plaintiffs allegedly impeding their access to Emancipation Park, where they held a permit for a rally, when the Rev. Seth Wispelwey takes the stand. Wispelwey, who is a plaintiff in the case, organized a response from clergy. As Wispelwey and other clergy members, including Professor Cornel West, marched arm-in-arm to Emancipation Park, white nationalists charged through them, knocking Wispelwey into a bush.
Defendant Christopher Cantwell, a neo-Nazi podcaster, took the defendants’ efforts to link plaintiffs to violent left-wing activists a step further by extensively questioning Willis about various individuals who counter-protested the Aug. 11 torch march. At one point, Cantwell asked Willis to name the people who were in the car with him when he traveled to campus to counter-protest the torch march. During his direct examination, Willis had explained that when the white nationalists attacked them at the Jefferson statue he covered his face to avoid being doxed.
Responding to Cantwell’s question on Monday about his fellow counter-protesters, he told the court: “I’m hesitant to name them. Some of them live here.”
“You have to name them,” Judge Moon told Willis.
Plaintiffs’ counsel asked to approach the bench for a conference.
Cantwell resumed his line of questioning, and Willis asked if he had to respond.
“This is your lawsuit, and this is information they need to ask,” Moon said.
Cantwell, whose legal strategy has occasionally earned the scorn of counsel for his fellow defendants, has aggressively cross-examined the first two plaintiff-witnesses, running the risk of alienating jurors who sympathize with the injuries they incurred during the weekend of violence. At times, Cantwell’s courtroom comments have seemed more directed towards his white nationalist podcast audience than the court.
Jordan Green covers right-wing extremism for Raw Story. A Kentucky native, he now lives in North Carolina, where he spent 16 years writing for alt-weeklies and freelancing for the Washington Post and other publications.
Image: Peter Cvjetanovicm (Twitter)
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Donald Trump’s Friday morning claim Manhattan’s Criminal Courts Building is “heavily guarded” so his supporters cannot attend his trial was torched by a top CNN anchor. The ex-president, facing 34 felony charges in New York, had been urging his followers to show up and protest on the courthouse steps, but few have.
“I’m at the heavily guarded Courthouse. Security is that of Fort Knox, all so that MAGA will not be able to attend this trial, presided over by a highly conflicted pawn of the Democrat Party. It is a sight to behold! Getting ready to do my Courthouse presser. Two minutes!” Trump wrote Friday morning on his Truth Social account.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins supplied a different view.
“Again, the courthouse is open the public. The park outside, where a handful of his supporters have gathered on trials days, is easily accessible,” she wrote minutes after his post.
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Trump has tried to rile up his followers to come out and make a strong showing.
On Monday Trump urged his supporters to “rally behind MAGA” and “go out and peacefully protest” at courthouses across the country, while complaining that “people who truly LOVE our Country, and want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, are not allowed to ‘Peacefully Protest,’ and are rudely and systematically shut down and ushered off to far away ‘holding areas,’ essentially denying them their Constitutional Rights.”
On Wednesday Trump claimed, “The Courthouse area in Lower Manhattan is in a COMPLETE LOCKDOWN mode, not for reasons of safety, but because they don’t want any of the thousands of MAGA supporters to be present. If they did the same thing at Columbia, and other locations, there would be no problem with the protesters!”
After detailing several of his false claims about security measures prohibiting his followers from being able to show their support and protest, CNN published a fact-check on Wednesday:
“Trump’s claims are all false. The police have not turned away ‘thousands of people’ from the courthouse during his trial; only a handful of Trump supporters have shown up to demonstrate near the building,” CNN reported.
“And while there are various security measures in place in the area, including some street closures enforced by police officers and barricades, it’s not true that ‘for blocks you can’t get near this courthouse.’ In reality, the designated protest zone for the trial is at a park directly across the street from the courthouse – and, in addition, people are permitted to drive right up to the front of the courthouse and walk into the building, which remains open to the public. If people show up early enough in the morning, they can even get into the trial courtroom itself or the overflow room that shows near-live video of the proceedings.”
READ MORE: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’
Democratic U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is responding to Thursday’s U.S. Supreme Court hearing on Donald Trump’s claim he has “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution because he was a U.S. president, and she delivered a strong warning in response.
Trump’s attorney argued before the nation’s highest court that the ex-president could have ordered the assassination of a political rival and not face criminal prosecution unless he was first impeached by the House of Representatives and then convicted by the Senate.
But even then, Trump attorney John Sauer argued, if assassinating his political rival were done as an “official act,” he would be automatically immune from all prosecution.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, presenting the hypothetical, expressed, “there are some things that are so fundamentally evil that they have to be protected against.”
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“If the president decides that his rival is a corrupt person, and he orders the military, or orders someone to assassinate him, is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity?” she asked.
“It would depend on the hypothetical, but we can see that could well be an official act,” Trump attorney Sauer quickly replied.
SCOTUS Justice Sonia Sotomayor: “If the president … orders someone to assassinate [a rival], is that within his official acts for which he can get immunity?”
Trump attorney D. John Sauer: “It would depend on the hypothetical, but we can see that could well be an official act.” pic.twitter.com/RddEEYIUrR
— The Recount (@therecount) April 25, 2024
Sauer later claimed that if a president ordered the U.S. military to wage a coup, he could also be immune from prosecution, again, if it were an “official act.”
The Atlantic’s Tom Nichols, a retired U.S. Naval War College professor and an expert on Russia, nuclear weapons, and national security affairs, was quick to poke a large hole in that hypothetical.
“If the president suspends the Senate, you can’t prosecute him because it’s not an official act until the Senate impeaches …. Uh oh,” he declared.
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U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez blasted the Trump team.
“The assassination of political rivals as an official act,” the New York Democrat wrote.
“Understand what the Trump team is arguing for here. Take it seriously and at face value,” she said, issuing a warning: “This is not a game.”
Marc Elias, who has been an attorney to top Democrats and the Democratic National Committee, remarked, “I am in shock that a lawyer stood in the U.S Supreme Court and said that a president could assassinate his political opponent and it would be immune as ‘an official act.’ I am in despair that several Justices seemed to think this answer made perfect sense.”
CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen, a former U.S. Ambassador and White House Special Counsel for Ethics and Government Reform under President Barack Obama, boiled it down: “Trump is seeking dictatorial powers.”
Watch the video above or at this link.
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Legal experts appeared somewhat pleased during the first half of the Supreme Court’s historic hearing on Donald Trump’s claim he has “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution because he was the President of the United States, as the justice appeared unwilling to accept that claim, but were stunned later when the right-wing justices questioned the U.S. Dept. of Justice’s attorney. Many experts are suggesting the ex-president may have won at least a part of the day, and some are expressing concern about the future of American democracy.
“Former President Trump seems likely to win at least a partial victory from the Supreme Court in his effort to avoid prosecution for his role in Jan. 6,” Axios reports. “A definitive ruling against Trump — a clear rejection of his theory of immunity that would allow his Jan. 6 trial to promptly resume — seemed to be the least likely outcome.”
The most likely outcome “might be for the high court to punt, perhaps kicking the case back to lower courts for more nuanced hearings. That would still be a victory for Trump, who has sought first and foremost to delay a trial in the Jan. 6 case until after Inauguration Day in 2025.”
Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern, who covers the courts and the law, noted: “This did NOT go very well [for Special Counsel] Jack Smith’s team. Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh think Trump’s Jan. 6 prosecution is unconstitutional. Maybe Gorsuch too. Roberts is skeptical of the charges. Barrett is more amenable to Smith but still wants some immunity.”
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Civil rights attorney and Tufts University professor Matthew Segal, responding to Stern’s remarks, commented: “If this is true, and if Trump becomes president again, there is likely no limit to the harm he’d be willing to cause — to the country, and to specific individuals — under the aegis of this immunity.”
Noted foreign policy, national security and political affairs analyst and commentator David Rothkopf observed: “Feels like the court is leaning toward creating new immunity protections for a president. It’s amazing. We’re watching the Constitution be rewritten in front of our eyes in real time.”
“Frog in boiling water alert,” warned Ian Bassin, a former Associate White House Counsel under President Barack Obama. “Who could have imagined 8 years ago that in the Trump era the Supreme Court would be considering whether a president should be above the law for assassinating opponents or ordering a military coup and that *at least* four justices might agree.”
NYU professor of law Melissa Murray responded to Bassin: “We are normalizing authoritarianism.”
Trump’s attorney, John Sauer, argued before the Supreme Court justices that if Trump had a political rival assassinated, he could only be prosecuted if he had first been impeach by the U.S. House of Representatives then convicted by the U.S. Senate.
During oral arguments Thursday, MSNBC host Chris Hayes commented on social media, “Something that drives me a little insane, I’ll admit, is that Trump’s OWN LAWYERS at his impeachment told the Senators to vote not to convict him BECAUSE he could be prosecuted if it came to that. Now they’re arguing that the only way he could be prosecuted is if they convicted.”
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Attorney and former FBI agent Asha Rangappa warned, “It’s worth highlighting that Trump’s lawyers are setting up another argument for a second Trump presidency: Criminal laws don’t apply to the President unless they specifically say so…this lays the groundwork for saying (in the future) he can’t be impeached for conduct he can’t be prosecuted for.”
But NYU and Harvard professor of law Ryan Goodman shared a different perspective.
“Due to Trump attorney’s concessions in Supreme Court oral argument, there’s now a very clear path for DOJ’s case to go forward. It’d be a travesty for Justices to delay matters further. Justice Amy Coney Barrett got Trump attorney to concede core allegations are private acts.”
Due to Trump attorney’s concessions in Supreme Court oral argument, there’s now a very clear path for DOJ’s case to go forward.
It’d be a travesty for Justices to delay matters further.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett got Trump attorney to concede core allegations are private acts.⬇️ pic.twitter.com/F3qXi47ZT6
— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) April 25, 2024
NYU professor of history Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an expert scholar on authoritarians, fascism, and democracy concluded, “Folks, whatever the Court does, having this case heard and the idea of having immunity for a military coup taken seriously by being debated is a big victory in the information war that MAGA and allies wage alongside legal battles. Authoritarians specialize in normalizing extreme ideas and and involves giving them a respected platform.”
The Nation’s justice correspondent Elie Mystal offered up a prediction: “Court doesn’t come back till May 9th which will be a decision day. But I think they won’t decide *this* case until July 3rd for max delay. And that decision will be 5-4 to remand the case back to DC, for additional delay.”
Watch the video above or at this link.
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