See also: What Really Happened at Charlottesville, Part I and Part II by Roger Devlin
There can be few things more transparently evil than framing someone for murder, or a terrorist attack, simply because you don’t like their politics. But as we approach the start of the Sines v Kessler case on October 25, that is exactly what is happening to me and to other attendees of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville VA.
The lawsuit, filed by various “counter-protesters,” i.e., disruptors of the UTR rally—for which I held a permit upheld by a federal judge—alleges a violent conspiracy to assault and murder racial minorities. But as trial approaches, and no evidence of a conspiracy between James Fields, controversially convicted of running down and causing the death of Leftist protestor Heather Heyer, and UTR organizers has materialized, the politically connected attorneys representing the plaintiffs have begun maneuvers to suppress this inconvenient fact.
Take for example, their treatment of the Charlottesville Independent Review, conducted at the city government’s behest by former federal prosecutor Tim Heaphy [Charlottesville report criticises police response and blocking of investigation, by Associated Press, The Guardian, December 2, 2017]. Incredibly, plaintiffs have filed motions trying to bar its use as evidence at trial.
Why would they do that? Perhaps because the Heaphy Report details critical failures by police and said flatly that “the City of Charlottesville protected neither free expression nor public safety on August 12.” It materialized that police leadership had no intention of allowing a peaceful rally. They caused protesters and counter-protesters to fight as part of a pre-approved plan to declare an unlawful assembly.
Additionally, the Heaphy Report shows that not all the counter-protesters were as “peaceful”—as the Regime Media would have you believe. Police discussed intel about Antifa using projectile weapons against the assembly. There is evidence that much-lionized Black Lives Matter protester Deandre Harris did just that.
Next, plaintiffs have tried to bar Corporal Steve Young, who investigated the James Fields homicide case, from testifying about the lack of communication between Fields and event organizers. As the plaintiffs tell it, online banter in a Discord gaming chatroom is proof of a conspiracy with James Fields to murder Heather Heyer. The problem: Fields was not in that chatroom and Corporal Young has testified that neither he, nor the FBI, have found any evidence of conspiracy or communication with other individuals about the homicide.
According to the motions attempting to gag Young from testifying on this matter, his views on lack of conspiracy are “unfounded” because Fields followed UTR speaker and Alt Right celebrity Richard Spencer on social media and may have once responded to one of his tweets. Therefore evidence of the police investigation should be stricken from the record.
Seems like a tad bit of overkill, right?
Last, and perhaps most egregiously, lacking evidence of their conspiracy claims plaintiffs have tried through a technical legal ploy to have the court declare, pre-trial, that there was a conspiracy with James Fields. Their argument: various defendants, including Daily Stormer founder Andrew Anglin and Elliot Kline (aka Eli Mosley), simply refused to participate in the legal proceedings. As a result, they have received adverse inference judgments stipulating that they were part of the alleged conspiracy [Federal judge again sanctions rally organizer, by Tyler Hammel, Daily Progress, December 5, 2020].
But this is merely a punishment of these individuals for their failure to participate, rather than a truth established by facts and evidence. In contrast, I and other defendants are absolutely prepared to dispute the plaintiffs’ claims strongly in court.
Similarly, various motions were filed aimed at the same technical goal regarding Fields, predominantly based on two factors: that he asserted his Fifth Amendment right to avoid testifying at a deposition; and his admission that he threw away two Christmas cards he received while incarcerated, instead of preserving them as evidence (!!). Plaintiffs allege that these cards were from an unknown member of Vanguard America and contain evidence of the alleged conspiracy. But they provide no proof of this.
Breaking news: in a significant development last Friday, October 15, Magistrate Judge Joel Hoppe found these requests unreasonable. He awarded monetary sanctions against Fields but declined to “prove” the plaintiffs’ case for them.
With respect to the depositions in which Fifth Amendment privileges were asserted, Hoppe wrote:
…proposed language for a catch-all adverse-inference jury instruction—i.e., that ‘Fields intentionally withheld documents and information from Plaintiffs ... because he was aware they contained evidence that supported Plaintiffs’ claims that he conspired to engage in racially-motivated violence at the Unite the Right event,’—goes well beyond the information Plaintiffs sought in those interrogatories. [Emphasis added]
Regarding the Christmas cards, Hoppe commented:
The information before the Court shows that sometime––presumably at least several months––after the events of the Unite the Right rally, an unknown person purporting to be associated with Vanguard America sent unsolicited Christmas cards to Fields, who was incarcerated in a secure facility. Nothing about these circumstances suggests that the contents of the cards, which Fields did not author, were likely to contain any statements from which a reasonable factfinder could conclude that Fields “conspired with other alleged Vanguard America members to commit racially motivated violence” on August 12, 2017.
Additionally, the plaintiffs complain that they didn’t get a consent form to search Fields’ Discord account. But, as Hoppe points out, Fields has already stated under oath that he was not in the Unite the Right chatroom which is the subject of the plaintiffs’ complaint. Further, Hoppe noted that Discord discovery has already been produced for the other Defendants (including myself). If Fields was suppressing evidence of this alleged conspiracy, communication with him should appear in the production of other defendants. It does not.
This campaign to persecute UTR organizers for exercising their First Amendment rights is financed by a nonprofit, Integrity First for America, whose Executive Director Amy Spitalnick, right, allegedly the granddaughter of Holocaust survivors, is receiving the usual fawning publicity, e.g., How tales of Jewish resistance inspire a 21st Century Nazi hunter, by Austin Ratner, The Forward, August 17, 2021. (This particularly nauseating example from CBS blithely reveals the fact that Spitalnick is married to CBS News technology reporter Dan Patterson, i.e., a clear conflict of interest for the network: Nonprofit sues white nationalist leaders 4 years after Charlottesville attack, CBS News, August 12, 2021.
Spitalnick was formerly spokesperson for disgraced New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who suspended an investigation into the Harvey Weinstein rape allegations after Weinstein’s attorneys at Boies, Schiller Flexner sent $10,000 to Manhattan DA Cy Vance and $25,000 to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo [New York governor reportedly halted Harvey Weinstein probe after donation from Weinstein lawyers, by Addy Baird, August 29, 2018].
Spitalnick’s Integrity First has raked in money by fanning the flames of hysteria surrounding the Unite the Right event. She has made incendiary and unsupported statements about how UTR organizers are “currently planning new attacks.” (In fact, it is UTR participants who have been hounded and even driven to suicide by Leftist social media lynch mob.) Her Integrity First has the backing of wealthy Democrats, often Jewish, like Linked In Founder Reid Hoffman, and That '70s Show actor Topher Grace (perhaps because he played David Duke in Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman).
While it is unknown exactly how much Spitalnick’s nonprofit has raised, it is certainly in the tens of millions of dollars (read its IRS financial disclosures for 2017, 2018 and 2019). Much of that has been provided by Silicon Valley billionaires, hedge fund managers, the ADL and SPLC. Despite claims these monies are all going to “security” much of the funding in fact goes to the law firms involved, which are not in fact acting pro bono. And, significantly, portions of it have been funneled to shadowy Democrat thug operations like Fusion GPS [Tech Billionaire Who Bankrolled Numerous Disinformation Projects Linked To $620,000 Donation To Fusion GPS’s Legal Fund, by Chuck Ross, Daily Caller, December 21, 2020].
Disgraced former journalist Mary Mapes [CBS fires 4 executives, producers over Bush-National Guard report, by Stephen Kiehl and David Zurawik, Baltimore Sun, January 11, 2005] makes approximately $300,000 a year as their head researcher. Executive Director Amy Spitalnick takes in a mere $200,000, presumably because this is important to her [Read Integrity First’s 2018 IRS financial disclosures here].
In a recent interview with former Senator Doug Jones, Spitalnick claimed that IFA was “non-partisan” (as required by the IRS).
However, Spitalnick uses her IFA-branded social media accounts to spread far Left disinformation and regularly engage in conspiracy theories comparing Republican officials and their voters to the KKK, Nazis, and violent terrorists.
This would be hilarious if it weren’t so fascist.
— Amy Spitalnick (@amyspitalnick) January 6, 2021
(But also this is truly insane and unenforceable since antifa isn’t an organization... unlike, say, the white supremacist groups currently terrorizing DC.) https://t.co/5FabOec8Mv
In case you were wondering what they mean when they talk about preserving our “Great American heritage”:
— Amy Spitalnick (@amyspitalnick) June 11, 2020
Tennessee Republicans Rally To Preserve Statue & Holiday For KKK Founder https://t.co/8RfpSmgYHT
If you would like to support the defense in this case, visit givesendgo.com/utr.
Jason Kessler (email him) is a journalist and civil rights activist with bylines in VDARE.com, Daily Caller, and GotNews as well as his own site JasonKessler.us. Follow him on Telegram, Gab, and Twitter.
