An Update on Unite the Right Lawfare

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Thomas Rousseau, leader of the activist group Patriot Front, became the eleventh man to be arrested for his participation in the August 11, 2017 Unite the Right (UTR) tiki torch march across the University of Virginia campus on February 23, 2024.

Patriot Front ^[2], whose motto is “Reclaim America,” has recently come to national attention for their peaceful yet bold public demonstrations calling for whites to embrace the European roots of the historic American nation. The group’s emergence has caused fiery debates on the Right, with many arguing that they are not an authentic movement but rather a federal government operation, and others complaining that they use tactics which harm conservative causes. Some Patriot Front members have been given short sentences ^[3] for participating in protests, and the group is facing civil lawsuits related to its activism in several states.

Legacy media reporting on Patriot Front inevitably mentions Unite the Right because James Fields, who was sentenced to 419 years for driving the car which killed Heather Heyer, had been photographed hours before the crash standing amongst members of Vanguard America, the group with which Rousseau was previously affiliated. At the time, however, Rousseau was not charged with any crimes related to the Charlottesville rally. Now he is facing a felony charge — a remarkable seven years later — for burning an object with the intention to intimidate.

The Commonwealth Attorney at the time of Unite the Right, Robert Tracci, had declined to prosecute ^[4] the marchers, stating his belief that there were no legal grounds to do so. Tracci was eventually unseated by Soros-backed Albemarle County Commonwealth’s attorney Jim Hingeley, who campaigned on the promise to pursue charges. Hingeley obtained an unknown number of sealed indictments against participants in the march in February 2023. Since April 2023 ^[5], he has been extraditing men from around the country back to Virginia to face this nakedly political prosecution, using an old cross-burning law ^[6] that had originally targeted Ku Klux Klan members against participants in a First Amendment-protected demonstration. (The fact that the marchers’ intentions were to engage in a peaceful and legal protest are irrefutably demonstrated by this video ^[7] of a pre-march meeting in which, after learning that violent Leftist counter-protesters would be present, the organizers agreed to call the police and ask for protection.)

One outrage has followed another in the torch-march prosecution saga, a farcical tale of Communist lawfare masquerading as justice. Unbelievably, Judge Claude Worrell, who presided over several tiki-torch cases ^[8], was discovered to have personally been in attendance at a counter-protest ^[9] with his family during the demonstration in question. There is also evidence that his wife, Kathryn Laughon, is friendly with an anti-UTR antifa activist and prolific tweeter who has been accused ^[10] of being inexplicably in possession of insider information about the cases. Worrell’s daughter, Althea Laughon Worrell, has been photographed at a Black Lives Matter protest alongside Zyahna Bryant ^[11], an activist who helped instigate the removal of Charlottesville’s Robert E. Lee statue, and who later falsely accused ^[12] a white University of Virginia student of threatening to run over protesters.

After these egregious conflicts of interest were discovered, Peter Frazier, the attorney for tiki-torch defendant Jacob Joseph Dix, filed a motion that forced the recusals ^[13] of Worrell and Judge Cheryl Higgins from his case. Prosecuting attorney Lawton Tufts was also removed ^[14] after Frazier enumerated Tufts’ extensive ties to far-Left Unite the Right counter-protest groups. Other defendants are fighting to remove their cases from the wildly biased Charlottesville judicial system. Augustus Invictus, who was arrested in Florida in June 2023 and held for nearly a month awaiting extradition to Virginia, is another of the over half-a-dozen men who have pending matters related to the tiki torch march. His attorney, Terrell Roberts, has also filed a motion to recuse ^[15] the entire Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office. Arguments were heard on February 13 before Judge Richard Moore, who oversaw the railroading of James Fields as well as other Unite the Right related cases. Moore has not yet issued a ruling on Invictus’ motion. William Fears, who was arrested in June 2023, was denied bail and remains in the Albermarle County Jail awaiting trial. He is expecting a hearing on his motion to recuse Judge Higgins on April Fools’ Day, which he describes as “fitting considering the clownish nature of this case.”

Other persecution is continuing outside the legal system. Antifa activists are still posting rally photos on social media in an attempt to dox UTR attendees, even those accused of no illegal behavior whatsoever.  One victim of this treatment is Enid County, Oklahoma City Councilman Judd Blevins.

Though Enid is a deeply conservative area, the extreme Left is behind the challenge to Blevins.  The smear campaign against him is based upon a 2019 report by professional doxxer Jared Holt ^[18] of Right Wing Watch. In the report, Holt identified Blevins as a member of Identity Evropa and attendee of Unite the Right in Charlottesville. It was not until after Blevins’ election to the city council in February 2023 that a group of local radicals, identifying themselves as the Enid Social Justice Committee ^[19] (ESJC), resurrected the old story. Blevins was subsequently threatened with censure, but in November 2023 the motion to censure him for attending the legal rally was tabled ^[20]. The ESJC obtained enough petition signatures to force a recall election, and a recall vote in Enid Ward 1 has now been scheduled for April 2, 2024. Blevins asserts ^[21] that the local leadership failed to hold the recall election in a timely manner, as required by local ordinances ^[22], because they had not yet recruited a candidate to oppose him. It is disconcerting that the organized far Left can descend upon and disrupt the lives of peaceful attendees of a lawful event many years after the fact.

You can learn more about Blevins’ campaign and support him here ^[23].

 Anne Wilson Smith is the author of Charlottesville Untold: Inside Unite the Right ^[24].