Each day, we’ll have the latest news from the courtroom in the Sines v. Kessler Unite the Right trial. For coverage from previous days, check the list of links at the bottom of this page.
By the start of the seventh day in court Tuesday, three witnesses had taken the stand, and Sines v. Kessler plaintiffs’ attorney Roberta Kaplan worried that at this rate, the four-week trial would go beyond November 19.
Federal Judge Norman Moon also apparently had concerns. “We spent a lot of time with the witness saying the same thing,” he said. “We don’t need to do that eight times.”
Plaintiff Devin Willis testified Monday and spent 90 minutes on direct questioning, said Kaplan, while he was cross-examined for five hours.
Part of the issue is the sheer size of the civil lawsuit, in which nine plaintiffs allege that two dozen organizers of the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally conspired to commit racial violence. The handful of defense attorneys, as well as the defendants who are representing themselves, all get to cross-examine the witnesses—and some of them like to talk a lot. On top of that, the plaintiffs have listed 31 witnesses.
Much of the day was spent with defendant Matthew Heimbach, head of the Traditionalist Worker Party in 2017, on the stand. The court has already sanctioned Heimbach for failing to turn over evidence during discovery. Heimbach blamed his ex-wife for destroying his electronic devices and deleting his social media accounts.
Heimbach says he was “partially inspired” by Hitler and that at some events, followers would exclaim, “Heil Heimbach.”
Defense attorney Josh Smith objected to the descriptor “Nazi salute,” and informed the court it was actually a Roman salute. He also objected to the use of “white supremacist,” and Moon asked plaintiffs’ attorney Karen Dunn to use “a non-perjorative like white nationalist.”
Exhibits showed that neo-Nazis planned the Unite the Right rally on a Discord server called Charlottesville 2.0. The Traditionalist Worker Party had its own server, where Heimbach called for the “total destruction of Jewry.”
A defense attorney objected to the number of exhibits and Smith asked why Dunn referred to a February 14, 2018, post as “Valentine’s day.”
At that point Moon observed, “I think [Heimbach] has established his feelings toward Jewish people.”
The exhibits showed that organizer Jason Kessler and Heimbach discussed the white polo shirt and khakis dress code, and that Kessler worried about KKK members showing up in robes.
In his deposition, Heimbach said Trad Workers had their own dress code: all black, because “black is a good color to hide blood. Blood on white polos is not a good look.”
On the stand, he said there were multiple reasons his group wore all black.
Heimbach invited two skinhead groups, known to be violent, to Unite the Right, said Dunn. “I said they were rough around the edges,” countered Heimbach, who added the groups were supposed to act as a deterrent to antifascists.
Heimbach and his best friend and codefendant Matthew Parrott, whose ex-wife Heimbach married, formed the Nationalist Front with the League of the South, the National Socialist Movement, and Vanguard America. The Front’s webpage described itself as “an alliance among organizations committed to the struggle for white nationalism.”
Dunn asked about the Trad Workers’ shields and helmets. Heimbach said that 12 transparent shields were police surplus and that some of the helmets his followers wore were actually hard hats.
On video from August 12, 2017, Heimbach is seen marching down Market Street with League of the South leaders Michael Hill and Michael Tubbs. A Discord post said that the allies may have to remove “commies from Lee Park,” as Market Street Park was then called.
Heimbach looks at the camera and says, “Just another day in the park,” before ordering, “Shields up.” The group surges forward, swinging shields at a female counterprotester while a Trad Worker is seen stabbing at counterprotesters with a rolled up flag.
The defense objected to the use of the word “stabbing,” and Heimbach said he can’t see clearly enough to say anything but that the man “used a flagpole vigorously.”
In the course of Dunn’s questioning, she said “strike that” multiple times when Heimbach went into lengthy explanations to yes/no questions. When asked if he couldn’t identify a Trad Worker marching with him because of his goggles, Heimbach responded, “Yes, because he might be pepper sprayed by antifascists.”
Dunn asked if Heimbach knew who DeAndre Harris, the counterprotester brutally beaten in the Market Street Garage, was. Heimbach answered, “He’s the man who viciously attacked a man on the street.”
By midafternoon, when Heimbach answered a question, “yes, because…” Moon interjected, “Please don’t say why.”
Moon also seemed to lose patience with defense attorney Smith, who asked to show a video of Harris before he was beaten. “This is not a law school,” Moon snapped. “Don’t ask me little questions.”
From Heimbach, jurors learned that the right wasn’t quite united. “Identity Evropa and the Traditionalist Worker Party had a fraught relationship,” said Heimbach, describing his group as working class, while IE was more “boat shoes, bougie types.”
Defendants Elliott Kline, aka Eli Mosley, and Nathan Damigo were Identity Evropa leaders.
Alt-right leader Richard Spencer, acting as his own attorney, asked Heimbach how he viewed Spencer. Heimbach said it was complicated. “I kind of always viewed you as a bit of a dandy,” and said Spencer was not someone he would rely upon.
Defendants in the conspiracy case have tried to distance themselves from each other—despite Moon telling jurors conspirators don’t have to know each other. Heimbach said he’d had maybe one conversation with Spencer and they talked about their families. He also professed to barely know Kessler, Kline, and “Crying Nazi” Christopher Cantwell, another pro se defendant. Heimbach appeared on Cantwell’s “Radical Agenda” podcast.
Imagery of a car plowing into protesters continues to come up in the trial. Dunn introduced a post from Heimbach that read, “Leftist protesters blocking the road with weapons, threats, and violence making you fear for your life. #HitTheGas.”
Heimbach cited Reginald Denny, who was pulled from his truck during the 1992 Los Angeles riots after the cops who beat Rodney King were acquitted, and said, “You have no duty or responsibility for being beaten in your own car.”
James Fields struck four of the plaintiffs when he accelerated down Fourth Street, and he was convicted of the murder of Heather Heyer.
The day began with former Identity Evropa member Samantha Froelich’s videoed deposition. Froelich lived with Kline in Greenville, South Carolina, and in Leesburg, and she elaborated on his and Spencer’s hatred of Jews. She was at Charlottesville 1.0, the white supremacists’ first foray with tiki torches here in May 2017, where she was “physically intimate” with Spencer, she said.
Kline called himself an “un-ironic exterminationist,” she said. He worked for an exterminator and said “he wished he was killing Jews instead of cockroaches,” she testified. When asked how often he said this, she replied, “Every day.”
The use of torches harkened to an aesthetic the alt-right liked. It was “the easiest way to look intimidating,” said Froelich.
Kline, she said, saw Unite the Right as the start of RaHoWa, which stands for “racial holy war.”
She said, “It was his chance to lead white people into battle.”
According to Froelich, Kline said right-wing death squads would be at the rally. And at alt-right parties at Spencer’s Alexandria house, attendees discussed what sort of weapons they could bring to Charlottesville that wouldn’t look like weapons, such as a flagpole with a knife hidden in it, she testified.
Froelich did not attend Unite the Right. “I was afraid there would be violence.”
She left Identify Evropa and the alt-right in October 2017, and now works with an organization called Life After Hate. “I do try to help people who leave,” she said.
The trial continues Wednesday with Cantwell’s cross-examination of Heimbach, and “it’s definitely going to take more than 13 minutes,” Cantwell told the judge.
Previous Sines v. Kessler coverage
Pre-trial: Their day in court: Major lawsuit against Unite the Right neo-Nazis heads to trial
Day one, 10/25: Trial kicks off with jury selection
Day two, 10/26: Desperately seeking jury
Day three, 10/27: Jury selection wraps up
Day four, 10/28: Plaintiffs and defendants make their opening arguments
Day five, 10/29: “I hear it in my nightmares,” says plaintiff Romero
Day six, 11/1: “I stopped being an outgoing, sociable person,” says plaintiff Willis