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.
The defendants in Sines v. Kessler are accused of conspiring to commit racially motivated violence at the Unite the Right rally in August 2017. In the courtroom, their strategy has been every man for himself.
The plaintiffs rested their case at 11am on Tuesday, and defendants began presenting their evidence.
Alt-right leader Richard Spencer, who is representing himself, was the first Sines v. Kessler defendant to present evidence in his own defense. He painted a picture of himself as an ambitious man who thought Unite the Right would be a peaceful event that would further elevate his growing public profile.
In a series of text messages entered into evidence, Spencer invites a Washington Post reporter to Friday’s torchlight march to UVA Grounds.
“The notion that I was expecting awful activity or malign conspiracy I don’t think holds much water,” Spencer said. “I wanted to promote myself, and I’m inviting what could be said to be a hostile journalist. I wanted him to be there.”
After the march, Spencer exchanged additional texts with the reporter.
“I was concerned about his safety,” Spencer told the jury.
A tweet Spencer sent on August 12 at 9:21am shows a smiling selfie accompanied by the words, “Let’s do this.”
“This is an accurate depiction of my state of mind. Happy, confident,” Spencer said. “Things would change.”
Spencer’s photo and video evidence included images of himself after he’d been maced by police before the rally began, his face contorted and his blue shirt soaked with a mixture of sweat and pepper spray. He showed video of himself pleading with Virginia State Police after the state of emergency had been declared and the park was being cleared.
“Why don’t you go break up the communists,” Spencer said. “The ones who are macing us, the ones who are destroying this…”
Spencer also included evidence that he did not respond to UTR organizer Jason Kessler’s pre-rally text message calling Spencer “my liege,” and that he publicly called Kessler out for an August 18 tweet in which Kessler disparaged car attack victim Heather Heyer.
“I will no longer associate w/Jason Kessler; no one should,” Spencer tweeted.
On cross-examination, the plaintiffs’ attorneys noted that Spencer was already facing a different lawsuit at the time of that tweet, and suggested it was a “tactical move to improve your legal situation.”
In his continuing effort to present himself as a reasonable white nationalist, Spencer also attempted to reframe his viral post-rally rant, in which he uses the word “kikes” and says, “We are going to destroy this fucking town.”
He called the rant “infantile, shameless, and despicable,” and said it was made to a small audience when he was “feeling powerless, feeling extremely frustrated…after it was dawning on me that this thing was a disaster.”
While attorneys for other defendants kept their evidence brief or didn’t present any at all, Cantwell, who’s also representing himself, presented extensive evidence in his own defense. As has been the case on other occasions during the trial, Cantwell seemed to be playing to an audience outside the courtroom.
“Hello Mr. Cantwell, good to see you again,” he said as he took the lectern. The joke was met with silence in the courtroom.
Cantwell’s evidence included extensive video shot from his bodycam, starting at the Walmart parking lot on Friday, when he and a group of white nationalists were approached by a group of counterprotesters, one of whom he pointed out for a black Adidas T-shirt.
“Don’t interact with them if you don’t have to. Leave them alone,” Cantwell tells the group he’s with, whom he describes as listeners to his “Radical Agenda” podcast. Additional footage shows Cantwell interacting respectfully with police summoned to the parking lot by an anonymous complaint.
Cantwell then showed extensive video of himself at the Thomas Jefferson statue on Friday night, where he was maced by a counterprotester and had his bodycam ripped from his shirt. He presented more video evidence from Saturday, when he was maced by a counterprotester wearing a black Adidas T-shirt similar to the one worn by the counterprotester at the Walmart.
In the Friday night recording, a counterprotester speaks to Cantwell.
“How was the Walmart meetup, Chris?” the person asks.
“I felt threatened by this interaction,” he said, pointing out that he walked away from the interaction without committing violence. Both Spencer and Cantwell expressed their concerns about antifa as a threat to their physical safety.
On cross-examination, plaintiffs’ attorneys asked Cantwell to confirm he’d been convicted of two counts of assault for his role at the torchlight rally.
Cantwell showed video from Saturday in which he’s on his hands and knees immediately after he was temporarily blinded by pepper spray near the park. He screams,“Are we surrounded right now?”
He’s assured that he’s safe by a man with him, who says, “We’re going to fucking kill ‘em.” In the video, Cantwell responds, “Don’t kill anybody.”
“That’s more or less my day on August 12,” he told the jury. “You saw the plaintiffs play for you a clip, where I’m walking down the street with no shirt on because I’ve been pepper sprayed twice in two days after going through substantial effort to make sure nothing like that would happen. And so, if you’ll pardon my language, I didn’t feel very fucking good about it.”
Prior to the defense testimony, presiding Judge Norman Moon read the jury instructions about two of the defendants, Elliott Kline and Robert “Azzmador” Ray, who have been sanctioned in the case for failing to cooperate.
The sanctions establish as true that Kline and Ray “entered into an agreement with one or more co-conspirators to engage in racially motivated violence,” but do not apply to other defendants in the case.
The defense is expected to rest on Wednesday, and Moon will then give jury instructions before closing arguments. The trial was scheduled to end on Friday, but that timeline remains in question.
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
Day seven, 11/2: “Strike that”
Day eight, 11/3: Defendants fawn over Hitler
Day nine, 11/4: Quibbling about hate
Day 10, 11/5: League of the South takes the stand
Day 11, 11/8: “It gave me Nazi vibes”
Day 12, 11/9: False flags and missing evidence
Day 13, 11/10: “It was awful”
Day 14, 11/11: White supremacy 101
Day 15, 11/12: Sines speaks, defendant dances
Day 16, 11/15: Kessler vs. Spencer