LYDIA BRIMELOW: It's All Happening For The SPLC!
Discovery will be a bear for them (I know!). And it could find evidence of tortious interference.
See also: LYDIA BRIMELOW ON THOSE SPLC INDICTMENTS: There’s Never Just One Cockroach
My husband Peter and I stayed with family friends recently in their beautiful PA home. As our hostess serenely prepared a homecooked meal over the heads of her five blonde children (all under the age of 9) she admitted to me, “I’m pretty solidly on team ‘Nothing Ever Happens’.”
Since that dinner, President Trump survived his third assassination attempt and the Southern Poverty Law Center [SPLC] was caught passing money to the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
We’re So Back
As I continue to mull the DOJ’s indictment against the SPLC, I keep coming back to my feelings of eager anticipation of details unearthed in the forthcoming discovery.
Non-combatants in modern lawfare may not be familiar with legal discovery, but, having been forced to comply with subpoena demands so onerous that the expense and labor involved shuttered my main project, VDARE.com, I am very aware.
So far, the DOJ has done what is sometimes referred to as a “snapshot investigation,” or, just enough investigation of the SPLC to earn an indictment. Real discovery, presumably launching in earnest this summer, will be ongoing in real time. If the indictment investigation was a screenshot, real discovery will be a livestream.
Assuming the case goes forward, the SPLC will start to gather any evidence it has for its own defense. It is required to share that evidence with the DOJ whether it hurts or harms their case. As the DOJ receives those materials, it is required to share with the SPLC what of it they plan to use for the prosecution, thus making it public on a rolling basis.
Included:
Internal memos, emails, and financial records to which the prosecutors didn’t have access during the initial probe.
Witness lists and expert reports, likely revealing new individuals or documents.
The outcomes of private investigations, which may uncover transactions or communications unknown to federal agents.
Whatever happened to that private investigation the SPLC promised when founder Morris Dees was fired?
Statements by the defense, like depositions etc
Physical evidence, office equipment, personal effects. Notebooks, paycards, cell phones, burner phones, hard drives, stolen property, etc.
The prospect of these details becoming public are almost too delicious. The trail, including all pretrial motions and discovery disputes will be overseen by Judge Emily Marks, a white Catholic Alabaman Trump appointee who specialized in labor disputes and civil rights litigation while in private practice.
Just as there is never just one cockroach, it’s impossible to believe that employees of the SPLC who were comfortable engaging in fraud and money laundering for what is one of the world’s nastiest organizations didn’t also feel comfortable bending and breaking other rules.
I am particularly interested in evidence of “tortious interference. “
Tortious interference is when A and B have a contractual relationship and C comes along and blows it up, causing damage. Like, to choose an example at random, if VDARE had a conference scheduled at the Cheyenne Mountain Lodge in Colorado Springs, CO, with deposits fully paid up and tickets sold, and the SPLC or their minions intentionally disrupted that conference, causing the Lodge to pay out liquidated damages and VDARE to lose its conference. If that happened, the SPLC could be prosecuted for tortious interference.
Successful litigation against tortious interference happens all the time.
Although the SPLC is perhaps the biggest player in the Cancel Culture game, lawsuits against tortious interference filed by D.A. King and Gavin McInnes/Proud Boys haven’t gotten any traction in the courts. The SPLC has successfully claimed that their “Hate Map” and malicious labeling are “rhetorical hyperbole,” purely subjective in nature, and protected by the First Amendment.
But if the DOJ were to discover direct communications between the SPLC and a bank, platform, venue or other contractual partner where the SPLC specifically mentioned one of their victims, that could be a game changer. Or even if internal documents were discovered that discuss an SPLC policy to intentionally trigger cancellations, it could break things open.
It’s So Over
Of course, there is the terrible possibility that the SPLC’s crimes may skitter away into the walls just as Letitia James’s have (so far). In my experience, Leftists have gotten shockingly arrogant about what they can get away with, crime-wise, because they pretty much do always get away with it.
The justice system in most of the United States is broken and even where it isn’t exactly broken, it is slow. According to Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, the SPLC investigation was started years before Trump but was put on ice by the Biden Administration. If things drag on, yet another change in leadership could turn down the heat again.
The SPLC, never one to let a good crisis go to waste, will likely raise a ton of money to defend themselves against what they are already framing as a political persecution. They have between 200-500 employees and some number of those employees are actually lawyers. The American Civil Liberties Union is politically sympathetic, as are any number of enormous NGOs that could decide to circle the wagons in their defense.
Already, the SPLC has filed a motion requesting the transcripts of the grand jury testimony, because
“…the indictment suffers from obvious legal infirmities— including the omission of essential elements of intent and a failure to reconcile the charges with recent Supreme Court precedent. These particularized irregularities suggest that the grand jury was not merely misled by the government’s presentation of the law, but likely that it was actively weaponized to facilitate such charges.”
Grand jury proceedings are typically secret, so it will be interesting to see what happens there. But we can already see that they’re planning to argue the DOJ lied to the grand jury. They haven’t presented anything yet about their First Amendment rights, but they characterized their actions as “tradecraft” and Trump’s attitude toward the prosecution as a “naked display of politicization and partisanship.” Their next step will likely be a motion to dismiss the charges entirely. Maybe it will be granted, who knows?
Judge Marks, the world is watching!
There are doomers and naysayers on our side, too. The charges are flimsy, some say. The DOJ is pulling punches and will be guarded about outing their own. They are, in short, not sending their best.
It’s All Happening!
The time Peter and I spend fighting for the Historic American Nation is often a grind. Losses hit hard. It’s tempting to want our troubles to resolve in a flash of drama.
But I’m reminded of a character in Flannery O’Connor’s Temple of the Holy Spirit, who “could never be a saint, but she thought she could be a martyr if they killed her quick.”
I’m not impatient for martyrdom. Like in the development of virtue, or raising a family, or building an institution, the nature of the commitment is the on-and-on-ness of it.
That’s why it is important to celebrate the wins when they come, and to celebrate them unconditionally.
This indictment is a WIN. Are you celebrating?
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