For the first time since a wave of prosecutions announced early last year, a man accused of violating Virginia’s law banning the use of fire to racially intimidate has waged a defense with evidence.
Augustus Sol Invictus, the 41-year-old, goat’s blood-drinking White supremacist and failed Florida Senate candidate, has been charged for his participation in the torch-carrying mob that marched across University of Virginia Grounds on Aug. 11, 2017, the night before the infamous and deadly Unite the Right rally-turned-riot.
Invictus brought multiple witnesses to the stand in Albemarle County Circuit Court — including himself — Thursday, hoping to prove to the jury that the counterprotesters the mob surrounded and came to blows with that night were willing participants in the violence.
"This is not just some students here," said Invictus’ lawyer Terrell Roberts III. "This is professionals."
The night before the planned Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, protesting the removal of the city’s Confederate monuments, Invictus and hundreds of other White supremacists carried lit torches across UVa Grounds. They ultimately surrounded a group of counterprotesters, including students, at the base of a statue of Founding Father Thomas Jefferson in front of the school’s iconic Rotunda. It was there that the two sides came into close contact and the police finally declared an unlawful assembly and dispersed the crowd.
Thursday’s first witness, a self-styled security guard from Indianapolis, a man named Allison Peirce, said several people in photographs of the event were violent antifa, or anti-fascists. He blamed an unnamed member of the counterprotesters for throwing a "flaming projectile" toward him and others that night.
"I called molotov," said Peirce, who added that he ushered the man he was protecting, White supremacist and well-known provocateur Richard Spencer, away from danger.
Peirce told the court that the White supremacists hastily decided to gather for a nighttime rally at UVa because their next-day permit for the planned Unite the Right rally was in limbo. He said he helped devise the march to give the next day’s keynote speaker, Spencer, an opportunity to speak without threat of interference.
He said Spencer was planning to step onto the base of the Jefferson statue and give a speech.
"And we might sing ‘Dixie’ or something like that," Peirce added.
"The circling was always intended," Peirce said. "The purpose is recording these things to show a wider audience."
Asked why the 300-strong, torch-carrying mob surged toward the group of 20 to 30 counterprotesters at the statue instead of diverting, he cited the darkness, the size of his own crowd and his unfamiliarity with the terrain.
"We didn’t have any alternate routes or destinations planned," he said. "The best thing to do is keep moving, keep to the script as much as possible."
But as prior witnesses have alleged, the sight of hundreds of torch-toting White supremacists chanting racist and Nazi-era slogans such as "You will not replace us" and "Blood and soil" left some fearing for their lives. A Black UVa student testifying the day prior who was among those at the statue’s base said it felt like he was confronting a lynch mob.
Fluvanna County homemaker Hannah Brown, one of a relatively small number of women who were bearing torches that night, testified that she was the reason the mob congregated on UVa Grounds in the first place.
"We didn’t want to be trespassing or doing anything illegal," she said. "We figured the Grounds were empty public property, that it would be an appropriate place."
Retired UVa Police Chief Michael Gibson also testified Thursday to discuss how he quickly mustered an array of officers to monitor the march. He said he was first aware of a request for protection at 8:12 p.m., less than two hours before the torches were lit.
If the prosecution’s star witness was videos, as the lead prosecutor asserted a day earlier, Thursday’s star witness was Invictus. He told the court that Unite the Right was supposed to be the launchpad for his second run for the U.S. Senate, this time as a Republican. A prior effort to gain the seat vacated by former presidential contender Marco Rubio ended in a failure to secure the Libertarian Party nomination due to his extreme political views and an admission that he once drank goat’s blood as part of a ritual ceremony.
Invictus spoke during pauses in a video he shot of the 2017 march at UVa, blaming antifa as the instigators of any conflict that night.
"That was the first instance of violence that night," said Invictus, as he pointed to a man seen smacking something out of a marcher’s hand. "There are disparate people here."
He denied any effort to confine those who were surrounded by marchers.
"They walked right out," said Invictus. "They walked right on out."
On cross-examination by lead prosecutor Lawton Tufts, Invictus acknowledged his fellow White supremacists have bestowed a nickname on him.
"They called me the commie slayer," the father of seven and ardent Catholic said.
Tufts also reminded Invictus of the time he urged a helicopter-assisted death on a heckler. But when Tufts asked Invictus if he remembered saying that the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants, Invictus seemed ready.
"It was actually," said Invictus pointing to the painting of the third president hanging over the judge’s chair, "Thomas Jefferson."
The trial resumed Friday with the finalization of jury instructions and closing arguments.
Source: www.dailyprogress.com
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