Last month we named the members of the neo-nazi group Patriot Front who vandalized a mural honoring Black tennis champion Arthur Ashe mural in Battery Park, a mostly Black neighborhood in Richmond, VA: unicornriot.ninja/2022/patriot-f…
Yesterday, the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights (@LawyersComm) filed a federal lawsuit against Patriot Front, Nathan Noyce and Thomas Dail (the 2 members seen on leaked video defacing the mural), Patriot Front leaders Thomas Rousseau & Paul Gancarz, and 23 John Doe defendants.
The new civil suit alleges that Noyce, Dail, and Patriot Front as a group committed at least three civil rights violations under the Ku Klux Klan Act and Virginia state laws against “Racial, Religious, or Ethnic Harassment”: lawyerscommittee.org/lawyers-commit…
The suit notes that Thomas Rousseau "require[s] that members get Patriot Front regional and national leadership approval for any high-profile acts of vandalism."
In leaked meetings Rousseau repeatedly says vandalism needs his OK: unicornriot.ninja/2022/patriot-f…
Nathan Noyce and Thomas Dail, the PF members caught on tape defacing the Arthur Ashe mural, use the in-group aliases 'Roger VA' & 'Kenneth VA', respectively.
We first identified them via videos of an incident where they were detained by police last year: unicornriot.ninja/2022/patriot-f…
Police bodycam footage shows 4 Patriot Front members being pulled over in Maryland after a 12/4/21 nazi march in DC.
Along with Noyce and Dail, the other two passengers are also now named as John Does in the @LawyersComm suit - 'Vincent VA' & 'John VA':
Patriot Front member and KKK Act lawsuit John Doe defendant 'Vincent VA' is Aedan Tredinnick, a 21-year-old from the Norfolk, VA area who graduated high school from @TCCva and began attending college at @ODU this fall:
Patriot Front member & KKK Act lawsuit John Doe defendant 'John VA' identified himself during a traffic stop as Jacob Brown, 21, of Newport News.
Leaked videos show he's been involved in posting nazi propaganda on behalf of Patriot Front around Virginia:
Jacob Brown ('John VA') & Aedan Tredinnick ('Vincent VA') are seen in leaked footage of fascist posters being glued to utility boxes on 11/14/21.
Patriot Front's Virginia leader Paul Gancarz, also named in the new lawsuit, addresses Brown as 'John' and Tredinnick as 'Vincent':
On 11/10/21 Nathan Noyce, Aedan Tredinnick, Thomas Dail & ~10 others were at a drilling meet led by Patriot Front Network Director Paul Gancarz ('ND - Samuel VA').
They were training for PF's official 'shield team' that attacks anti-racists at PF rallies:
At least 5 defendants in the Patriot Front lawsuit are seen in leaked footage of the Nov. 20 drilling session led by Paul Gancarz, including unidentified Network 9 member 'Christopher VA', who was involved in defacing the Arthur Ashe mural.
[Full video: ]
More on 'Christopher VA' here:
According to the complaint filed yesterday by @LawyersComm, Patriot Front Network 9 Director Paul Gancarz violated the Ku Klux Klan act by planning, overseeing, and failing to stop his PF chapter's racially-motivated vandalism of the Arthur Ashe mural in Richmond.
Leaked notes show Gancarz was at an October meeting of the Patriot Front's Network 9, which he leads, when a plan for "Richmond Stencils" was approved.
Exif data on the leaked .docx file show that the meeting document was created by the username 'Ganz' - Gancarz's nickname.
Patriot Front's founder/leader Thomas Rousseau is also being sued under the federal Ku Klux Klan Act for approving, allowing, and not stopping the racially-targeted destruction of the Ashe mural last year.
Thomas Rousseau often coordinates directly with local Patriot Front chapters to intimidate minorities.
In a call last Oct, 4 days before Gancarz's meeting to plan the Richmond vandalism, Rousseau helped plan the destruction of gay pride art in Olympia: unicornriot.ninja/2022/patriot-f…
With Rousseau's blessing, Patriot Front's PNW chapter planned to destroy the "Respect & Love Olympia" mural, filmed themselves doing it, then discussed the act in a leaked meeting the next day.
This happened at roughly the same time that Richmond's Ashe mural was trashed.
Patriot Front's Rousseau-appointed Network 8 Director Colton Brown ('ND - John WA') and low-ranking member Spencer Simpson ('David WA') were both arrested this year for their role in destroying the Olympia pride mural:
Spencer Simpson once said that the point of Patriot Front's nazi vandalism campaigns was to “show people that you can do something like this, and you can get away with it.“
He's now under court order to avoid contact w Colton Brown, his PF chapter leader: unicornriot.ninja/2022/two-patri…
The Richmond suit & Olympia arrests paint a picture of a future of increasing legal trouble for Patriot Front.
Many identical incidents exist in which Thomas Rousseau and his Directors seem liable for apparent hate crimes committed by their underlings: unicornriot.ninja/2022/patriot-f…
Take one example - in November, St. Louis-area members of Patriot Front (led by Network Director Luke Paule aka 'Carter MO') vandalized a LGBTQ center while clearly intending to intimidate people based on gender and/or sexual identity:
The 5 Patriot Front members who defaced the LGBTQ youth center in Springfield are also implicated in the destruction of a Black history mural on Washington State University campus. 1 of the 5, Mitchell Wagner, currently faces a felony in St. Louis for it: unicornriot.ninja/2022/patriot-f…
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