White Nationalists Suing Undercover Activist Because They're Big Mad They Were Identified

Members of the white nationalist group Patriot Front are suing a man who went undercover to gather intel which was eventually used to identify them—as they believe they have a right to hide their racist views from the public.

The man at the heart of the lawsuit, which was filed in Washington state in late July, is David Capito, who is alleged in the suit to have joined Patriot Front intending to undermine it. The plaintiffs in the suit—James Johnson, Amelia Johnson Colton Brown, Paul Gancarz, and Daniel Turetchi—say the Washington man used his access to find out the identities of several Patriot Front members and publicize them.

Patriot Front is a white nationalist hate group that was founded in Texas in 2017 in the aftermath of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. It has since grown to be one of the largest hate groups in the United States. After their connections to the racist group became public, the five plaintiffs said they lost their jobs and were estranged from their families because most people really don't like white nationalists. 

At no time does the lawsuit attempt to distance the five from Patriot Front or dispute that they hold racist views. They are instead arguing that they should be able to have their repugnant views hidden from the public. 

A bit of a Streisand effect is happening with the white nationalists. While their identities were kept to niche websites before, now with their lawsuit, mainstream outlets are picking up the story and blasting out their names and affiliations to readers. 

The suit doesn’t state what became of the data that Capito collected but it seemingly gives us a look at how a trove of information about Patriot Front, released by the journalism nonprofit Unicorn Riot and the transparency group Denial of Distributed Secrets in 2022. 

The lawsuit is something straight out of an espionage thriller. It claims that Capito, who according to the lawsuit recently changed his name to Vyacheslav Arkangelskiy, tricked Brown into letting him join by faking an identity and pretending to be racist. Once he had gained the group's trust they, knowing of his photography background, asked the infiltrator to take photos of the group during their actions. He happily did so, not only taking photos of the group's racist actions but also photos of license plates and faces. 

They state Arkangelskiy wore hidden cameras and microphones to meetings he had with the white nationalists where he would secretly record them. Lastly, it states he “was able to download private chats and intercept video links” after gaining access to online chats in which users kept identifying information. 

That information seemingly came to light when Unicorn Riot and Denial of Distributed Secrets released the massive trove to the world on January 21, 2022. Infiltration into far-right groups is a long-time anti-fascist tactic and has been used to damage groups such as The Base and the Proud Boys.

“This release includes more than 400 gigabytes of data published by Unicorn Riot. Ostensibly private, unedited videos and direct messages reveal a campaign to organize acts of racial hatred while indoctrinating teenagers into national socialism (Nazism). The information stands as a chilling reminder that fascist organizing thrives in secrecy and obscurity,” Unicorn Riot wrote at the time of the information’s release. 

The lawsuit accuses Arkangelskiy of slashing tires on the vehicles of some of the Patriot Front members and harassing them at home by putting up flyers and posters notifying neighbors of their affiliations. It also brings up some not flattering personal history of Arkangelskiy including a previous restraining order against the man filed by a former partner. 

The lawsuit states Gancarz lost an engineering job where he earned $107,000, Turetchi lost a realtor job where he was earning $10,000, and Brown lost a job where he was making $50,000 and had to move out of his parent's home. James Johnson and Amelia Johnson, who are husband and wife, say they were forced to relocate because their neighbors found out about their affiliation with the white nationalist group. Amelia was fired from her job where she made $60,000 a year, and James had to take a pay cut because of the move. 

Brown and James Johnson’s identities were also exposed when they were arrested with a plethora of other Patriot Front members in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. 

To make matters worse for the white nationalists, one of the lawyers they’re working with, doesn’t have a sparkling track record in similar cases. In 2016, the Southern Poverty Law Center reported that Allen was a longtime supporter of National Alliance (a neo-Nazi group founded by the author of the influential and virulently racist book The Turner Diaries), and attended a Holocaust denying conference. This led the city of Baltimore where he was working as an attorney to cut ties with him.

Allen, much like the white nationalists he’s currently representing, tried to use the legal system to get back at those who exposed him. In 2018 he filed a lawsuit claiming the SPLC defamed him and sought over $6 million in damages. Less than a year later a judge ruled that the SPLC did not defame Allen, who didn’t dispute the allegations against him, and that their reporting fell under the first amendment. 

Since then Allen has continued to offer legal services to those in the far-right including, according to the SPLC, participants of the “Unite the Right” rally.