Chris Cantwell calling into full house on Thanksgiving night.
How are you, brother?
I'm doing good, man.
I'm feeling thankful.
We're thankful for your service and your good fight.
You got to fight in Charlottesville multiple times, I guess.
But the thought occurred that holidays are tough.
Some more brutal than others.
Yeah, exactly.
You were in chemical warfare there, according to some of the legislation.
But the thought occurred that being behind bars on holidays is supposedly really tough on guys.
So how was today?
Give us a little bit of color, what you did and if you got another question.
This isn't too bad.
For lunch, they actually gave us hot turkey and gravy and some stuffing.
And the stuffing was actually pretty good.
And the guy who was sitting next to me didn't want a stuffing.
So I did pretty good at lunch.
Dinner was less impressive than coffee sandwiches, sadly.
You'd think they'd at least give us turkey sandwiches for dinner.
And so really, I'm still basking in the glow of the courtroom.
And so it's kind of hard to get me down, honestly.
Even in the wake of being told that I owe Antifa $700,000, I'm still feeling pretty good about what I did over there.
No, I know.
It's kind of hard to get me down.
It's so clear that you're a natural-born fighter, Chris, because, you know, when the verdict had just come down, came down, and you called me, I was worried you were going to be upset that, you know, because we all had possibly unrealistic expectations that at least some of you guys were going to get out scot-free.
And you said, tell everybody not to worry.
They can't garnish my commissary.
So far as you know.
Everybody got a kick out of that.
But let's, you know, a couple days have passed now to settle a little bit.
It certainly didn't go as bad as it could have.
It didn't go as well as it could have.
You, of all people, know and have analyzed the verdict and what it means.
So share with the audience your interpretation of their draw and what it means going forward.
To be clear, I'm still trying to figure this out myself.
I'm still a little bit confused.
They can't give me a copy of that verdict form, and I don't even have the final jury instructions.
So I'm a little bit confused myself.
But here's what I know, okay?
They did not sign for the plaintiffs on the top two counts.
The jury deadlocked on those.
And that means that the other side lost.
There's no other way of putting it.
They lost.
Now, it's kind of hard to call anything where a judge tells me I owe Antifa $700,000 a win, but they definitely lost because that's the whole narrative, right?
And the narrative was the prize.
You know what I mean?
They said they told this story, and they have been telling this story for over four years, that the Nazis came to Charlottesville to terrorize minorities.
And that's not what happened.
That's not what happened.
It was a lie.
Everybody who was anywhere in the other thing knew it was a lie.
And now the jury knows it's a lie.
And now anybody who pays attention knows that it's a lie.
But of course, the media is lying.
And so if you turn the court.
Of course.
Yeah, $25 million is what you're lying.
Right.
$25 million, almost all of which is owed by James Fields, who's spending the rest of his life in a federal prison and is never going to pay a dime of that, right?
And then other portions of it are, you know, TWP.
Do you think that TWP has a million dollars to give to Antifa?
I kind of doubt it, right?
And so, you know, the idea that they just won $25 million is farcical.
It's nonsense.
And again, they didn't prove what they set out to prove, which was that we came to Charlottesville bent on racially motivated violence.
That's not what happened.
Here's another really interesting thing.
So they found on claims 3, 4, 5, and 6.
Okay, 5 and 6 were specifically pertained to James Hills.
And no matter how Herculean an effort I put into trying to clear that boy's name, it just wasn't going to happen in that courtroom.
So forget about 5 and 6.
They're a foregone conclusion.
Three and four are the problems that we presently have.
And so on count three is a Virginia civil conspiracy.
And it says, okay, that, you know, we viol, that the name plaintiffs, I'm sorry, the defendants found liable were found liable for conspiracy to violate any one or more of half a dozen Virginia state statutes, which includes like assault and battery, false imprisonment, and a bunch of other shit, okay?
So in other words, there's no, like, there's no, they have not proven that racially motivated violence was conspired to.
And the other component of this is that if you look at the damages on that, it's like, okay, this plaintiff gets a dollar, this plaintiff gets zero dollars, okay?
Okay?
And so, yeah, and of course that we discussed earlier the difference between punitive and compensatory or for damages versus, all right, let's teach them never to do this again.
And the jury basically said these people are full of it with those $1, and in some cases, $0 amount, right?
The fake priest and the headline plaintiffs.
It's more than that.
It's like, so they, well, so they have these, there's compensatory damages and punitive damages, which I think you've already explained to your audience, I presume.
And so what they did was they gave them compensatory damages on count four, which I actually think was a mistake on the jury's part, and we'll try to get to that.
But the jury sent out a question to the judge and said, can we decide who gets the punitive damages, okay?
Because the way the verdict form is set up is, okay, which plaintiff gets how much in compensatory damages, and then it asks, which defendants should pay how much in punitive damages?
Okay, so punitive damage is not so much given to plaintiffs, although they get them, as they are taken from defendants, okay?
Now, if you take the jury wants to know, can we decide who gets the punitive damages?
And the judge said no, but only plaintiffs who received compensatory damages will share in punitive damages, okay?
And so what they did for count three was they said, okay, this plaintiff gets a dollar, this plaintiff gets zero dollars, okay?
I don't know the entire breakdown of it, but I know two things.
Seth Whispoly and Elizabeth Signs got zero dollars, and then that means that they don't share in the $500,000 that they wanted to extract from me in punitive damages.
So they said all count three, all of the individual defendants are going to get half a million dollars in punitive damages, and all the organizational defendants owe a million dollars in punitive damages, okay?
But even if those things get paid, which they're not going to, Seth Whispoly and Elizabeth Signs at a minimum are cut out of it.
And if anybody was paying attention to the trial, they can understand why, because I destroyed them on the witness stand.
It's my own personal victory that I cut them out.
The jury said these people are full of crap.
They were running around with armed credits, and they're lying to us.
We're not paying them.
Not on this count.
Signs versus Kessler, the nameplate plaintiff, zero.
You're full of it, yeah.
Which belies and goes to show exactly what was going on with Kaplan showing up in the town, hustling up plaintiffs, and then she probably figured that signs, this nice young law student, would be a sympathetic plaintiff.
Not so.
Miscalculating.
Well, you know what?
I honestly think that this, you know, what I discovered during the course of this thing, I didn't realize it until I was in the midst of it.
The connection with the National Lawyers Guild, okay?
I think that this, I think that this lawsuit was part of the plan before we showed up, and that the National Lawyers Guild was part of this, and that she's involved with the National Lawyers Guild more than she was letting on.
And so, you know, I think it's part of the reason she's the namesake of the case, is that she was actually planning this from the beginning.
I sort of pointed out that, oh, she was all shoulder to shoulder with the torchbearers as they were walking and then knew not to go down by the statue because she knew that the fight was about to happen.
She knew that we were being set up.
And she claims that she was so scared of us afterwards, but she followed Richard Spencer out of there.
So Mrs. Runatech knew exactly what was happening.
This is a setup, and it was a setup from before.
And she knew it, and I showed that to the jury.
So they cut her out on count three.
Now, I believe on count four that they did get their compensatories, and then they get to share in the punitives that are levied against us.
But, you know, interestingly, count four is about harassment.
Okay?
It actually doesn't imply any violence.
And so since Marcus Martin, whose damages arise from having his leg crushed by the car crash, is being awarded compensatory damages under a claim of harassment, it boggles the mind.
I think that that is going to be the subject of motions before the court to see these damages dramatically reduced.
So Dave Campbell, James Beals' attorney, pointed out that under Virginia state statute, punitive damages can't exceed $350,000, apparently.
And the Supreme Court, in a case called State Farm B. Campbell, ruled that you can't have, you know, compensatory damages and punitive damages have to have some relationship to each other.
And so for you to say that, okay, you get $1 in compensatory damages at $500,000 in punitive, well, that's a $500,000 to $1 ratio.
And the Supreme Court has said that anything approaching 10 to 1 is arbitrary and a violation of one's due process rights.
And so these things are going to be the subject of motions that come before the court in the next few weeks to get those damages pretty drastically reduced.
Exactly how that's going to play out and what the specific juror intent is going to be assigned, I think, is going to be the subject of some argument.
and I'm still researching that subject, so I won't try to speak intelligently to something I don't fully understand, but I think that...
Sure.
Has it crossed your mind, Chris?
Do you want to try to get a lawyer now, or you're like, oh, I kind of got the hang of this, and you're going to keep representing yourself going forward?
Because there's still a lot of, as you said, there's still a lot of base plate here, appeals and further findings, possibly a retrial on counts one and two.
You're just going to keep soldiering away on your own?
Well, I don't have any resources to buy to hire an attorney.
And so I think that I'm going to like, I'm kind of stuck with my, I'm stuck with my own services.
And fortunately, I seem to be faring all right.
You know, now I will confer with my co-defendants' counsel and see, you know, to the extent, if any, that I can join motions that they're making where people with better legal minds than mine are talking about things that they better understand.
I'll incorporate by reference here in whatever arguments they make.
You know, my performance in the courtroom is a function of my understanding of the facts of the case and my talents as a showman, which does not translate well into filing legal papers.
Sure.
Yeah, I thought saying that your closing speech speech was worthy of Cicero with a little bit over the top, but not too much.
Not that I've ever heard of Cicero's speech, but it was like stand and deliver.
Only wish that we had video footage of it that night.
So, all right, so have you heard whether they're, I mean, we can only speculate at this point about will, I guess, you guys have to appeal together or separately and whether Kaplan and Co. Incorporated are going to try again for one and two remains to be seen.
But you have to assume that they will.
I am under the impression it's my informed belief that they absolutely intend to come back after us for one and two.
You have to understand something.
These people enrich themselves to the tune of millions of dollars without ever entering a courtroom about us, right?
The people who are paying for this don't care about the outcome.
They care about making us suffer and hindering our organizing, right?
And so the people who paid for that are more than willing to continue paying for it.
That's the prize, right?
And so it's a well-financed effort to keep us bogged down in legal lawfare.
And they will absolutely do everything in their power to continue that.
Now, there's a question in my mind, which is, you know, if the plaintiffs have been fully and fairly compensated for their damages, I'm not sure that there's a controversy anymore.
That seems to be something that would be the subject of a motion to dismiss, perhaps, or a motion for summary judgment.
I don't know.
But, you know, they asked for a certain amount of compensatory damages, and it's my understanding that they were awarded said amount.
And so the idea that they would come seeking another award, you know, it's not good enough that you don't like us and don't want us in your city anymore.
You actually have to have a case in controversy to get a court involved.
And I'm not sure that one exists.
But I'm sure that I'm quite certain that I'm quite certain that these people will make every effort to convince the court that such standing exists, and they will try.
I am perfectly happy if you want to give me another opportunity to step to that microphone.
I will ep and do it.
I'm happy for the opportunity.
Absolutely.
I don't know if you saw, we only got a minute left on this call.
Did you see that there was a Fox reporter who was in the courtroom the entire time of the trial who came out and for about six minutes on her local broadcast was like, no, the plaintiffs lost.
This is a big L. Like they were going for far more and they failed.
I couldn't believe that this lefty female legal analyst, whatever she was, called it as it was.
It was a real break in the messaging, the coordinated messaging.
I've heard about this.
I haven't seen it, but I agree with the assessment.
They lost.
There's no way, you know, again, I can't call this a win when the judge says I owe Yantifa $700,000, but they can't call it a win either.
They failed, You can run on for a long time.
Run on for a long time.
Run on for a long time.
Sooner or later, gotta cut you down.
Sooner or later, gotta cut you down.
Go tell that long-tongue liar.
Go and tell that midnight writer.
Tell the rambler, the gambler, the backfighter.
Tell them that God's gonna cut them down.
Tell them that God's gonna cut them down.
Well, my goodness drazes, let me tell you the news.
My head's been wet with the midnight dew.
I've been down on bended knee, talking to the man from Galilee.
He spoke to me with a voice so sweet.
I thought I heard the shuffle of angels' feet.
He called my name and my heart stood still.
When he said, John, go do my will.
Go tell that long-tongue liar.
Go and tell that midnight rider.
Tell the rambler, the gambler, the backbiter.
Tell him that God's gonna cut him down.
Tell him that God's gonna cut him down.
You can run on for a long time.
Run on for a long time.
Run on for a long time.
Sooner or later, gotta cut you down.
Sooner or later, gotta cut you down.
Well, you may throw your rock, hide your hand, working in the dark against your fellow man.
But as sure as God made black and white, what's done in the dark will be brought to the light.