James Edwards interviews Lydia Brimelow regarding New York Attorney General Letitia James's "unabated lawfare" against her husband Peter and VDARE.com, which drained resources and forced the site's closure. They discuss the American Free Press feature "Does this help?" arguing the SPLC indictment damages its reputation while benefiting the "Historic American Nation," alongside debunking Michael Edison Hayden's book Strange People on the Hill as a fabrication. The segment concludes by urging donations to support their legal defense against civil technicalities, highlighting the disparity between the SPLC's billions in assets and conservative groups' limited funds. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Historic American Nation Feature00:14:43
You're listening to the Liberty News Radio Network, and this is The Political Cesspool.
The Political Cesspool, known across the South and worldwide as the South's foremost populist conservative radio program.
And here to guide you through the murky waters of The Political Cesspool is your host, James Edwards.
And we're back with our second hour this evening.
Joining us now is.
Lydia Brimelow, half of the husband-wife team that ran VDARE.com.
She was the fundraiser and publisher for more than 10 years until New York Attorney General Letitia James killed the main project, VDARE.com, through unabated lawfare.
Now, Lydia is a homeschooling mother of three and the president of the Berkeley Springs Castle Foundation, a nonprofit that works to restore and maintain the Berkeley Springs Castle, which is listed on the National Registry of Historic Places.
The castle is open for community events there in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, and available for private bookings.
The law fair is ongoing.
Peter and Lydia are still currently being sued, both through their organization and personally by the New York Attorney General.
We're going to let you know how you can support them later this hour.
Lydia was a standout star on our Valentine's Day broadcast with the ladies, and I told her we would have her back at our earliest opportunity.
And here we are, and I appreciate her for.
Coming on tonight.
I know what it's like on a Saturday night to have three kids, Lydia, so I appreciate your time.
Well, thank you so much for having me back.
It's wonderful.
Well, it's great to have you.
We're going to talk about a few different topics this hour, but just one more segment on the SPLC.
We did three hours on it last week, basically, and Greg Johnson touched on it a bit in the first hour tonight as well.
But, folks, there is an upcoming feature in the American Free Press.
That I'm working on, and it's really good.
This one's very, very good.
And we have 15 different contributors.
Lydia is one of them, and her contribution was very much a standout.
Lydia, I don't know if you have it in front of you.
I do if you don't, or maybe you can just recall it from memory.
But you framed it in a little bit different way rather than examining just the nuts and bolts of the indictment or just personal experiences with the SPLC, as others did, which is also what I wanted.
You looked at it basically just from the question does this help?
The historic American nation.
He had some great takes on it.
Take it away.
Well, thank you.
I have lots and lots of thoughts about the SPLC indictment because I have lots and lots of thoughts about the SPLC.
They were chasing down my husband and VDARE for the whole 25 years that he was publicly fighting against everything that they stand for.
So a few days ago, I published a piece on peterbrimelow.com.
That is my husband's new website.
I wrote a piece about my first general impressions about the SPLC, which is probably more in line with what you were looking for in terms of personal experiences and the nuts and bolts.
But the more I thought about it and was reading some other people's takes, and I haven't had a chance to read everybody's, the more I thought, you know, there's actually like a meta question here, which is not necessarily whether these are the right charges and whether the FBI is tough enough and blah, blah, blah.
It's just what does this mean for us?
And for us, my definition of us is the Historic American Nation.
And so in my piece, I just said, does it hurt the Historic American Nation?
Does it help the Historic American Nation?
Does it hurt the SPLC and their colleagues?
Or does it help them?
And, you know, I could get into my answers to each of those questions in more detail, but I think no matter what happens at this point, enough has happened that it is damaged.
It is damage to the SPLC.
It is a benefit to the historic American nation.
And, you know, it could get worse for them, which is better for us, and that is to be hoped for.
But even as it stands right now, even if they're able to shrug it off and get the charges dismissed, I think it's a black eye.
You know, there are, it's tempting as an activist and, you know, maybe an ideologue.
To forget that there's a huge number of people in the country who get impressions of things from headlines and don't spend a lot of their time paying attention to the details.
And a headline like, the SPLC is funding the KKK and organized the deadly Charlottesville rally, is something that normal people are going to remember.
You have some congressman or some public figure saying, Well, the SPLC said so and so is a hater, they don't have as solid a foundation as they used to have.
You know, doubt has been introduced.
And I think that's very valuable, regardless of how far down they fall as a result of the indictments.
And, you know, really only I've learned through hard experience that it's very difficult to predict how these legal situations are going to pan out, regardless of the merits of the case.
So, you know, I'd be happy to speculate on it.
But at the end of the day, it's all just looking into a crystal ball.
And what we know right now is that it is a good thing that this has happened and we should celebrate it.
I agree 100%.
And, folks, if you subscribe to the American Free Press, you'll get it in the mailbox here in a few days.
And we will also cross post it online.
I think Kevin McDonald's going to run it at TOO.
Lydia, you're welcome to do anything you want with it.
Roster of contributors for this piece.
Lydia, of course, but several attorneys, including Sam Dixon, Glenn Allen, Kirk Lyons, and my own attorney during my libel case against the Detroit News, Kyle Bristow, and then others as well Pastor Brett McAtee, Sam Bushman, owner of our radio network.
All of these people have unique experiences with the SPLC and prescient insights.
Sheriff Richard Mack, Lou Moore, Tom Sunich, Paul Fromm, Jason Kessler.
That is a hell lineup for this particular topic, and that is going to be coming out in print.
Some of those people were on the show last week, of course, as well.
But yes, you're right, Lydia, and I've got yours pulled up here now.
My only question about the SBLC indictment is what does it mean for the historic American nation?
Several facets of that answer interest me particularly, and you asked the questions and answered them.
Does it damage the SBLC?
And, you know, this is a point Lou Moore came out.
I mean, the SBLC, even the liberal newspaper, the Montgomery Advertiser, had begun as As late as the 90s, talking about some of their nefarious dealings, and then all of that went up, and they got embroiled in all of this Me Too and wokeism, and the staff has been turned over.
But you had even more recently 20 state AGs just say that they are an unreliable source, basically just unmasking them for what we all knew them to be forever.
You ask also, does it benefit the SPLC or any of the leftists with whom they are in league?
You had a great answer for that.
Does it damage our people?
And of course, the answer is no.
There is a caveat to that, which Greg mentioned, that you have these Fox News types saying that everything that's authentically, muscularly conservative, pro white or right wing must be an SPLC op now.
But I don't think that's going to be a narrative that sticks.
And then Does it benefit our people?
And you say yes and list the reasons why.
Anything else you want to say about that before we transition going into the next segment to another topic?
Well, no, I do have, you know, I think, I understand, and I'm totally sympathetic to Greg's observation that, you know, this basically cop out of the respectable right, quote unquote.
Saying, oh, you know, all of these things, it was just an op by the SPLC.
Well, you know, that's wrong and it's also irritating.
On the other hand, it might be a positive thing for normies and people in the middle who do not want to be associated with what they think the Unite the Right was.
They don't know that it was a total setup and a scam and a trap like J6.
It was not organized by the SPLC and it was not an op, but it certainly was a trap.
And it's one that frightened a lot of people.
And if those people are given permission to stop being afraid of it because they can just scapegoat the SPLC, I think, generally speaking, that would be a net win for our side.
I think it makes us a little bit scarier, even though we are not scary.
That's the narrative that's been created.
And then my other thought is it's also possible that some people who are sympathetic to the SPLC might be forced to consider.
Why in the world are they hoarding such treasure?
If the American cult of society is so desperately threatened by these boogeymen, why aren't they spending that money to make the boogeyman go away instead of sitting on it like a dragon?
I see all kinds of numbers out there $800 million in an offshore account.
If I were a left wing philanthropist, that's the kind of thing that would make me go, hmm.
You've got enough money.
I mean, what can you do with 834 million that you can't do with 833 million?
I don't know if Leftist thinks like that, but it does beg the question.
Right.
I love how you ended this and that the music's playing.
We're going to shift to a different topic, but you write this.
Well, I'll read it when we come back because I don't want to get in the middle of it and have it be cut off.
It's a beautiful sentiment.
And we'll continue with Lydia Bremolo of the Berkeley Springs Castle Foundation and, of course, of Be There for so many years right after this.
Stay tuned.
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Callforcivility.com I don't want to leave anyone off the list.
I was rattling off from recollection the people who have contributed to this feature.
It's going to be a pretty big feature in the next issue of the American Free Press.
I don't know if I mentioned Michael Hill and Patrick Martin.
They were both on the show last week to talk about it, but they will both be featured in this piece as well as will Lydia Brimelow.
And reading her closing statement here, I think it's beautiful.
And she's addressing the prospects of whether or not the SBLC will be punished or not, or at least.
Severely punished.
And she closes with this Hope is a dangerous thing because disappointment is so painful.
I have seen months lead to years where there are no victories.
In that indeterminable desert, keeping the faith takes real effort.
And ultimately, God's time is not our time.
We may never see victory, but we're called to fight and we're called to rally.
And victory comes one win at a time.
So pop some champagne and take this win, Patriots.
We're joining you in a toast at the Berkeley Springs Castle.
I thought that was a perfect way to end your.
Contribution to this piece, Lydia.
Well, very good.
I hope people really follow it and pop some champagne with us.
Well, that is what we certainly want, but it is good to have a not to temper expectations, but just to continue on, not get too high, not get too low.
We have got to shift from the SPLC in a way, but another thing I wanted to talk to you about, and I had this in mind as even going back to February for the next time you were on because I knew that the timing would be beginning to overlap.
Secret Tactics at the Castle00:10:51
An SPLC operative sort of, I guess you could say, visited you at the castle, and there is a major book about you and Peter and your home.
Has that been published yet?
Yes, it came out a couple of weeks ago here in April.
That's what I thought.
Mm hmm.
It's called Strange People on the Hill by Michael Edison Hayden, and I have.
I have to admit, I have not read the book.
Peter read it.
He stayed up all night when he first got it and read every detail.
So I feel like I've read it.
But the fact is, I lived it.
And when we first moved here to Berkeley Springs to run the castle, which we expected would be the Patriot venue of choice for this neck of the woods, and it was VDARE's offices and where we had VDARE conferences, the SPLC immediately showed up in town.
And the first time that I know of that Michael Edison Hayden came was in 2020.
And there was a little coffee shop in the center of town that hosted him in a secret meeting.
And they met after hours.
And all the local leftists, of which there were about 14, talked to him and tried to, I don't know exactly what they were trying to do.
He basically, I think they were trying to scare each other about how bad we were going to be, you know, about how we were going to be turning the town into who knows what.
And so he came back to Berkeley Springs several times over the course of the next couple of years.
He brought Tanya Gersh from Whitefish, Montana.
She won an enormous lawsuit against Andrew Anglin for being harassed online, and she's kind of branded herself as like a, I don't know, social justice warrior and enemy of the right.
And so they hosted her in a secret meeting, too.
Anyway, I don't really see how Hachette, which is a major publisher, saw that there was enough to write about because the The town is pretty small.
There's fewer than 1,000 people here.
V Dare did not do anything in town.
One of the reasons we bought the castle is because we valued its privacy.
And privacy goes two ways.
If we don't want you bugging us, it means we're also not letting you know what we're doing, and we're not doing it in the center of town.
So, anyway, he evolved the book into being not only about V Dare and Peter and me being in the castle, but also being about various gossipy things that happened among people not associated with me who live in Berkeley.
But Peter said that the main characters of the book were Michael Edison Hayden himself and his mental health.
And it turns out he spent several weeks in mental hospitals and was having panic attacks and all kinds of things because he was so stressed out covering the American right.
And he talks about that in great excruciating detail.
Peter actually found it pretty funny.
So, I don't know.
That's it.
There haven't been any repercussions for us, and I don't know if it's selling.
It's hard for me to believe that this is an interesting enough topic to make much of an impact, but obviously Hachette is a big publisher and they picked it up, so there it is.
Yeah, I mean, I think what you just touched on there is something I want to reiterate: that this was a major, officially, professionally published effort.
It wasn't self-published.
Published like so many of our fellow travelers' books are, this was something that he would have gotten paid for, not just by going to conferences and selling them at booths and things like that.
So, this was interesting.
And of course, the left has money to lose on efforts like this.
I mean, they lose money on movies all the time, making movies people don't want to see just to get the propaganda out there.
And if this actually does get turned into a movie, have you and Peter talked about who you'd like to play?
Have you?
Wow, that hadn't even crossed my mind.
I'd have to think about that.
Unlikely to happen, but you know, you got to be prepared.
But he actually was in the castle.
He attended a public, if I'm not mistaken, a public Christmas event that you host every year.
And I guess he bought a ticket, came in, and was interviewing your children and basically just being a little uncomfortable.
Yeah, so, you know, one thing that people, it's worth clarifying, is that my family doesn't live in the castle.
The castle is a public venue.
And we really, it's owned by a nonprofit called the Berkeley Springs Castle Foundation, which really values its regional and local identity.
So we do as much as we can to support people who live in Berkeley Springs and Morgan County.
And one of the ways that we do that is partnering with a local nonprofit called the Bath Christmas Project.
And their whole mission is just decorating the town of Berkeley Springs for Christmas for free.
It's an all volunteer effort.
So the Castle Foundation donates space at the castle so that the Christmas Project can host.
Their fundraiser every year.
So they sell tickets to a party at the castle, and the castle has donated the space for them to do that.
And the Christmas people decorate the castle for Christmas from top to bottom, and they do an absolutely, I mean, it knocks your eyes out job.
It's truly professional work, professional level work.
So it wasn't, I go into all that to point out it wasn't our party.
It wasn't a Brimelow family party, and it wasn't a beer party.
Well, yes, yes, yes, I see.
Yeah, so it was just anybody could buy a ticket.
And so he, Michael Edison Hayden, and his buddy Hannah Geis, bought tickets and came.
And Peter and I had also bought tickets for the family.
So we came and we had a guard down because it was at the castle and we were among friends.
And my children run around.
You know, they're very comfortable there.
It's like, you know, if your kids are at a church party, you know, they run around.
And he actually cornered my then eight year old daughter, who's extremely friendly and talkative, and was asking her about where she lives and, you know, where there's.
Spaces in the castle building that were off limits and stuff like that.
And luckily, another volunteer saw this happening and diverted my youngest and then came and told me.
And Peter and I actually confronted Michael Hayden and then he left the party.
So he covers that in his book.
We had actually covered it on vdare.com and bittersweet.
One of the times that story actually ended up on the Charlie Kirk podcast.
It's one of the times Charlie Kirk defended us along with Blake Neff, his podcast co host.
And so that had already made the rounds.
And actually, that's one of the things I'm very interested in in this SPLC indictment.
If it gets to discovery, how did the SPLC like that?
How did they like to hear that their operative was?
Behaving in such a profoundly inappropriate way.
Imagine this.
I'm so glad you told that part of the story because this is an SPLC employee, correct?
That's my understanding.
I don't know the clear.
If not, it was close.
I'll put it that way.
And Hannah Geis, his buddy, was definitely with SPLC at that time.
At the very least, he was.
And this is the kind of people that they either had actively working for them at the time or at the very least.
In the very recent past, from that point, and a grown man going into the castle and without permission, basically interviewing or interrogating, however you want to, trying to get information from an 18 year old girl, excuse me, an eight year old girl, an eight year old girl.
That's right.
And I had a similar experience, well, somewhat similar, just to show you the kind of tactics that this organization employs.
The SBLC used to write about us all the time.
Especially going back about 20 years ago, 15 years ago, even 10 years ago, before there was just so many more targets in pro white media, from 04 to 14, 15, 16, I mean, you know, 80, 90 articles.
Well, the first big features they did was in 2006, 2007.
And one of their, it was a girl who worked for them, a college girl, but she didn't introduce herself as that.
She basically just introduced herself as a flirty fan of the show and was asking me all these questions.
And certainly, You know, I passed the test, or you would have heard about it for sure.
But, I mean, just to come in deceptively, to come in your home and interview your little girl, to come on as if you're some sort of fan of the program to entrap, I mean, this is the kind of people you're dealing with.
And so you always have to stay on that straight and narrow.
All right, we'll be right back.
We're going to talk more with Lydia Brimlow.
Stay tuned.
Proclaiming liberty across the land.
You're listening to Liberty News Radio.
Breaking news at Town Hall, I'm Bob Agnew in Washington.
Officials say the Justice Department has indicted former FBI Director James Comey over the posting of a social media photo.
Last year, Comey posted a beach photo of seashells in the shape of the numbers 8647.
86 is slang for get rid of, and administration officials asserted that Comey was advocating the assassination of Donald Trump, the 47th president.
At the time, Comey said it was simply a political message, and he deleted the post.
The indictment is the second criminal case the Justice Department has brought against the former FBI director.
Comey Indicted Over Photo00:15:24
Greg Clugston, Washington.
The Supreme Court has struck down Louisiana's second majority black congressional district.
In a key voting rights decision, the court's action could open the door for Republican led states to eliminate black and Latino electoral districts that tend to favor Democrats.
Justice Samuel Alito, riding for the six conservatives on the court, said Louisiana's map is what he called an unconstitutional gerrymander.
Justice Elena Kagan wrote for dissent for the three liberals on the court, warning that the consequences are likely to be far reaching.
One of the directors of Camp Mystic has now offered a tearful apology to the families of the 25 girls and two teen counselors killed in last year's devastating Texas floods.
Edward Eastland says he's so sorry, offering the apology during a hearing before a legislative panel investigating the deadly flooding.
Dozens of family members of the girls sat just a few feet behind Eastland as he spoke.
A written report of findings is expected later in the year.
Camp Mystic's owners want to reopen late next month and have said they will only use parts of the camp that did not flood.
However, many of the victims' families oppose the plan to reopen the camp.
Rich Thomason reporting.
Once again, a mixed bag today on Wall Street.
The Dow's struggling.
It's down 316 points, but the NASDAQ is up about 50.
More on these stories at townhall.com.
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I really shouldn't do this.
All right, because I want to talk to Lydia about what's going on at the Castle Foundation and how you can be a part of it, maybe even have an event there.
We've done that.
I'll tell you a little bit more about that in a minute.
But, Lydia, just during the break, just out of sheer morbid curiosity, I pulled up the Amazon sales page for this book.
Maybe there will be a movie.
Who knows?
Strange People on the Hill How Extremism Tore Part a Small American Town.
By Michael Edison Hayden, former SBLC, really one of their top guys during that 2.0 SBLC.
This was after Dees and Byrick and Richard Cohen and all of that from the early 2000s.
This was like the second wave, but it's listed as number one, the number one new release in U.S. immigrant history, an interesting subcategory for it.
But listen to this a gripping story that reveals what happened to a small American town when an influential white nationalist group relocated its headquarters there.
How radical changes in American politics impact our psyches and divide our communities.
J.M. Berger writes Michael Edison Hayden has written an admirably candid and remarkably intimate account of the toll that extremism enacts on ordinary people.
An utterly riveting and heartbreaking read, writes David Nywert.
He used to write for the SBLC, he did a few pieces on us.
I remember him.
And then also this finally, a harrowing account.
Of how extremist forces can infiltrate communities and how new networks of solidarity and defense of truth can emerge to resist them.
So it's creating this fictitious scenario around the fact that you and Peter bought this property for foundation work and that it just ripped the town of Berkeley Springs apart.
And, you know, this is a very conservative area.
That just did not happen.
This is entirely manufactured.
If anything, Lydia, if I'm not mistaken, the people of the town have basically rallied to your defense.
That's totally true.
I'm laughing, though, about that subcategory.
What is it, immigrant histories or something?
Are they talking about Peter?
I mean, I don't know.
It's number one in that category, the U.S. immigrant history.
And the reason they're talking about it being candid and intimate is because he talks about, in very explicit terms, how he came to this Christmas event at the castle and then he went from there into a Three week psychiatric hold because he was trying to kill himself.
I mean, that is candid and that is intimate, but it is not what it sounds like on the back of the book cover.
He's clearly got problems.
He's clearly trying to exercise those demons on people that don't deserve it.
No, the town was not ripped apart.
If anybody who's listening has lived in a small town or alternatively has a big family, you know that there is always some level of Drama and conflict involved in human interaction.
And what he did basically was embed himself in Berkeley Springs for a number of years and then act like a gossip columnist and talk about who was arguing with who, which, by the way, it was never me and Peter.
We were never involved in his arguments.
They have nothing to do with us.
And, you know, what can I say?
How interesting a read can it be?
But.
I tell you, you asked the question.
It could be very interesting if basically everything is a work of fiction.
Who knows how far it went and what's going to be in there?
You're thinking about things that actually happened and what did or didn't happen in real life.
I mean, according to some of these endorsements of the book, this has just sort of destroyed the entire town.
Well, I'll tell you, when we first purchased the castle, when V Dare first purchased the castle, Peter and I were living in a very beautiful home in a very beautiful part of the country in Litchfield, Connecticut, and I had no intention of moving.
My whole plan was to run the castle remotely.
In fact, Sam Dixon and I got in, I wouldn't say in an argument, but we had a very serious discussion about how he thought that was a bad idea and I didn't want to move.
But when I Came to know Berkeley Springs when we started visiting and got to know the people.
I was so taken with how wonderful they are, how kind and open and generous and conservative and everything that I moved my family here as a choice.
And I moved from a property and a house and a home in a situation that I loved to a property and a house and a home that was very uncomfortable for me.
We were not living in the castle.
We had a dramatic downsize.
The house was.
Built in the 30s and falling apart.
I don't need to get into it.
But there were bigger priorities that made it totally worth it.
And as far as I'm concerned, it's a wonderful, beautiful place to raise a family.
And we have no intention of leaving because we have such a strong and dynamic community here of support.
And that's just in direct opposition to what Hayden is suggesting in this book.
I was reading his bio.
It talks about, well, it just reads Michael Edison Hayden is an investigative reporter and a leading expert on far right extremism.
I always got to.
Kick during SPLC articles about us, it would be this investigative report, and it's like, you know, what was the investigation?
They listened to the radio show.
People would ask all the time, how did they investigate you?
I said, they tuned in.
Because they never quoted anything that wasn't.
How did you get access to the castle?
Oh, I bought a ticket.
I mean, exactly, exactly.
You know, but that is another thing I was going to say is that he actually never interviewed me and Peter.
How about that?
We approached him at this party, and my main concern, and he says this in the book, and he said it on his Free Substack too was, did you take pictures of my kids?
You better, I mean, that was, you know, get out of here.
And not get out of here at the party, but like, what on earth do you think you're doing talking to my kids right now?
And then at the end of it, you know, Michael said, oh, Peter, I have some questions for you.
And Peter said, well, okay, just send them to me in an email.
Well, he never did.
You know, he's embedded in this town supposedly for two years, and that is the full extent of the interaction that we had with him.
And, you know, supposedly were the subject of the book.
Yeah, you are the subject.
You and Peter moving there and buying that property and having events on the property for the two different foundations is the whole subject of the book, that and the apparent demise of the town over it, or, you know, alleged.
Obviously, that didn't really happen.
But, yeah, so you would have thought that he would have at least, as an author, would have tried to talk to the two principal subjects of the book.
Yeah, as an investigator, no less.
Well, it reminds me, I tell you another story very quickly.
And, Lydia, I guess.
Cringed to ask this.
I don't like doing this, and I certainly don't like putting people on the spot when I do this.
But we had talked about 45 minutes, but I do really want to get into how we can help.
And I took a little bit more time.
If you wouldn't mind staying just until the end of the hour, I know you've got family things going on.
But it reminds me of another book that was written entitled Rising Out of Hatred.
So we talked about, you know, you've got this guy here that goes in, he's interviewing your young daughters.
You talked about an experience I had before with one of their female staffers, you know, being deceptive.
And But this book, Rising Out of Hatred, it was written by Eli Saslow, and it deals with the Derek Black situation.
I won't say anything more about it than that because I have a great deal of respect for Don and his wife and her kids and just that whole family, very dear friends.
But this book was written, and there's a point here.
In the very first chapter, I think it may have been the first page of the first chapter, it talks about an event that I had put on in 2008 in Memphis.
And everything about that accounting in this book that was written by Eli Saslow, he won a Pulitzer.
I don't know if it was for this book or for something else, but it was a bestseller.
They were on all the Talk shows at the time.
And it talks about how people were fighting in the parking lot, how there were rows of protesters protesting the conference, and our people had to fight through them.
Lydia, that was 100% made up.
That was not only were there no fights, there were no protesters.
It was a private event.
Nobody ever showed up the whole time.
I mean, it just goes to show.
I mean, if people don't have this experience, I think people would be maybe surprised, or at least people should know that so much.
Is just completely manufactured.
And your situation with this book we've been talking about, that's just one anecdote I can share from personal experiences.
I mean, these people, there's no depth to the depravity and the dishonesty of these people.
Right, right.
I agree completely.
All right.
Well, we've got music in about a minute.
When we come back, we're going to have the last full measure here with Lydia Brimelow.
We're going to talk about their current legal situation, where that stands after.
So many months and years now of duress, how we can help, what the prospects are, anything she wants to say about that, and how you can visit Berkeley Springs and see for yourself what is real and what isn't, and perhaps even attend an event at the castle and perhaps even have your own event there as we have done.
It is a very charming little place.
Technically, I think it's considered to be a spot town.
There's bathhouses there, but don't get the wrong idea, folks.
But George Washington is rumored to have been there in a vacation spot and not too far from Washington, D.C., in the mountains of West Virginia.
Just a beautiful spot.
Before the music plays, I would just ask you to say one more thing about Berkeley Springs, the town.
It's a really beautiful spot.
The George Washington connection is that he actually surveyed the whole town.
So when you buy property in Berkeley Springs, often enough, it'll come with George Washington's signature on it.
And it is America's first spa town.
It has more mineral springs that bubble up out of the mountain all year round, and you can take the baths.
And it's a truly magical experience here in Appalachia.
Beautiful, wonderful people, and a very lovely little town.
I highly recommend it.
Got the country in there where I stayed, and they had some of the best food I've ever eaten.
We'll be right back.
Advancing Moral Law Foundation00:03:02
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One more segment with Lydia Brimelow, and I think it was Warren Balog who pointed out within the last few days, with regards to all of this stuff going on with the SPLC, that they have almost a billion dollars in assets, a billion dollars to crush and destroy people who don't share their political opinions, which is basically what we're talking about.
Not that necessarily people are doing anything illegal, but because they have viewpoints that differ from that of the SPLC.
And when they do come, Warren noted that our side is lucky to raise a few thousand dollars in legal defense funds to try to survive against these attacks of lawfare against this lavishly funded organization.
Vdare Foundation Legal Update00:10:24
And we have so many good people in our ranks, so many good supporters.
But typically, when this happens, and I'm not just talking in our circles, I'm not talking about our circles, I'm just talking about generally in life with human beings.
You fall on hard times, misfortune occurs, injustice happens in the form of lawfare, which the Brimelows know all too well.
And a lot of people morally support you.
It's a pat on the back and bootstraps, my boys, and good luck.
We've got to do our best to stand with the people who have championed our cause and held the standard bearer for so long and advanced our flag.
Lydia, where are we now with all of the lawfare against?
I mean, it's so vast and varied, it would probably take an entire show just to break it down.
But if you could summarize what the standing is as of this first week of May, and of course, what we can do to help.
Sure.
So I'll update on three fronts.
One is the most long battle, the longest battle that we've been enduring, which is the investigation, which was filed, you know, frankly, I lose count four years ago, five years ago.
And the weird thing is that it still hasn't closed.
They.
You know, the New York Attorney General has gotten everything that she wanted, except we were successful in protecting the names of our donors and writers.
And it was the fight for that that ultimately drained vidare.com of its resources and forced us to close that part of the project of the Vidare Foundation.
And so that is ongoing.
I'm still every month paying for various compliance issues having to do with that discovery.
So that's update number one.
Update number two.
Is the lawsuit that Letitia James and the New York Attorney General's Office brought in the fall against the Vidair Foundation at the same time with update number three, which is the lawsuit she brought against my family.
So, that is, say, Peter and me.
And she is accusing us of various fiduciary obligations and things that our lawyers refer to as paper cuts.
A lot of things she just made up.
In the face of evidence that shows our innocence, but she says that we checked the wrong box on the 990 here and there, whatever.
That's not necessarily true, but even if it were true, it's the kind of thing that's typically resolved if she were to send us a letter and then we file an amendment.
I've had that experience with the IRS, so I know of which I speak.
So in January, we had.
Both our personal lawyers and the VDARE lawyers filed a motion to dismiss, hoping that the lawsuits could just be dismissed by the judge.
But the judge decided not to dismiss them, and the next step now is to go into hearings about how discovery is going to work.
I just genuinely can't imagine what discovery against a VDARE would look like because they already have everything.
And so I keep asking the lawyers, How are we having a hearing about discovery when they've already gotten discovery for four years?
And they just say, We're not really sure.
That's not true for our family.
They have not gotten discovery against Peter and me yet, and so we have that to prepare for.
And it will be, you know, as awful as you can imagine like a hostile audit, you know, if your worst enemies were looking through all of your paperwork for the last 10 years.
And then on top of that, you get to pay a lawyer by the hour to go through and redact it and make sure that it's.
Responsive to the various subpoenas and discovery requests.
So, I anticipate that that is what my summer will be taken up with this summer.
And what happens after that, I don't know, but that's where we are right now.
Depositions and things, presumably, are forthcoming.
Folks, would you like to be in that position?
I mean, this is the question.
I mean, it is just an obscene injustice, and it's happening to two truly great individuals, Peter and Lydia, friends of mine for so many years.
They're three young daughters.
Obviously, Peter has two older children as well, grown adult children, but you know what I mean.
This is a wonderful family, and they are in a completely unenviable position.
We need to stand with the people who have advanced our issues so dutifully and faithfully for so many years.
How can we do that, Lydia?
Well, first and foremost, I ask for prayers.
I am a strong Christian believer, and I think ultimately these things are in God's hands.
But God helps those who help themselves, as people say sometimes, and we're doing our best to put up the best defense.
And that, needless to say, takes money.
So if people are in a position to donate and donate generously, we're profoundly grateful.
Right now, we have two Give, Send, Go appeals going up.
One is for VDARE, so that's give, send, go.com slash VDARE, and all that money.
Goes directly to paying legal bills for the VDARE Foundation itself, and the other is for Peter and me.
So that is give, send, go.com, slash, Brimelow, and that money is going to pay the legal bills for Peter and myself because VDARE does not pay our personal legal bills.
What a waking nightmare.
I'm a layman.
Obviously, I'm not a legal expert.
We know a lot of lawyers, but it seems as though they're going after the VDARE Foundation and you and Peter.
Personally, in separate but concurrent cases.
So that, I mean, it's, and for completely overlapping complaints, I'm sure.
I mean, it seems like that would all be tied into the one.
Yeah, exactly.
And I do want to, I like to make a point.
This is not actually a criminal case, this is a civil case.
We're not accused of any crimes.
They just think that we didn't file paperwork the right way and we didn't get the proper board vote recorded in the minutes and it's.
Certain month and that kind of thing.
And as the leaders of the VDARE Foundation, you know, so the VDARE Foundation, they're saying that this improperly, and Peter and I were the leaders of the VDARE Foundation, so we're being held responsible for it personally.
And the thing is, we're innocent of all charges.
You know, we didn't do anything wrong.
And some of the things that they've accused us of, and I don't want to get too far down the rabbit hole, but I'll give you one example.
If you read the 55 page complaint against us, there are a lot.
Of technical details involved.
And one of the things that the AG's office complains about is that Peter and I are on the board of the VDARE Foundation and on the board of the Berkeley Springs Castle Foundation.
And they cite this as evidence of some kind of corruption controlling the board, making sure that, you know, I don't know what.
And I'll tell you why we're on both boards, and it's because the IRS regulations require us to be on both boards.
The Berkeley Castle Foundation was set up as a supporting organization of the VDARE Foundation.
And in that case, you must have overlapping boards between the supporting and the supported organization.
So I'm being accused by Letitia James of some sort of inappropriate activity by my compliance with IRS regulations.
And when a layperson reads the complaint, you don't know these things, but it doesn't matter how many times we've said.
To the Attorney General's office or to a judge.
Look, the reason that they're on both boards is because it says right here in the IRS regulations that they're required to be on both boards.
They never retract it, it's never corrected, and we continue to have to defend against it.
And that's the kind of thing that this complaint is made up of.
Folks, if you go to give send go.comslash Bremolo, Peter writes here on this I'm writing this with a heavy heart, but I have to do it for my family.
Lydia and I have three daughters aged 15, 13, and 10.
I have to do what I can to protect and provide for them.
As a father, As a husband, Lydia, I relate to that.
It just cuts straight to the marrow of one's bones.
Folks, we have to have the sense of solidarity with our family and with our community and with our friends.
And you would want that if it was you in a situation like this, completely unjust.
And we want that for them.
So give, send, go.com, slash, Bremolo.
And again, as we mentioned earlier, if you want to take a vacation, get out to Berkeley Springs, see what events are going on at the castle, you can have your own events.
There.
I had an event there, not for TPC, but for another organization.
And it was just a weekend I'll always remember.
My wife went, we strolled around the shops and the restaurants and the springs.
And it's you can meet Peter and Lydia.
I mean, you know, that reads in a lawn right there.
So, hey, Lydia, God bless you.
BerkeleySpringsCastle.com.
And we'll get something up on the website so people can just click right over if that's too hard to remember.
Lydia, God bless you.
Godspeed.
And let us know what we can continue to do to stand with you and Peter.