Jason Kessler sues Gavin McInnes over false claims linking Kessler to the "Field Source 37" paid $270,000 between 2015 and 2023 for information regarding the 2017 Unite the Right rally. While Kessler secured the permit for the Charlottesville event where violence occurred, McInnes disavowed it yet alleges Kessler orchestrated a hoax, a theory contradicted by the indictment's timeline showing payments predate Kessler's public emergence. The messy lawsuit, filed pro se by Kessler against McInnes and his attorney Mark Randaza, highlights conflicting narratives about the rally's origins and the SPLC's alleged wire fraud conspiracy. Ultimately, this legal clash underscores the chaotic misinformation surrounding white nationalist movements and the difficulty of establishing factual accountability amidst competing conspiracy theories. [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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Making You Funnier With Guests00:02:18
This is an iHeart podcast.
Guaranteed human.
Another podcast from some SNL late-night comedy guy?
Not quite.
On Humor Me with Robert Smigel and Friends, me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier.
This week, my guests, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an acapella band with their between songs banter.
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We do some retirement homes.
Those people are starving for banter.
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Hey, what's good, y'all?
You're listening to Learn the Hard Way with your favorite therapist and host, Keir Games.
This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that it's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing.
How many men carry a suit of armor?
It signals to the world that you're not to be played with.
And just because you have the capability, that does not mean that you need to.
Listen to Learn the Hard Way on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal, but encouraged.
It's the Enhanced Games.
Some call it grotesque, others say it's unleashing human potential.
Either way, the podcast Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year.
Within probably 10 days, I put on 10 pounds.
I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth.
Listen to Superhuman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
The story I've told myself can then shape my behavior, and that can lead me to sabotage the possibility of connection.
This Mental Health Awareness Month, tune into the podcast Deeply Well with Debbie Brown.
If you've been searching for a soft place to land while doing the work to become whole, this podcast is for you to hear more.
Listen to Deeply Well with Debbie Brown from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Rally Trap And Lawsuit Drama00:09:27
Molly here with our first ever Weird Little Guys Emergency Mini Sode.
You know, I don't like current events.
I was just telling you a few weeks ago what a relief it's been working on this show, but I don't have to deal with the stress of breaking news.
I can work current events into my narrative flow when the time is right in the history I'm trying to write.
Whatever.
I did say that.
But here's the thing I couldn't wait this time.
It's too funny.
I have to tell you this right now.
And it actually fits in perfectly with the subject of this week's regular episode.
Because that's how I found it.
I was doing my due diligence researching for the episode you'll hear in a few days when I found something extremely unexpected.
A weird little guy has filed a new lawsuit.
And the lawsuit is against another weird little guy.
This is one of my favorite things.
It doesn't happen very often, but it's always so special.
So, this week, I was getting my notes together to write about the president's claim that the Unite the Right rally was a hoax, perpetrated entirely by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
So, as part of my process, I popped over to PACER, the public access site for federal court documents.
We'll explore this more fully in the regular episode.
But the Department of Justice recently indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center, alleging they engaged in wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering in their dealings with paid sources within various hate groups.
The government seems to want you to believe that paying sources for information means that the Southern Poverty Law Center was actually funneling their donor money into those hate groups for the purpose of manufacturing racist violence to justify their own existence.
It's very stupid, and we'll talk about it later.
But one of those paid sources described in the indictment is Field Source 37, F 37 for short.
And according to the indictment, F 37 was involved in planning the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017.
The indictment alleges that F 37 was paid $270,000 between 2015 and 2023.
But the brief paragraph about F 37 Only describes the source's activities in the summer of 2017.
And naturally, I'm very curious about who this could be.
And I know a lot of the guys it could be are extremely anxious to find out who it really was.
The finger pointing and speculation in their circles has been a very fun read for me.
And that's something we'll touch on in a regular episode.
But there's another group of people who might be very interested.
To find out who got that money.
The victims.
Several people who were injured at the Unite the Right rally won a civil lawsuit against the rally's organizers.
They're owed millions of dollars in damages and it hasn't been paid.
So if someone who helped organize that rally has a quarter of a million dollars that nobody knew about, well, that would be legally relevant to some people, wouldn't it?
Now, of course, it very well could be that the paid source was involved in organizing the rally in the manner the government alleges in that indictment, but that the source wasn't one of the defendants in the lawsuit, right?
Those things can both be true.
But I went to go dig around in the federal court filings just to see if anybody was making moves, you know, check all my boxes, cover all my bases.
Maybe someone who was involved in that lawsuit on either side.
Is curious about what's going on here, and maybe they filed something.
But I didn't see any new filings in that old lawsuit or in any of the appeals related to it.
They're all still closed, sitting quietly, accumulating interest on that unpaid judgment.
So I didn't find what I was looking for.
But I found something I wasn't looking for.
There is something new under one of the names I was searching for.
So when I went to PACER, The party I searched for was the lead defendant in that lawsuit against the rally's organizers.
I searched for lawsuits involving Jason Kessler.
And there he was in my search results, as I expected.
It pulled up a bunch of familiar old lawsuits and one I hadn't seen before.
Jason Kessler has filed a lawsuit against Gavin McGinnis.
Jason Kessler was the man who got the permit for the Unite the Right rally in the first place.
He was the local loser who thought organizing a big rally in his hometown would make him a star, only to end up taking the lion's share of the blame for the mess that he made and the woman who got killed.
And now he's suing Gavin McGinnis, the founder of the Proud Boys.
It's easy to forget now, so many years later, but back in 2017, Gavin McGinnis was still in charge of the Proud Boys.
And he didn't attend the Unite the Right rally.
You absolutely, under no circumstances, have to give it up to Gavin fucking McGinnis, but it's true that in 2017, he did spot from a mile away.
But that rally was going to be a mess.
And he not only didn't attend, but he disavowed it ahead of time and said that Proud Boys should not attend.
It was a different time.
They used to try to keep their distance from a swastika.
And just as an aside, I think it's worth noting here that Enrique Tario was already a member of the Proud Boys back then, and he ignored Gavin McGinnis's order to stay away.
Did attend the Nazi rally.
But now, in the wake of the indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center, Gavin McGinnis feels vindicated.
He thinks that this is proof that the whole rally was a trap to begin with, or at least that's what he's saying in public.
On his social media, on his own podcast, in appearances on other people's podcasts, he's saying that maybe Field Source 37 was Jason Kessler, and that the whole rally was a setup orchestrated by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Organized by that paid informant.
Now, for the record, he's wrong about all of that.
It's just not possible.
The facts don't fit.
F 37 wasn't Jason Kessler.
I don't know who it was, but it couldn't have been Jason Kessler.
If the facts in the indictment are correct, the payments to F 37 started in 2015, and Kessler wasn't anything to anybody until the summer of 2017 because that rally.
Was his entry into the scene.
That was his ticket to relevance.
The SPLC wouldn't have heard of him or had any reason to pay him for information any earlier than 2017, so he's not F 37.
But Gavin McGinnis is saying that he was.
According to Jason Kessler's complaint, McGinnis said, among a variety of other things, I'm 95% sure that Jason was getting SPLC money.
But again, that's just my theory.
And I'm basing it strictly, almost exclusively, on vibes.
End quote.
The defamation complaint is a mess.
Jason doesn't have a lawyer.
Gavin does, but it's Mark Randaza.
Jason Kessler has already filed a motion asking the court to refuse to admit Randaza, citing Randaza's very real history of discipline from other state bar associations and some alleged threatening statements he made in a conversation they had leading up to this lawsuit.
I suspect that Gavin is going to say vibes based assessments aren't actionable in a defamation claim.
And Jason is already arguing that he's not a public figure for the purposes of defamation.
I suspect they may both come to discover they're mistaken.
I just wish it were possible for everyone involved to lose a lawsuit.
It's going to be a huge mess.
And I've got my docket alerts on for this one.
Riffing On Dubious Legal Advice00:02:44
Weird Little Guys is a production of Cool's Home Media and iHeartRadio.
It's researched, written, and recorded by me, Molly Conger.
Our executive producers are Sophie Lecterman and Robert Evans.
The show is edited by the wildly talented Rory Gagan.
The theme music was composed by Brad Dickert.
You can email me at WeirdLittleGuysPodcast at gmail.com.
I will definitely read it, but I probably won't answer it.
It's nothing personal.
You can exchange conspiracy theories about the show with other listeners on the Weird Little Guys subreddit.
Just don't post anything that's going to make you one of my Weird Little Guys.
Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy?
Not quite.
On Humor Me with Robert Smigel and Friends, me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier.
This week, my guests, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel, help an acapella band with their between songs banter.
Where does your group perform?
We do some retirement homes.
Those people are starving for banter.
Listen to Humor Me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey, what's good, y'all?
You're listening to Learn the Hard Way with your favorite therapist and host, Keir Gaines.
This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that it's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing.
How many men carry a suit of armor?
It signals to the world that you're not to be played with.
And just because you have the capability, that does not mean that you need to.
Listen to Learn the Hard Way on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal, but encouraged.
It's the enhanced games.
Some call it grotesque.
Others say it's unleashing human potential.
Either way, the podcast Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year.
Within probably 10 days, I put on 10 pounds.
I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth.
Listen to Superhuman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm Joey Dardano, and on my new podcast, Hope From a Hypocrite, I'll be changing lives, helping people in need with thoughtful solutions.
Psych, I'm a comedian.
I'm not qualified to give good advice.
Join me and my comedian friends as we riff, rant, and recommend some of the most legally dubious advice known to man.
This is Help From a Hypocrite, the worst advice from the dumbest people you know.
Listen to Help From a Hypocrite Wednesdays on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.