WEBVTT - The Florida Bar v Invictus 0:00:01.680 --> 0:00:07.119 Cool Zone Media. 0:00:07.880 --> 0:00:11.880 Hello everyone, and welcome to the last full length non 0:00:12.000 --> 0:00:16.560 rerun episode of twenty twenty five. This won't be the 0:00:16.600 --> 0:00:19.319 last thing on your feed this year, but it is 0:00:19.400 --> 0:00:23.480 the last regular episode until we pick back up in January. 0:00:25.200 --> 0:00:28.760 It's been a hodgepodge sort of month this month, but 0:00:28.800 --> 0:00:30.280 I think we're going to hit the ground running in 0:00:30.280 --> 0:00:32.760 twenty twenty six with some stories you'll really get a 0:00:32.840 --> 0:00:36.800 kick out of. Today's episode is another one that isn't 0:00:37.159 --> 0:00:40.760 quite in the classic We're Little Guy's format, but it 0:00:40.800 --> 0:00:42.919 is about a guy a lot of you have been 0:00:42.960 --> 0:00:48.200 asking me about. Look, it's the end of the year. 0:00:49.200 --> 0:00:52.080 It's dark at four in the afternoon, but it's too 0:00:52.120 --> 0:00:54.200 cold to convince my dogs to go for a walk 0:00:54.240 --> 0:00:58.080 with me. Back when I had an office job, I 0:00:58.080 --> 0:01:00.760 could get away with pretending to look busy at my 0:01:00.840 --> 0:01:03.680 desk for the last week or so before any major holiday. 0:01:04.880 --> 0:01:07.240 The problem with the job I have now is that 0:01:07.280 --> 0:01:10.959 you guys would definitely notice if I spent the week 0:01:11.000 --> 0:01:13.800 goofing off online and then quickly switching to a big 0:01:13.840 --> 0:01:18.640 spreadsheet on my monitor if somebody walked by. It's okay, though, 0:01:19.600 --> 0:01:21.160 I like you guys a lot more than I liked 0:01:21.200 --> 0:01:23.319 anybody who ever looked over my shoulder at an office, 0:01:23.400 --> 0:01:28.120 so I'll do my best for you. I had planned 0:01:28.160 --> 0:01:31.080 on doing a sort of reverse weird little guy thing 0:01:31.160 --> 0:01:33.720 for the holidays. You know, I was gonna write an 0:01:33.760 --> 0:01:36.800 episode about a guy who is definitely a little odd, 0:01:37.640 --> 0:01:41.280 but like in a good way. But you know by 0:01:41.319 --> 0:01:45.320 now that I've never not once in my life sat 0:01:45.360 --> 0:01:47.360 down and written the thing I had in mind before 0:01:47.400 --> 0:01:51.080 I started. So that's not what this is. I didn't 0:01:51.120 --> 0:01:54.800 even start working on that. I'm not bound to this 0:01:54.920 --> 0:01:57.440 seasonal cycle. I can tell you a nice story about 0:01:57.440 --> 0:02:00.840 a different kind of guy some other time. We can 0:02:00.920 --> 0:02:06.080 have moments of joy anytime of year. Instead, today I'm 0:02:06.120 --> 0:02:08.799 going to keep my promise from last week and tell 0:02:08.840 --> 0:02:11.919 you a little bit more about the other man who 0:02:11.960 --> 0:02:14.520 lost his job the same day Tyler Dikes did. Back 0:02:14.520 --> 0:02:22.920 in October. Last week we were talking about Tyler Dikes. 0:02:23.919 --> 0:02:27.000 He's running for Congress in South Carolina, hoping to win 0:02:27.080 --> 0:02:31.280 the seat Nancy Mace's leaving. But before that, he was 0:02:31.320 --> 0:02:33.960 one of the nearly sixteen hundred people who received a 0:02:34.000 --> 0:02:39.119 presidential pardon for their actions on January sixth, twenty twenty one, 0:02:39.360 --> 0:02:45.520 and before that will it was mostly Nazi stuff, And 0:02:45.600 --> 0:02:49.920 in last week's episode, I opened with a funny little synchronicity. 0:02:51.520 --> 0:02:55.760 Tyler Diykes's campaign launched shortly after he tweeted on October 0:02:55.800 --> 0:02:59.640 twenty second that he'd just been fired from another job. 0:03:00.760 --> 0:03:03.960 That was something that keeps happening to him because people 0:03:04.000 --> 0:03:07.440 won't stop calling him a Nazi, due in part to 0:03:07.639 --> 0:03:11.680 all the times he's been photographed in public giving Nazi salutes. 0:03:13.320 --> 0:03:17.920 And that same day, October twenty second, the Florida Supreme 0:03:17.919 --> 0:03:21.240 Court filed an order giving Augustus soul and Victus thirty 0:03:21.360 --> 0:03:24.520 days to offload all of his clients before his license 0:03:24.560 --> 0:03:28.040 to practice law was suspended. But by the time I 0:03:28.080 --> 0:03:32.679 finished picking apart the congressional candidate's conspiracy theory podcast appearances, 0:03:32.800 --> 0:03:35.320 I had run out of time and we never got 0:03:35.320 --> 0:03:40.280 to the second guy. And I paired those two seemingly 0:03:40.400 --> 0:03:45.520 unconnected stories because they started in the same place. They're 0:03:45.560 --> 0:03:48.080 both still living with the consequences of a trip they 0:03:48.080 --> 0:03:54.840 took to Charlottesville in August of twenty seventeen. It might 0:03:54.880 --> 0:03:59.240 seem like a strange preoccupation to you listener, how often 0:03:59.280 --> 0:04:02.240 a story that's winding its way in and out of 0:04:02.280 --> 0:04:07.640 side stories. We'll wind up here. I'm sure you've noticed 0:04:08.240 --> 0:04:12.240 comes up a lot, even if it's only in passing. 0:04:13.000 --> 0:04:17.600 Almost every one of these stories has some thread that 0:04:17.640 --> 0:04:21.800 connects it to Charlottesville, something that connects it to the 0:04:21.880 --> 0:04:24.600 Unite the Right rally here in August of twenty seventeen. 0:04:26.279 --> 0:04:29.080 If you hadn't noticed it before, I'm sure you will now. 0:04:30.080 --> 0:04:35.400 It's always there. Gerald Drake, the Confederate reenactor who went 0:04:35.440 --> 0:04:38.960 to prison for threatening his former friends. He got the 0:04:39.000 --> 0:04:42.479 idea to pretend the bomb threats were from Antifa because 0:04:42.480 --> 0:04:45.000 he saw pictures of protesters in Black Bloc on the 0:04:45.000 --> 0:04:51.160 news after Unite the Right. Those fake grassroots marchigainst. Sharia 0:04:51.279 --> 0:04:54.840 rallies were organized by many of the same men who 0:04:54.880 --> 0:04:57.560 were planning the Unite the Right rally later that same summer. 0:04:59.000 --> 0:05:02.320 The featured speaker at the American Freedom Party conference earlier 0:05:02.360 --> 0:05:05.760 this year were both men who had led their respective 0:05:05.880 --> 0:05:09.799 organizations on the ground here in Charlottesville in twenty seventeen. 0:05:11.800 --> 0:05:14.800 At a twenty eighteen Brightbart News town hall, the man 0:05:14.880 --> 0:05:18.760 asking Anne Coulter about white genocide was the leader of 0:05:18.760 --> 0:05:24.080 a group that organized Unite the right over and over 0:05:24.640 --> 0:05:28.680 and over again. In all of these seemingly unrelated places 0:05:28.680 --> 0:05:32.599 and times. These stories are all connected, and it's not 0:05:32.640 --> 0:05:41.240 a coincidence. Part of that, to be fair, is that 0:05:41.600 --> 0:05:46.119 I live here. My own interest in figuring out how 0:05:46.160 --> 0:05:48.440 someone ends up marching in the streets at a Nazi 0:05:48.520 --> 0:05:53.839 rally started here. It was these guys in particular that 0:05:53.920 --> 0:05:57.360 sparked my interest in understanding the concept of the weird 0:05:57.400 --> 0:06:01.520 little guy as I write about them today. I have 0:06:01.600 --> 0:06:06.960 spent years reconstructing those events and trying to understand the 0:06:07.000 --> 0:06:10.960 men who marched here. That then led to a need 0:06:11.000 --> 0:06:13.359 to understand the groups they came with, which led to 0:06:13.400 --> 0:06:16.080 a need to understand where those groups came from and 0:06:16.080 --> 0:06:19.800 what preceded them. And it's been one long rabbit hole 0:06:19.800 --> 0:06:21.760 that I haven't dug myself back out of for more 0:06:21.800 --> 0:06:26.440 than eight years. So that's definitely part of why it 0:06:26.440 --> 0:06:29.919 comes up so often. It is what I know best. 0:06:31.839 --> 0:06:37.440 But truthfully, everything is connected, and that rally in twenty 0:06:37.480 --> 0:06:42.320 seventeen is a central node. It comes up all the 0:06:42.400 --> 0:06:47.320 time because everyone was there. It was the largest and 0:06:47.400 --> 0:06:50.600 most violent public gathering of white supremacists in the United 0:06:50.600 --> 0:06:55.120 States in decades. It was a pivotal moment in our 0:06:55.160 --> 0:06:59.560 collective understanding of political violence, and it didn't come out 0:06:59.560 --> 0:07:04.080 of nowhere. Every story I write about the present has 0:07:04.120 --> 0:07:08.080 a very clear relationship to that day, because the guy 0:07:08.160 --> 0:07:12.600 was probably there. But even in stories about the distant past, 0:07:13.880 --> 0:07:17.880 it's there, like the ghost of Nazi rallies yet to come. 0:07:21.800 --> 0:07:24.840 Just recently, I spent two months writing about the men 0:07:24.880 --> 0:07:27.720 whose lives intersected with the death of American Nazi Party 0:07:27.800 --> 0:07:32.200 leader George Lincoln Rockwell. Those stories mostly took place in 0:07:32.200 --> 0:07:36.600 the nineteen sixties, but that weekend in August fifty years 0:07:36.680 --> 0:07:41.880 later kept Elboyan's way into the story. That kind of 0:07:41.920 --> 0:07:45.160 white power march owed quite a bit to Rockwell, just 0:07:45.200 --> 0:07:48.440 in terms of the ideological lineage of that kind of event, 0:07:49.920 --> 0:07:53.280 but it's more than that. Some of his old friends 0:07:53.320 --> 0:07:58.320 were actually there. Decades after Rockwell's death, the man who 0:07:58.360 --> 0:08:01.080 still keeps the Nazis' ashes in a white urn on 0:08:01.120 --> 0:08:04.920 a swastika shrine drove halfway across the country to be here, 0:08:05.760 --> 0:08:09.280 and he'd told reporters that Rockwell would have been pleased 0:08:09.280 --> 0:08:14.000 to see it. So while it is a funny coincidence 0:08:14.040 --> 0:08:17.840 that Tyler Diykes and Augustus Invictus both became unemployable on 0:08:17.880 --> 0:08:22.880 October twenty second, twenty twenty five. It's not a coincidence 0:08:23.280 --> 0:08:27.840 that they both attended the rally in twenty seventeen and 0:08:27.920 --> 0:08:31.800 back in twenty seventeen. Tyler Dykes was just part of 0:08:31.800 --> 0:08:37.680 the crowd. He was some teenage nobody. Augustus Invictus, on 0:08:37.720 --> 0:08:42.080 the other hand, was here as a headline speaker. He 0:08:42.120 --> 0:08:44.559 had been part of the core group of organizers and 0:08:44.840 --> 0:08:47.400 was at the time a member of a group called 0:08:47.400 --> 0:08:51.400 the Fraternal Order of Alt Knights, which was a short 0:08:51.440 --> 0:08:55.600 lived subset of proud boys who were particularly committed to 0:08:55.720 --> 0:08:59.880 engaging in violence. And the night before the main event 0:09:00.240 --> 0:09:03.160 to take place, they were both in the crowd lining 0:09:03.240 --> 0:09:05.880 up for the tiki torch march at the University of Virginia. 0:09:08.160 --> 0:09:11.640 There were hundreds of them there that night, torches in hand, 0:09:12.400 --> 0:09:15.240 chanting as they marched through the university grounds and then 0:09:15.320 --> 0:09:18.240 encircled a small group of counter protesters at the base 0:09:18.240 --> 0:09:42.080 of the Thomas Jefferson Statue. But I've told you that 0:09:42.120 --> 0:09:48.120 part of the story before. This is an update. Of 0:09:48.160 --> 0:09:52.560 the hundreds of torch marchers, only twelve were ever charged 0:09:52.640 --> 0:09:55.599 under the Virginia law that makes intimidating someone with a 0:09:55.640 --> 0:09:59.959 burning object of felony. Tyler Dykes and Augustus and Vici 0:10:00.320 --> 0:10:05.560 were two of those unlucky twelve. Of those twelve, five 0:10:05.640 --> 0:10:09.920 pleaded guilty without taking it to trial. Tyler Dykes, of course, 0:10:10.880 --> 0:10:14.679 along with Colton Fears and his brother William Fears, and 0:10:14.760 --> 0:10:18.559 a pair of gigantic redheads from Texas named Billy Williams 0:10:18.559 --> 0:10:23.439 and will Smith. Another four took plea agreements that reduced 0:10:23.480 --> 0:10:30.160 their charge to misdemeanor disorderly conduct, Ryan Roy, Jamie Troutman, Dallas, Medina, 0:10:30.559 --> 0:10:35.760 and Patriot Front founder Thomas Rousseau. One of the twelve 0:10:35.800 --> 0:10:39.760 got lucky. Jacob Dix took his chances at trial, and 0:10:39.880 --> 0:10:43.920 the out of town's special prosecutor handling his case fumbled 0:10:43.960 --> 0:10:48.040 it so badly that jurors who watched video footage of 0:10:48.080 --> 0:10:51.959 the crime couldn't reach a verdict and it ended in 0:10:52.000 --> 0:10:56.920 a mistrial. Augustus and Victus and a former marine named 0:10:56.960 --> 0:11:02.240 Vassilios Pistols were both convicted at trial. And I think 0:11:02.280 --> 0:11:04.640 I will come back to some of these cases down 0:11:04.640 --> 0:11:11.320 the road, but today we're just talking about Invictus. As 0:11:11.360 --> 0:11:14.560 far as trials go, this one was as close to 0:11:14.600 --> 0:11:19.120 a slam dunk as I've ever seen. The charge requires 0:11:19.120 --> 0:11:22.480 that the defendant burned an object, that they did it 0:11:22.520 --> 0:11:26.440 in a public place, that their intent was to intimidate someone, 0:11:27.720 --> 0:11:30.040 and that the way they went about it would make 0:11:30.080 --> 0:11:35.600 a reasonable person afraid of death or bodily injury. In 0:11:35.640 --> 0:11:39.400 this case, the defendant himself provided the best piece of evidence, 0:11:40.440 --> 0:11:43.640 a thirty minute video that he live streamed from his 0:11:43.800 --> 0:11:45.200 phone during the march. 0:11:47.679 --> 0:11:51.920 Now we all live here at University of Virginia at 0:11:51.960 --> 0:11:57.560 the Torchlight Rally, high energy, as you can tell, high tea, 0:11:57.760 --> 0:11:58.440 very high tea. 0:11:58.480 --> 0:11:58.840 Today. 0:11:59.040 --> 0:12:04.559 We all got our tour on. Somebody forgot the pitchforks 0:12:04.600 --> 0:12:07.880 at home, so all we got is torches. So we'll 0:12:07.920 --> 0:12:11.240 flip the camera around. You got antipo up there on 0:12:11.280 --> 0:12:11.640 the hill. 0:12:16.960 --> 0:12:19.640 The video starts in the field where the crowd assembled, 0:12:20.559 --> 0:12:24.800 and it follows the march through the university grounds. The 0:12:24.880 --> 0:12:27.440 narrator is in good spirits for much of it. He's 0:12:27.520 --> 0:12:30.000 laughing as the men around him are working themselves into 0:12:30.000 --> 0:12:34.400 a frenzy. And for most of the march there are 0:12:34.800 --> 0:12:38.600 these isolated verbal encounters with individual people they pass on 0:12:38.640 --> 0:12:43.679 their route, but the campus is pretty empty. But as 0:12:43.679 --> 0:12:45.640 the march reaches the top of the stairs at the 0:12:45.720 --> 0:12:49.520 rotunda and begins to walk back down the steps into 0:12:49.559 --> 0:12:53.080 the plaza on the other side, the marchers know they 0:12:53.080 --> 0:12:54.040 aren't alone anymore. 0:12:57.320 --> 0:13:01.360 It's like a Disney l where he gets in the ride. 0:13:03.440 --> 0:13:05.000 That way. 0:13:22.760 --> 0:13:27.240 That's Augustus and Victus. Just as the counter protesters and 0:13:27.280 --> 0:13:31.840 the plaza come into view, he says, it's like a 0:13:31.880 --> 0:13:36.120 Disney ride. He's comparing this to the moment on a 0:13:36.200 --> 0:13:38.120 roller coaster where you're at the top of the hill 0:13:38.600 --> 0:13:42.560 looking down and you feel that rush of excitement knowing 0:13:42.559 --> 0:13:44.520 you're about to get to the best part of the ride. 0:13:46.600 --> 0:13:49.640 And the other voice, the one telling those counter protesters 0:13:49.679 --> 0:13:54.520 to look out, telling them they're outnumbered, that's Daniel Borden. 0:13:56.440 --> 0:14:00.199 He was never charged for this night, but he would 0:14:00.160 --> 0:14:02.400 eventually serve a few years in prison for the violent 0:14:02.400 --> 0:14:07.640 assault he committed the next morning. And as the video continues, 0:14:07.760 --> 0:14:11.560 the marchers fill the little plaza. You can see the 0:14:11.640 --> 0:14:17.319 crowd consciously and intentionally form a ring around the statue, 0:14:18.080 --> 0:14:20.400 around the people who are now trapped at its base. 0:14:22.120 --> 0:14:27.400 It wasn't an accident, it wasn't organic it was the plan. 0:14:29.040 --> 0:14:32.760 You can hear Richard Spencer's bodyguard directing the marchers standing 0:14:32.840 --> 0:14:33.960 right next to Invictus. 0:14:34.560 --> 0:14:40.600 Why why, Hi, why drop on this way, Block the 0:14:40.680 --> 0:14:57.680 eyes off, fill it in, block them off, trap them 0:14:57.720 --> 0:15:00.680 and after the rally Augustus Invictus may no secret of 0:15:00.720 --> 0:15:01.600 how he felt about it. 0:15:02.640 --> 0:15:04.880 He loved it, no regrets. 0:15:07.480 --> 0:15:11.560 So you know, the torchlight route, it was gorgeous, It 0:15:11.600 --> 0:15:15.080 was beautiful. The entire thing was an aesthetic and I 0:15:15.160 --> 0:15:18.200 regret nothing about it. It was perfectly done, It was 0:15:18.240 --> 0:15:20.920 falsely executed, and I would do it again. 0:15:24.880 --> 0:15:29.400 So, like I said, kind of a slam dunk starts 0:15:29.400 --> 0:15:31.240 by joking about how he has to make do with 0:15:31.280 --> 0:15:34.960 a torch because he doesn't have a pitchfork, marching with 0:15:35.000 --> 0:15:40.120 a crowd chanting explicitly racist, xenophobic, and anti Semitic slogans 0:15:40.200 --> 0:15:44.560 all along the route, seeing the counter protesters already standing 0:15:44.600 --> 0:15:47.800 in that public place, and making the conscious choice to 0:15:47.840 --> 0:15:51.560 surround them, continuing to hold that line as other members 0:15:51.560 --> 0:15:54.280 of the crowd engage in violence against the people you've trapped, 0:15:55.480 --> 0:15:58.200 ratifying the actions and the intent after the fact by 0:15:58.200 --> 0:16:00.000 saying you have no regrets, and you do it again. 0:16:01.560 --> 0:16:04.960 Testimony from one of those trapped counter protesters who says 0:16:04.960 --> 0:16:09.320 he feared for his life that night. It's pretty clear cut, 0:16:10.680 --> 0:16:28.840 and the jury thought so too. Augustus Invictus was convicted 0:16:28.840 --> 0:16:31.360 by a jury on that felony charge in Virginia in 0:16:31.360 --> 0:16:35.920 October of twenty twenty four. Coincidentally, it was the same 0:16:35.920 --> 0:16:39.160 week that Tyler Dykes reported to federal prison to begin 0:16:39.200 --> 0:16:44.480 serving his sentence for his January sixth conviction. But Augustus 0:16:44.480 --> 0:16:48.800 and Victus did not report to jail. He didn't have to. 0:16:50.720 --> 0:16:52.560 He had been out on bond since his arrest in 0:16:52.600 --> 0:16:55.200 the summer of twenty twenty three, and he was allowed 0:16:55.240 --> 0:16:59.560 to return home again after his conviction in January of 0:16:59.560 --> 0:17:03.360 twenty twenty The judge sentenced him to five years, but 0:17:03.960 --> 0:17:07.320 suspended the majority of that time, ordering him to serve 0:17:07.520 --> 0:17:10.040 just nine months and two weeks in the local jail. 0:17:11.880 --> 0:17:15.640 But again, he didn't go to jail. He went home. 0:17:18.000 --> 0:17:21.800 It's not that unusual to allow a defendant to delay 0:17:21.840 --> 0:17:25.040 their report date. It gives them a little bit of 0:17:25.080 --> 0:17:27.480 time to get their affairs in order. You don't get 0:17:27.480 --> 0:17:32.640 remanded directly into custody in most cases if you're out 0:17:32.640 --> 0:17:35.560 on bond already at the time of sentencing. There's not 0:17:35.760 --> 0:17:38.879 much harm in letting you go home that day, and 0:17:38.960 --> 0:17:40.840 his attorney made it very clear from the moment the 0:17:40.920 --> 0:17:44.639 verdict was in that they planned to appeal, so it 0:17:44.720 --> 0:17:46.919 was no surprise when they asked for an appeal bond, 0:17:47.560 --> 0:17:51.320 which the judge granted, allowing him to continue to kick 0:17:51.320 --> 0:17:54.240 out that report date while he was appealing his conviction. 0:17:57.680 --> 0:18:01.720 So all year checked in from time to time. I 0:18:01.840 --> 0:18:05.080 just added it to my mental list of dozens of 0:18:05.080 --> 0:18:07.720 other ongoing little matters that I check in on when 0:18:07.720 --> 0:18:11.879 I'm sitting at my computer. The sentencing order was finally 0:18:12.000 --> 0:18:15.280 entered in March, followed by the defense filings for their 0:18:15.320 --> 0:18:19.200 appeal to the State Court of Appeals, and he remained 0:18:19.280 --> 0:18:25.600 out on bond, and he kept practicing law. Despite rules 0:18:25.600 --> 0:18:28.320 governing the practice of law in Florida that specify no 0:18:28.480 --> 0:18:32.439 uncertain terms that suspension from the bar is automatic and 0:18:32.560 --> 0:18:39.040 immediate following a felony conviction, it didn't happen. The months 0:18:39.119 --> 0:18:44.920 dragged on. The appellate courts moved pretty slowly, but there 0:18:44.960 --> 0:18:47.639 was no indication that the Florida Bar intended to enforce 0:18:47.680 --> 0:18:51.639 their own rules. He continued practicing law for over a 0:18:51.720 --> 0:18:58.160 year after his conviction at trial. Again, the rules regulating 0:18:58.200 --> 0:19:03.160 the Florida Bar are remarkably straightforward on this subject, which 0:19:03.480 --> 0:19:07.000 isn't always a given from a rule book written by lawyers. 0:19:07.760 --> 0:19:10.560 If a lawyer in Florida is convicted of a felony, 0:19:11.400 --> 0:19:18.320 they are suspended from the bar immediately and automatically, even 0:19:18.359 --> 0:19:21.880 if they're appealing. The Conviction Rule three to seven point two, 0:19:22.000 --> 0:19:26.400 sub Section J says the suspension will remain in effect 0:19:26.600 --> 0:19:29.919 during any appeal of the determination or judgment of guilt 0:19:30.160 --> 0:19:34.919 of a felony offense in the criminal proceeding. But I 0:19:34.920 --> 0:19:38.240 guess someone of the bar was feeling generous because he 0:19:38.280 --> 0:19:43.320 was still practicing law. Just weeks after his own felony conviction. 0:19:44.000 --> 0:19:46.199 He was in federal court at the sentencing hearing of 0:19:46.200 --> 0:19:50.359 one of his clients, a January sixth defendant named Anna Letchnowski. 0:19:52.119 --> 0:19:55.600 Based on available records, it's not clear how much of 0:19:55.600 --> 0:19:59.399 her forty five day sentence she ever served. The President's 0:19:59.400 --> 0:20:05.040 pardons came not long after this. Augustus and Victus worked 0:20:05.040 --> 0:20:08.960 on Lichnowski's case as co counsul with his own lawyer. 0:20:10.600 --> 0:20:15.000 That's a confusing arrangement. Let me explain. She was indicted 0:20:15.040 --> 0:20:18.200 on January sixth charges in the summer of twenty twenty three, 0:20:19.440 --> 0:20:23.600 not long after Augustus. In Victus's own arrest here in Virginia. 0:20:24.119 --> 0:20:27.399 He then hired a Maryland attorney named Terrell Roberts to 0:20:27.480 --> 0:20:30.840 work on his criminal case, and a few weeks later 0:20:31.359 --> 0:20:37.600 they were both hired by Miss Lichnowski in her case. Now, 0:20:37.640 --> 0:20:40.679 Invictus isn't a member of the bar in DC Federal Court, 0:20:40.800 --> 0:20:44.960 and he hadn't shown any particular interest in j six 0:20:45.040 --> 0:20:50.200 cases before this, but it wasn't Terrell roberts first January 0:20:50.240 --> 0:20:56.720 sixth case, And given Invictus's apparently pretty dire financial situation, 0:20:58.040 --> 0:21:00.480 it kind of looks like he may have been paying 0:21:00.600 --> 0:21:04.480 his own lawyer by providing legal assistance on one of 0:21:04.520 --> 0:21:08.200 his other cases. But that's just me spitballing. I can't 0:21:08.200 --> 0:21:13.280 prove that. In the two years between his arrest and 0:21:13.359 --> 0:21:16.199 June of twenty twenty three and his suspension from the 0:21:16.240 --> 0:21:19.679 bar in October of twenty twenty five, he had a 0:21:19.880 --> 0:21:25.200 small but steady case load. Aside from the January sixth 0:21:25.240 --> 0:21:28.080 cases he worked with his own lawyer, he had a 0:21:28.080 --> 0:21:32.520 handful of clients with domestic violence charges, a few divorce cases, 0:21:33.080 --> 0:21:38.560 a dui case, pretty typical stuff. Perhaps there were others, 0:21:38.600 --> 0:21:42.240 but I don't have access to any fancy legal databases. 0:21:42.280 --> 0:21:45.040 I just love wasting my own time enough that I 0:21:45.160 --> 0:21:47.159 checked in with half the county court clerks in the 0:21:47.160 --> 0:21:52.160 state of Florida, according to statements he offered the court here. 0:21:53.000 --> 0:21:55.159 Some of those clients were referred to him through his 0:21:55.280 --> 0:21:59.480 volunteer work with his church. Obviously I couldn't tell you 0:21:59.520 --> 0:22:02.760 which case, as he worked pro bono, but it does 0:22:02.840 --> 0:22:05.040 seem to be true that at least some of these 0:22:05.080 --> 0:22:09.080 clients he's represented in the last two years were unconnected 0:22:09.240 --> 0:22:15.480 to white nationalist political causes, and that's noteworthy. I mean, 0:22:15.520 --> 0:22:17.760 today isn't the day we get all the way into it? 0:22:18.080 --> 0:22:21.320 Do you have my word? I'll cover the whole story eventually, 0:22:22.560 --> 0:22:25.920 but his career as an attorney has been a real 0:22:26.040 --> 0:22:31.840 roller coaster. After graduating from law school in twenty eleven, 0:22:32.280 --> 0:22:34.719 he passed the bar in several states in twenty twelve 0:22:35.400 --> 0:22:39.320 and was eventually admitted to practice in Massachusetts, Illinois, New York, 0:22:39.560 --> 0:22:43.919 and Florida. He was just shy of thirty, a proud 0:22:43.920 --> 0:22:47.679 father of four married and settling in as a defense 0:22:47.720 --> 0:22:52.080 attorney at his father's law firm outside of Orlando. By 0:22:52.119 --> 0:22:57.879 twenty thirteen, he was divorced. That spring, he dropped all 0:22:57.920 --> 0:22:59.960 of his clients and quit his job at his dad's law. 0:23:02.000 --> 0:23:03.880 He sent a letter to some of his former law 0:23:03.880 --> 0:23:08.360 school classmates announcing that he was a powerful, successful genius, 0:23:08.920 --> 0:23:11.119 but he'd grown bored of society and was going to 0:23:11.200 --> 0:23:17.640 leave it behind. And that's not an exaggeration. So many 0:23:17.640 --> 0:23:21.280 people got this letter, and the letter was so fucking 0:23:21.359 --> 0:23:25.440 weird that it was published in full and roundly mocked. 0:23:25.600 --> 0:23:28.160 In an article by Elie Mastahl on the blog Above 0:23:28.200 --> 0:23:33.679 the Law, the letter is addressed to the gray world 0:23:33.720 --> 0:23:39.320 of man. He's boastful, He's accomplished everything a man could 0:23:39.400 --> 0:23:41.080 dream of. He's better than you, and he wants you 0:23:41.160 --> 0:23:48.639 to know that. It reads, in part, witness Yee, the 0:23:48.680 --> 0:23:51.240 glory of my life. At twenty nine years of age, 0:23:51.680 --> 0:23:53.960 I have four children, each of whom should be the 0:23:54.040 --> 0:23:56.760 envy of every parent in the world. I have attained 0:23:56.800 --> 0:24:00.919 a baccalaureate degree in philosophy with honorsained a doctorate in 0:24:00.960 --> 0:24:04.480 law cum laude. I have acquired licenses in the profession 0:24:04.520 --> 0:24:07.640 of law in the states of New York, Illinois, and Florida. 0:24:08.160 --> 0:24:10.800 I am scheduled to acquire two more such licenses in 0:24:10.840 --> 0:24:14.879 North Carolina and Massachusetts. I am editor in chief of 0:24:14.920 --> 0:24:18.280 a poetry journal. I run an independent publishing company. I 0:24:18.320 --> 0:24:21.399 have opened my own law office in downtown Orlando. I 0:24:21.440 --> 0:24:24.120 am an MBA candidate, and I have accomplished a few 0:24:24.160 --> 0:24:27.119 other things that will remain off the record for now. 0:24:28.200 --> 0:24:32.200 I am of genius, intellect and cultured, well educated and creative, 0:24:32.280 --> 0:24:36.360 well mannered and refined. I am God's gift to humankind 0:24:36.640 --> 0:24:39.840 where the English language is concerned. I also happen to 0:24:39.880 --> 0:24:42.840 have a basic knowledge of Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, and Italian. 0:24:43.600 --> 0:24:47.160 I am musical and artistic. I am athletic and possessed 0:24:47.160 --> 0:24:51.600 of militant self discipline. I am many other things. I 0:24:51.600 --> 0:24:54.760 have a Cadillac and a poodle, multiple computers, and a 0:24:54.760 --> 0:24:58.800 personal library. I live in an apartment downtown right across 0:24:58.840 --> 0:25:01.760 the street from the courthouse. I have been to Paris 0:25:01.800 --> 0:25:06.400 and Vancouver, to Cairo and Dubrovnik, to Mexico City and Syracusa. 0:25:07.320 --> 0:25:10.480 I dress better than all of you, pronounce my words perfectly, 0:25:10.720 --> 0:25:14.879 and have a winning professional handshake. I am everything you 0:25:15.000 --> 0:25:20.919 ever wanted to be. I mean, can you argue with that? 0:25:21.880 --> 0:25:27.240 A Cadillac and a poodle and an apartment. But he's 0:25:27.280 --> 0:25:30.720 sick of it. He's so sick of this world, and 0:25:30.760 --> 0:25:34.480 the world makes him sick. He has nothing but contempt 0:25:34.560 --> 0:25:39.280 for it. He renounces his law license, his diplomas, his Catholicism, 0:25:39.320 --> 0:25:43.440 his citizenship, and all of his material possessions. He wants 0:25:43.480 --> 0:25:48.240 none of it. He's walking away, and he ends the 0:25:48.320 --> 0:25:55.040 letter with this, hear, ye, my final words in peacetime. 0:25:56.080 --> 0:25:58.560 I have prophesied for years that I was born for 0:25:58.560 --> 0:26:01.359 a great war. If I did not witness the coming 0:26:01.400 --> 0:26:04.280 of the Second American Civil War, I would begin it myself. 0:26:05.320 --> 0:26:09.520 Mark well, that day is fast coming upon you. On 0:26:09.600 --> 0:26:12.600 the new moon of May, I shall disappear into the wilderness. 0:26:13.119 --> 0:26:16.520 I will return bearing revolution, or I will not return 0:26:16.560 --> 0:26:20.040 at all. War be unto the ends of the earth. 0:26:21.800 --> 0:26:26.800 Augustus Stulenvictus or Land of Florida, USA, twentieth of April 0:26:27.680 --> 0:26:45.399 twenty thirteen. Some of the people who got this letter 0:26:46.200 --> 0:26:48.399 emailed it to a funny blog about news in the 0:26:48.480 --> 0:26:55.080 legal profession, but some of them called the FBI. According 0:26:55.119 --> 0:26:57.600 to his self published memoir about this time in his life. 0:26:58.520 --> 0:27:01.640 He then drove out to the mountains and Carolina wrote 0:27:01.680 --> 0:27:03.840 a goodbye letter to his family, which he left in 0:27:03.880 --> 0:27:07.520 his car, hoping whoever found the abandoned vehicle would drop 0:27:07.520 --> 0:27:11.080 it into a mailbox for him. He then spent several 0:27:11.080 --> 0:27:15.600 months hitchhiking across the country before returning home and resuming 0:27:15.600 --> 0:27:20.400 the life he'd just so dramatically renounced. He went back 0:27:20.440 --> 0:27:23.280 to being a lawyer from twenty fourteen until twenty seventeen, 0:27:23.440 --> 0:27:25.880 and then he publicly announced that he was retiring from 0:27:25.960 --> 0:27:30.920 law to focus on politics. And by politics he meant 0:27:31.480 --> 0:27:34.760 both his run for US Senate as well as a 0:27:34.800 --> 0:27:39.119 punishing schedule of headlining white supremacist rallies all over the country. 0:27:40.080 --> 0:27:42.879 A year later, though, in twenty eighteen, he announced that 0:27:42.920 --> 0:27:47.200 he was unretiring from law to focus on taking clients 0:27:47.200 --> 0:27:51.240 he referred to as political dissidents. He wanted to be 0:27:51.280 --> 0:27:56.480 a movement lawyer, and he tried. He took on a 0:27:56.520 --> 0:27:59.399 couple of cases and he'd lost them all, but he 0:27:59.440 --> 0:28:01.879 made a good public show of being the hard rights 0:28:02.000 --> 0:28:06.440 go to guy for legal advice. He ghost wrote lawsuits 0:28:06.440 --> 0:28:08.960 for Nazis who were angry at the city of Charlottesville. 0:28:09.520 --> 0:28:11.840 He sent a cease and desist letter to a journalist 0:28:11.920 --> 0:28:15.280 on behalf of members of Adam Waffen, and he founded 0:28:15.320 --> 0:28:18.520 a nonprofit that solicited donations for members of the Rise 0:28:18.560 --> 0:28:22.720 Above movement who faced federal charges for beating counter protesters 0:28:22.760 --> 0:28:27.160 at several rallies in twenty seventeen, And like I said, 0:28:28.040 --> 0:28:32.439 I don't think you won a single case. By twenty twenty, 0:28:33.119 --> 0:28:36.639 he was dealing with his own problems. His father was 0:28:36.720 --> 0:28:41.000