Angry Lawyer Already Engaged In A SLAPP Suit Promises To Sue More Critics, Use His Machine Gun If Sanctioned

from the well,-that'll-go-over-well dept

Earlier this year, we mentioned the Texas lawyer Jason Lee Van Dyke in relation to a story in which Twitter, ridiculously, banned Ken "Popehat" White after he wrote about threats from Van Dyke. We had written about Van Dyke years earlier when he sued the Tor Project because a revenge porn site was using Tor. We also noted that that case involved a guy who had been declared the leader of a hate group, Kyle Bristow -- and appeared to involve Van Dyke deliberately and knowingly "serving" the wrong party. The revenge porn site that Van Dyke claimed he was targeting had sarcastically provided Bristow's address as its address to mock Van Dyke, and Van Dyke then claimed he had properly "served" the revenge porn site by serving it on Bristow.

That post, from back in 2014, also included an awful lot of Van Dyke cursing out people and threatening to sue lots and lots of people. Oh, and also declaring "it's my job to violate the civil rights of people like you" to one critic. The more recent story, involving threatening Ken White and Asher Langton, showed that not much has changed with regards to anger management and Van Dyke. I won't rehash the entire story, but Ken White summarized it earlier this year. Just suffice it to say, Asher Langton turned up quite a bit of evidence suggesting that Van Dyke was advertising his legal services to white nationalists on Stormfront.

Since then, Van Dyke has, repeatedly, threatened to sue and (separately!) to physically harm both White and Langton. He's also declared himself to be part of the "Proud Boys" -- a nutty group of self-declared chauvinists, who get upset if you suggest they're racists or neo-Nazis, even if many of the distinctions appear to be quite fuzzy. Either way, they appear to get quite upset if anyone calls them those things, even though the press regularly associates them with racists, neo-nazis or the "alt-right."

Van Dyke has also threatened to sue a number of news organizations for these claims, and actually did sue a small local news site in Ohio called the Mockingbird. The Mockingbird published this article about Proud Boy antics in Ohio -- which led Van Dyke to send Mockingbird a letter requesting the site delete the article, no longer write about the Proud Boys and pay $10,000. Mockingbird's Gerry Bello responded appropriately, telling Van Dyke to fuck off, but also stating Bello's opinion (backed up with evidence) that Van Dyke is a Nazi.

It is over this letter that Van Dyke then sued (not the original article that inspired the bumptious threat letter). The lawsuit was filed in county court in Denton, Texas, which seems unwise. Texas actually has a fairly robust anti-SLAPP law that the courts have construed broadly to cover all sorts of SLAPP suits, making Texas one of the strongest defenders of free speech in the country.

Anyway, you can read Van Dyke's complaint here. Mockingbird removed the case from the local county court to the federal district court late last week (we'll see if Van Dyke tries to block that). Van Dyke is representing himself. The crux of the lawsuit:

On information and belief, Defendants are associated with a domestic terrorist collective known as “Antifa” that prides itself on harassing, defaming, and committing acts of violence against persons and groups that espouse conservative groups. In this instance, Defendants wrongfully accused members of the Houston, Texas and Columbus, Ohio chapters of “The Proud Boys” of the following: (a) being “neo-Nazis”; (b) engaging in a hate crime by placing hand-drawn swastikas into mailboxes; (c) engaging in “ethnic cleansing” during hurricane relief efforts in the Houston area; and (d) roaming the nation in an effort to commit acts of mass murder against minorities. It should be noted in this case that Plaintiff was present with the Houston Proud Boys during Hurricane Harvey relief efforts and assisted them in rescuing residents in need of evacuation and in the distribution of relief supplies such as food, bottled water, cleaning supplies, and other items to residents of areas affected by the hurricane.

Plaintiff sent a demand letter for Defendants to issue a retraction of these statements (which clearly meet the criteria for defamation per se) and Defendants responded by publishing the letter attached hereto as Exhibit “B” on their website

Because of all of this, Van Dyke insists Bello/Mockingbird have committed libel per se, specifically in reference to the statements about Van Dyke being a Nazi, as well as statements Bello made claiming Van Dyke had a previous arrest and conviction. Bello claims this was "on weapons charges and domestic violence." Van Dyke counters that it was a misdemeanor weapons charge -- not domestic violence -- and has since been expunged. He also claims that Bello wondering if Van Dyke is forum shopping his lawsuit is defamatory, as might also be Bello's statement that under his conviction Van Dyke should not be allowed to possess firearms. Amusingly, in Van Dyke's lawsuit, he also disputes that he was the lawyer pitching for business on Stormfront, but insists that he's not suing over that because it's not libel "per se."

It does appear that Bello certainly goes a bit closer to the line than I imagine most lawyers would advise in making statements about Van Dyke, but the "Nazi" line is clearly protected opinion or rhetorical hyperbole. The throwaway line about forum shopping is clearly not defamatory either. The statement about whether he can possess firearms was presented as a question rather than a statement, so again is a stretch. As for getting the specific details of the conviction wrong, Bello doesn't cite where he got that information, but it is true -- as Van Dyke readily admits -- that he was convicted on a misdemeanor firearm charge. So Van Dyke would have to show that Bello not only got things wrong beyond that in a defamatory way, but that Bello knew the information he posted was false. That's... a tough bar to reach.

Bello/Mockingbird's "Original Answer" is fairly short on details, other than denying all the claims and (for now) throwing out all possible affirmative defenses (I assume a more specific answer will be forthcoming later). Bello's lawyer has also said that they'll file an anti-SLAPP motion, though that does not appear to have happened yet.

Meanwhile, Bello has launched a crowdfunding campaign as well.

Oh, and we're not even remotely done yet. A few weeks back, Van Dyke also got into a Twitter spat with, of all people, Talib Kweli. While the conversation is now gone (in part because Twitter recently suspended Van Dyke's account), here's how Kweli describes it:

“His first tweet to me was that he was a defense attorney and worked with mentally challenged people,” explained Kweli. “He wrote, ‘You are stupider than the mentally challenged people I work with,’ and so that caught my eye immediately, because why would a defense attorney be upset at a black stranger and starting using his own clients to engage in harassment?”

Kweli responded to the tweet, explaining that he doesn’t start arguments, but is willing to engage when challenged. “And so, I engaged him,” he said. “And the way I engage people who harass me like that is I always ask them to explain their position, because if you ask a racist or a bigot to explain their position, it falls apart.”

As this went on, Kweli eventually posted Van Dyke's publicly available business contact info -- and, not unlike Ken White, Twitter stupidly temporarily suspended Kweli's account, because (again) Twitter is bad at understanding the difference between abuse and calling out abuse. Over the last few months and weeks, Van Dyke has been ranting about Kweli, Langton and White. He even wrote up and posted completely made up stories about Langton and White, calling them satire. It seems like he thinks he's proving a point, though what point is unclear.

As for why Van Dyke was finally suspended from Twitter, it was apparently for tweeting a pretty gruesomely horrible racist tweet -- involving both the n-word and a noose. In the HuffPo article, they spoke to the president of the Texas state bar, who does not seem happy about Van Dyke's actions:

“The statements attributed to this individual are reprehensible and contrary to the values we hold as Texas lawyers,” State Bar of Texas president Tom Vick said in an email to HuffPost. “I condemn them in the strongest terms.”

Meanwhile, Van Dyke has been posting (on various other social networks) increasingly angry messages about Kweli -- many of which have pretty clear racist overtones, and some of which include threats of violence. He complains about Kweli being "uppity" while promising to beat him and skin him alive. He compares Talib to Amadou Diallo, the man assassinated by the NYPD in 1999. He also says that Talib will have to change his name to "Toby", a pretty damn likely reference to the famous scene in Roots in which Kunta Kinte is whipped by his owner, until he says his name is Toby -- at which point the owner says "Aye, that's a good n****r." So, yeah. If Van Dyke is trying to portray himself as not being racist, he's not doing a very good job of it so far.

And, because Van Dyke never seems to find the bottom of the hole he keeps digging, Asher Langton posted the following screenshot of Van Dyke not only promising to sue White, Langton, Kweli and the Huffington Post today, but also saying that he doesn't care if he gets disbarred or sanctioned, and if they do he'll defend himself with a gun.

If you can't see that, it says:

No longer welcome where I've trained for years. This is the final straw. Langton, White, Kweli, HuffPo - they are all getting sued first thing Monday morning. This ends now. They can disbar me if they want, I don't give a damn. If they sanction me, my property is defended with a 50 BMG.

I'm guessing that the Texas bar might not like that one so much either -- nor any court where these lawsuits may be filed. Of course, we saw similar threats in what we posted about Van Dyke years ago as well, which did not lead to lawsuits. This time, he has sued Bello and Mockingbird, though, so perhaps he will attempt to follow through on these other threats also. Apparently he has sent Mockingbird/Bello's lawyer the following email, asking to amend the original complaint to raise the damages from $60,000 to $10 million and to add White, Langton, Kwelli, Huffington Post and Andy Campbell (the author of the HuffPo piece).

It is, at the very least, unclear how he thinks any of this helps him rather than digging him deeper and deeper into a hole. As far as I can tell, Van Dyke seems upset that he's facing the consequences of his own actions -- which include threats of violence and lawsuits in addition to a variety of other highly questionable statements. And rather than recognize that perhaps he shouldn't do those things, he's responding to people who document his own statements by doing even more of the same, which only continues the cycle. We'll see if he's actually foolish enough to follow through on this lawsuit. It is unlikely to end well. Not only are there unlikely to be any legitimate claims, it makes no sense to add them to this other lawsuit, which is about an entirely different set of statements. Randomly joining together other people who have called you out separately hardly seems like good lawyering. It does, however, remind us of Rakofsky v. the Internet, in which a young (and not very good) lawyer sued basically everyone who criticized him. It didn't end well. And, of course, that one didn't include threats of violence mixed in.

I suspect he's not interested in taking our advice -- he has regularly mocked Techdirt any time we've written about him -- but there's a time when the correct response is to stop digging. Suing people for calling you out won't end well. Threatening violence, repeatedly, over criticism is not a good look, especially for a lawyer.

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Filed Under: asher langton, gerry bello, jason lee van dyke, ken white, proud boys, slapp, talib kweli, texas, threats, violence
Companies: mockingbird


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  • icon
    That One Guy (profile), 20 Nov 2017 @ 10:55am

    An angry child in an adult's body

    This article really does not do justice to how utterly insane the child pretending to be an adult known as Van Dyke really seems to be. Reading through Ken White's summary of events it's like looking at a condensed version of every grade-school bully, every 'I could totally beat you up' kid trash talking in an online shooter, where it would seem the default response to criticism is a thinly veiled(if hidden at all) threat to smash in someone's teeth.

    Threatening violence for sanctions is crazy to be sure, but after having looked at some of his history as summed up on Popehat it's basically par for the course for this angry, tantrum throwing individual, and the sooner the Texas State Bar(and every other state bar where he's licensed to practice I would hope) calls his bluff and yanks his license the better.

    Because when it comes to presenting a calm, rational and above all professional face for lawyers, he might as well be exhibit A in the chapter titled 'How Not To Act.'

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 21 Nov 2017 @ 7:11am

      Re: An angry child in an adult's body

      What are the odd that this guy *doesn't* show up on the evening news sometime soon? His own posts indicate that he's on the verge of snapping.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    SirWired, 20 Nov 2017 @ 11:07am

    I wonder how a gun defends an empty bank account?

    He appears to be doing his level best to make himself utterly employable. I wonder what he thinks his gun will do to "defend" his empty bank account?

    I wonder if mommy and daddy paid his student loans, because disbarment does tend to put a damper on prospects for repayment.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Middcore (profile), 20 Nov 2017 @ 11:20am

      Re: I wonder how a gun defends an empty bank account?

      In one of his tweets from several months ago after Ken White wrote about him, he straight-up acknowledged that he is now probably unemployable as a lawyer anywhere in the country.

      I believe a couple days ago he was also breathing out threatening and slaughter at people "poking their noses into his business" on a Texas lawyer Facebook group, and his lawyer for the bar complaint filed against him was trying to tell him to shut up.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Anonymous Coward, 20 Nov 2017 @ 12:59pm

        Re: Re: I wonder how a gun defends an empty bank account?

        I would be worried for him. His values seem very diluted and his constant struggle with forgiveness could end very bad. Lets pray it ain't going where his ideas seem to be pointing!

        link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Anonymous Coward, 20 Nov 2017 @ 1:06pm

        Re: Re: I wonder how a gun defends an empty bank account?

        In one of his tweets from several months ago after Ken White wrote about him, he straight-up acknowledged that he is now probably unemployable as a lawyer anywhere in the country.

        Which qualifies him to run for Congress!

        link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Jordan Chandler, 20 Nov 2017 @ 11:11am

    Confused

    Why haven't ever single one of his threats made it to the bar association already?

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 20 Nov 2017 @ 11:11am

    “Popcorn here! Get your popcorn here!”

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Grey, 20 Nov 2017 @ 11:23am

    Pedantic note... 50BMG usually refers to the Sniper rifles. 50s are usually more of an aircraft mounted machine gun when applicable.

    God I hope this guy isn't sitting on a fully functional P-38 lightning.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Asher Langton (profile), 20 Nov 2017 @ 11:32am

      Re:

      God I hope this guy isn't sitting on a fully functional P-38 lightning.

      You and me both.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • icon
        That Anonymous Coward (profile), 20 Nov 2017 @ 12:14pm

        Re: Re:

        Something something childs bed in the shape of an airplane.

        link to this | view in chronology ]

        • identicon
          Grey, 20 Nov 2017 @ 2:51pm

          Re: Re: Re:

          At best he deserves the Clown bedroom from "Problem Child".

          Plane beds are for the cool kids. ;)

          link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Dan (profile), 20 Nov 2017 @ 11:55am

      Re:

      More precisely, 50 BMG (.50 Browning Machine Gun) is the cartridge, originally used in the (surprise!) .50 cal. Browning Machine Gun, but now used in a variety of firearms, mostly single-shot rifles, sometimes semi-automatic rifles, occasionally pistols. It's certainly possible he has a legal .50 cal machine gun, but highly unlikely that he actually fires it full-auto, as it would be obscenely expensive to do so. Ammunition is at least a few dollars per round, and the machine gun fires around 500 rounds per minute.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Grey, 20 Nov 2017 @ 2:59pm

        Re: Re:

        Thank you for fleshing it out. Didn't have time earlier on my phone.

        Never had an interest in .50 BMG, if I ever get the urge to break my shoulder I'll find a .577 Tyrannosaurus.

        At least that way It'll sound cooler when people ask what happened to my arm.

        link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      TRX (profile), 21 Nov 2017 @ 1:16pm

      Re:

      "I shot you eleventy times in Call of Duty! You're DEAD!"

      Unless he's been to the toy store and bought an airsoft. You could put your eye out with one of those.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    radarmonkey (profile), 20 Nov 2017 @ 11:30am

    “His first tweet to me was that he was a defense attorney and worked with mentally challenged people,” explained Kweli.

    Well, JLVD is representing himself, so the math checks out!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Roger Strong (profile), 20 Nov 2017 @ 11:45am

    Mister Rogers didn’t adequately prepare me for the people in my neighborhood.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    pixelation, 20 Nov 2017 @ 12:05pm

    Charity work

    Time to buy shovels and keep handing them to Van Dyke.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      That Anonymous Coward (profile), 20 Nov 2017 @ 12:15pm

      Re: Charity work

      I'm not sure he is able to use tools in his devolving state, we'll just have to watch him chew his tunnel to China.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    I.T. Guy, 20 Nov 2017 @ 12:16pm

    That Van Dick fellah looks as if he couldn't fight his way out of a wet paper bag.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it
    icon
    Christopher (profile), 20 Nov 2017 @ 12:40pm

    I was with you right up until..

    ... this dumb line: " Amadou Diallo, the man assassinated by the NYPD in 1999"

    Assassinated? Really? This ceiling on your credibility keeps getting bumped by these cheap shots. Hey, have a good day, hope you don't get pulled over!

    -C

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Middcore (profile), 20 Nov 2017 @ 1:06pm

      Re: I was with you right up until..

      "hope you don't get pulled over!"

      Why? Because he might get executed by some cop angry he wrote negative stuff about cops? What exactly are you trying to imply here?

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Roger Strong (profile), 20 Nov 2017 @ 1:13pm

      Re: I was with you right up until..

      assassinate: To target and deliberately kill a person.

      This is what happened to Amadou Diallo. 41 rounds shot at an unarmed man who had done nothing wrong, who merely matched a general description of a suspect from a crime a year earlier. (He was black.)

      On the other hand there's the second part of the definition...

      The word assassinate is almost always used to describe the killing of a famous person.

      Diallo wasn't famous. That doesn't make his murder by police any less offensive. The description is not a cheap shot.

      Hey, have a good day, hope you don't get pulled over!

      Well, not by an asshole like you.

      Yes, I do note the Jersey City Police badge you use as an avatar and your how-dare-you-criticize-any-police posting history. And your threat.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 20 Nov 2017 @ 1:35pm

      Re: I was with you right up until..

      Hey, have a good day, hope you don't get pulled over!

      Normally, I'd think "look, another small-dicked douchebag cop isn't getting enough attention from his cheating wife!"

      But then I saw the Jersey City in your profile, and after I stopped laughing, realized it was a joke. No one goes to Jersey City on purpose.

      Damn funny! Marked as LOL.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      wshuff (profile), 20 Nov 2017 @ 2:14pm

      Re: I was with you right up until..

      I’m confused. If the ceiling of credibility is getting bumped by “cheap shots,” does that mean it is going up? You bump things up, right? I’ve never heard of bumping down.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Mike Masnick (profile), 20 Nov 2017 @ 3:34pm

      Re: I was with you right up until..

      Hey, have a good day, hope you don't get pulled over!

      So your way of complaining about the way I portrayed a situation in which cops -- for no good reason -- shot and killed a black man, is to threaten me, suggesting that I'll be in trouble over that?

      Why, that's not fucked up at all.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Hoboviking (profile), 20 Nov 2017 @ 3:37pm

      Re: I was with you right up until..

      Yes, he was absolutely assassinated. He was an innocent man shot 41 fucking times.

      Officer, you want people to like cops? Make sure you and your friends act with fucking ethics, and stop defending BAD COPS.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Amadou_Diallo

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Thad, 20 Nov 2017 @ 4:53pm

      Re: I was with you right up until..

      "How dare you suggest the police would do something unethical to somebody? You'd better hope the police don't do something unethical to you!"

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Baron von Robber, 20 Nov 2017 @ 12:54pm

    Well who did Nazi that coming?!

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Anonymous Coward, 20 Nov 2017 @ 1:00pm

    In re Twitter's (in)actions

    "because (again) Twitter is bad at understanding the difference between abuse and calling out abuse."

    No, they get it just fine. These kinds of suspensions aren't mistakes. They're deliberate.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Stephen T. Stone (profile), 20 Nov 2017 @ 2:22pm

    I have seen people dig themselves into some serious holes before, but rarely do I see someone dig their own grave and not realize it. Seems like the only careers Van Dyke could have left after this fiasco are either “municipal garbage collector” or “PR spokesman for Electronic Arts”.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 20 Nov 2017 @ 3:12pm

      Re: Are you sure?

      1) Thin skinned...
      2) Likes to throw out threats without any legal or actual validity...
      3) Likes to mouth off to anyone who opposes him...
      4) Tweets inappropriate responses to anyone who will listen...

      Sounds like he's Presidential material all the way...

      link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    norahc (profile), 20 Nov 2017 @ 4:18pm

    I'm guessing JLVD won't stop digging the hole fir himself until he smells feet.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

  • icon
    Ryunosuke (profile), 20 Nov 2017 @ 4:30pm

    I sense a copyright lawsuit coming...

    He has threatened with extreme violence against a reporter of a newspaper called "The Mockingbird". You could say he wants to kill one of their reporters. Harper Lee would like a word.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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