Virginia CD1 Candidate was Attorney for Charlottesville Neo-Nazi and Unite the Right Leader Jason Kessler
Virginia CD1 Candidate was Attorney for Charlottesville Neo-Nazi and Unite the Right Leader Jason Kessler
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Lawyer Who Represented Unite the Right Leader, Neo-Nazi Jason Kessler, is Running in CD1
As an attorney for the ACLU, Leslie Mehta, a candidate running for the Democratic nomination in Virginia’s 1st congressional district, represented antisemitic and racist Unite the Right leader Jason Kessler.
Days before the infamous Charlottesville gathering of neo-Nazis and white supremacist groups on August 11-12, 2017, the ACLU represented Kessler in his lawsuit against the city of Charlottesville on Aug. 10, 2017. The lawsuit was on the question of whether a permit for the Unite the Right rally should be granted.
The white supremacist Unite the Right rally made national headlines as a stunned nation watched the scenes of racist violence and vitriol during a summer weekend in the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia. In the wake of the violence, then-President Donald Trump would state that “both sides” in the violence featured “very fine people” in much criticized remarks equivocating the reaction to the racist gathering to those counter-demonstrating.
On May 13, 2017 in Charlottesville, four months before the Aug. 2017 Neo-Nazi gathering, white supremacists holding torches and wearing kaki pants and polo shirts marched in Charlottesville at Lee Park chanting "all white lives matter," and talked of protecting "white heritage" from the Charlottesville City Council’s decision to take down a statue of confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee originally installed in 1924. After legal wrangling, Charlottesville took the Lee statue down in July 2021 and in 2023 it was melted down.
Mehta, 46, joined the congressional race in Virginia’s first district in January 2024. There are currently two Democratic candidates: Army Veteran Herb Jones and Mehta. Typically sitting elected officials avoid endorsements in competitive primaries. However, Mehta has been endorsed over Jones by many Democrats in Virginia and has been positioned by local party leaders as “the establishment” choice. Mehta served as Legal Director of the ACLU of Virginia from Dec. 2015 to Jan. 2018.
Three days ago on April 26, Rep. Abigail Spanberger, announced she was endorsing Mehta for the Democratic nomination over Jones in one of Spanberger’s first major 2024 endorsements. Two years ago, Spanberger endorsed Herb Jones. Rep. Rob Wittman, 65, has represented Virginia’s 1st congressional district since 2007 and the district remains solidly Republican.
Jones told Mike Martz in The Richmond Times Dispatch on April 27, “I don’t understand why these people are putting their thumb on the scale in a primary. The Republicans don’t do that to each other.” Herb Jones received the fifth highest number of votes of all Democrats on the ballot in the 2022 election cycle — more votes than Luria (CD2), Scott (CD3), and Spanberger (CD7).
As a retired full bird Army Colonel, Jones is one of several Democrats who are military veterans running in 2024 in Virginia: Dan Helmer, JD Spain, Missy Cotter Smasal and Eugene Vindman are others. Virginia is ranked 3rd-highest among states for its share of veteran and both parties frequently recruit military vets.
RELATED: Charlottesville violence prompts ACLU to change policy on hate groups protesting with guns (PBS, Aug. 18, 2017)
In Aug. 2017, Mehta was one of two ACLU attorneys arguing for a permit to be approved for Unite the Right rally. According to an ACLU newsletter from Aug. 2017, Jason Kessler reached out for legal assistance in the days before the Unite the Right rally on Aug. 7, 2017. Kessler asked the Virginia ACLU to represent him against the city of Charlottesville over the permit to hold what would become the violent Unite the Right rally held on Aug. 11 and 12, 2017. The ACLU agreed to represent Kessler and filed suit against then-Charlottesville City Manager Maurice Jones (in his official capacity). The year before in 2016, Kessler worked to unseat the only Black City Council member in Charlottesville at the time, Virginia State University Professor Dr. Wes Bellamy.
A Judge ruled in Kessler’s favor and the August 11-12, 2017 rally took place in Charlottesville in the location requested.
The violent Unite the Right rally brought together anti-Jewish bigots, neo-Nazis and white supremacists from around the country who then marched and chanted the anti-semitic phrases “Jews will not replace us” and “blood and soil” on the campus of the University of Virginia and in the streets of Charlottesville in what was then Lee Park.
The ACLU was established in 1920 and defines itself as “non-profit and non-partisan.” The ACLU website states that, “about 100 ACLU staff attorneys collaborate with about 2,000 volunteer attorneys in handling close to 2,000 cases annually.” Mehta and attorney Hope Amezquita represented Kessler. Amezquita left ACLU Virginia in December 2017.
The ACLU has historically taken unpopular cases in an effort to protect the U.S. Constitution — a rarity in an era of partisan political decision making and controversy adverse corporate deference.
RELATED: NPR Criticized For Interview With White Supremacist Jason Kessler (NPR, Aug. 2018)
Mehta earned her undergraduate degree at UNC Chapel Hill and earned her law degree from Howard University School of Law. On Aug. 28, 2017, then-ACLU Virginia Executive Director Claire Gastañaga explained the ACLU’s decision to represent the Neo-nazis organizing what would go down as one of the most storied and violent weekends in Virginia’s recent history.
“What we decided to defend, with the facts available at that time, and only after requiring Kessler to swear in court papers that he intended the rally to be “peaceful” and “avoid violence,” were important principles of constitutional government. The First Amendment guarantees political speech, including protest, the highest level of protection… This case we brought against the city was about viewpoint discrimination,” Gastañaga wrote in Aug. 2017. Gastañaga served as Executive Director of the Virginia ACLU from June 2012 to May 2021.
The Unite the Right rally resulted in the murder of one person and the deaths of two law enforcement officers responding to the violence. Heather Heyer, 32, was murdered on Aug. 12, 2017 after white supremacist Neo-Nazi James Fields Jr. intentionally rammed his car into a group of counter-protesters demonstrating against the Unite the Right crowd. Fields killed Heyer and injured over 30 people. He was later sentence to two terms of life in prison in 2019.
On Aug. 12, 2017, two Virginia State Police officers, Trooper Berke Bates, 40, and Lieutenant Pilot Jay Cullen, 48, were killed responding to the violence at the Unite the Right rally.
Last week on April 24, former President Donald Trump downplayed the violent events of August 2017 in Charlottesville saying, “Charlottesville was a little peanut and was nothing compared — the hate wasn’t compared to the kind of hate that you have here.”
Trump’s comments as he exited court in Manhattan received a reaction from Virginia State Senator Ghazala Hashmi.
“The 2017 Unite the Right Rally, at which neo-Nazis and white supremacists marched in Charlottesville and UVA, was a chilling reminder of the bigotry, antisemitism, and racism of the far-right. Trump's characterization of that rally as a ‘little peanut’ is absolutely disgusting,” Sen. Hashmi wrote on social media on April 26, 2024. Hashmi filed today for a statewide run for Lt. Governor in 2025.
Days after the racist violence in Charlottesville on Aug. 15, 2017, as he stood in the lobby of Trump Tower during a press conference, Trump attempted to justify racist violence with equivocation.
“You had a group on one side that was bad and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. And nobody wants to say that, but I'll say it right now. You had a group on the other side that came charging in without a permit and they were very, very violent," Trump said as he compared the response to antisemitism and racism to blatant public displays of bigotry in the streets of Charlottesville.
On September 21, 2020, Leslie Mehta is quoted on the question of the representation of Jason Kessler and the issue of free speech in ACLU Florida’s newsletter. The article featured excerpts of scholar Ellis Cose’s book The Short Life and Curious Death of Free Speech in America.
“I think one of the reasons why free speech is so important to me is because … it exposes what you disagree with. And for me, I think it’s important to hear things like our president saying … ‘Well, there are good people on both sides,’” Leslie Mehta is quoted as saying in the Sept. 2020 article.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is an American nonprofit human rights organization founded in 1920. The organization strives "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States.” — wikipedia
Below is a boilerplate definition of how the ACLU defines its mission as stated on their website as of April 29, 2024. The organization has always made it clear that representation does not mean agreement and standing by the U.S. Constitution in matters of due process and freedom of speech is their focus.
“Kessler was inspired in part by fellow University of Virginia graduate and white supremacist Richard Spencer who, in May 2017, led a band of racists in Charlottesville chanting ‘Russia is our friend’ and ‘Blood and soil,’ a Nazi-inspired slogan… The reason for the Nazi chant was evident; they thought it allowed them to channel the spirit of General Robert E. Lee, who had abandoned the U.S. Army in a doomed quest to preserve race-based slavery in the South,” wrote journalist Ellis Cose in 2020 on Kessler from his book on free speech issues.
Racist-neo-Nazi-white-supremacists Jason Kessler and Richard Spencer are both graduates of the University of Virginia.
The question of Virginia ACLU’s representation of anti-Jewish bigots and racists has long been controversial, even in the context of “principled” legal representation.
“Yes, Ms. Mehta’s organization - the ACLU Virginia - does style itself as the state’s only true defenders of the First Amendment. But there are many First Amendment advocates who draw the line at defending the kinds of individuals who came to Charlottesville that day bent spewing hate and armed with weapons to back themselves up.
I think the Democratic Party leaders knifed Mr. Jones in the back by opposing him in the primary. That’s not fair. But more importantly, I think they owe Democrats an explanation as to why they did it for defender of Nazis and KKK wannabes,” wrote Richmond attorney and former Virginia Democratic Party Chair Paul Goldman to a group of reporters in an e-mail chain on Feb. 28.
In Nov. 2023, Goldman was recently the target of anti-semitic hate speech by a RadioOne host while advocating against a casino in Richmond.
RELATED: ACLU Virginia: Why We Represented the Alt-Right in Charlottesville
Issues of free speech and expression have become a growing concern in the U.S. as some who are targets of hate speech reference the violence that can be connected with it.
A 2022 FBI report on hate crimes listed race and ethnicity as a leading category bigots target for violence — but religion is clearly a factor. In January 2024, the FBI released a report demonstrating that Blacks and members of the Jewish faith are the number one and number two targets of hate crimes at schools.
RELATED: Charlottesville violence prompts ACLU to change policy on hate groups protesting with guns (PBS, 2017)
Though the ACLU has long been known to take unpopular legal cases they have at times been eerily silent on controversial questions of due process and freedom of speech. The national ACLU made headlines in 2022 when it was revealed during the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard trial, which took place in Fairfax, Virginia, that the ACLU ghost wrote a Washington Post oped for Heard. The news went unmentioned by The Washington Post and prompted an article in The Atlantic entitled, The ACLU has Lost Its Way in May 2022.
Currently, there is vigorous debate about freedom of speech as related to student protests on college campuses across the U.S. against Israel’s military strikes on Gaza in response to the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attack which killed over 1,200 Jewish people. As reported by Reuters on March 28, 2024 over 32,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7, 2023.
This week Congress is expected to take up several bills dealing with what many federal lawmakers say is a dangerous rise in antisemitism in the U.S.
Black Virginia News reached out to the campaign of Leslie Mehta regarding details of her representation of Jason Kessler but received no response.
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Thank you for this thoughtful and balanced coverage of the issue of Leslie Mehta’s legal defense of Nazi Jason Kessler. I have had ambivalent feelings about the ACLU’s decisions to provide free, valuable legal services to virulent hatemongers ever since they facilitated the Nazi march in Skokie, Illinois - a Chicago suburb with many Jewish Holocaust survivors and their families- in the 1970s.
While I agree with the ACLU on a range of other issues and agree that everyone deserves legal representation, their defense of actual Nazis has kept me from donating to them for the simple reason that I would never want a penny of mine to go towards helping somebody whose ultimate goal is to throw me into an oven.
The quote you cite from the former VA Director of the ACLU that they only agreed to represent Kessler after he promised to refrain from promoting violence shows the absolute height of precious, clueless progressive naivete - “But, but, but the Nazi guy promised he’d be nice to everyone!” Mehta can and will defend what she did, but consequences matter and sometimes you have to re-examine your principles and policies when the consequences of them turn out to be absolutely God-awful.