07/04/2024
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The Declaration of Independence was adopted 248 years ago today. One item in the Founders’ long list of complaints against King George III is cruelly resonating with us here today at VDARE.com:
Swarms of officers from the regulatory state, in the form of New York State Attorney General Letitia James and her staff have indeed been harassing VDARE.com for more than two years, blatantly aiming at crushing our First Amendment right to criticize immigration policy and America’s ongoing racial-socialist communist coup. And now they have finally succeeded in eating out our substance.
Note that we have not been formally accused of anything. But the process is the punishment.
The result: While VDARE.com’s issues, immigration and the cultural/ political changes it brings, have never been more in the news —
— we can no longer effectively cover those issues.
Instead, we are being forced to spend our time and our donors’ money on redacting multi-gigabytes of emails going back to 2016, subpoenaed in an unscrupulous fishing expedition by New York Attorney General Letitia James. We need to ensure that her notoriously leaky office can’t get its filthy paws on the names of our writers, donors, and vendors.
This is an essentially impossible financial and executive burden.
Note that NYAG James’ investigation was ostensibly triggered by our (heavily lawyered and legally bullet-proof) purchase of the Berkeley Springs Castle, which we did because communist pressure and corporate cowardice was blocking us from holding conferences.
But this purchase took place in 2020. What possible excuse does NYAG James have for demanding our email back to 2016?
We do now have heroic pro-bono legal volunteers familiar with e-redaction, brought in by Lydia’s interview with Tucker Carlson. We are told that their work may already have saved us $1 million (which is not to be confused with the other $1 million that we estimate we have actually already spent on lawyers to fight NYAG James’ harassment).
But even these volunteers’ work requires costly technical assistance. Lydia has just had to sign a $10,000 retainer to a specialist firm — whose costs might ultimately exceed $50,000.
How did this happen?
Because the New York State courts have declined to protect us against NYAG James’ clearly unconstitutional onslaught.
We did have a brief flicker of hope when the Court of Appeals, New York State’s highest court, granted us a temporary Restraining Order against being forced to produce our email. This could have meant that it recognized the power of our First Amendment argument: that NYAG Letitia James was engaged in unconstitutional harassment of our freedom of speech.
But on June 13, the Court of Appeals abruptly reversed itself, asserting that “no substantial constitutional question is directly involved” — and that therefore we would not even be allowed to make our planned appeal.
Significantly, this (“no substantial constitutional question is directly involved”) is exactly the same rationale the Court of Appeals gave for denying Trump’s appeal against Judge Merchan’s gag order.
It appears that Chief Judge Rowan D. Wilson was responsible for the reversal in our case.
GREAT REPLACEMENT NOTE: not once, in VDARE.com’s journey through the New York State judicial system, have we met with a judge who was white gentile, let alone a WASP.
This ruling presented us with an agonizing dilemma.
Appealing to SCOTUS would cost maybe $25,000. But it accepts virtually no appeals.
(Note that, contrary to media misrepresentation, SCOTUS’ not accepting an appeal doesn’t necessarily mean that it thinks your case has no merit. It just means SCOTUS doesn’t feel like addressing your issue at this point in time. Too bad for you. And for VDARE.com.)
But even if VDARE.com were granted the right to appeal, we would then have to finance litigation in front of SCOTUS. This might cost some $200-250,000.
If we lost, we would be back right where we are now — facing the massive burden of redacting our emails.
And even if we won, we would simply have secured a victory against producing our email — not a victory in principle against NYAG Letitia James’ potential further harassment of the VDARE Foundation’s First Amendment Rights
Frankly, we at VDARE.com have no real hope of justice. We drew very dark conclusions from SCOTUS’ February 28, 2022 denial of our appeal against the city of Colorado Springs’ refusal to extend police protection to our proposed conference in an hotel there — a Civil Rights case so clear that our original attorney took it on contingency, until it became clear that RINO-controlled Colorado Springs would bull-headedly resist, at which point he ran away.
It very much looks to us like word has gone out from Judge Central that so-called “White Nationalism,” or anything accused of it, must be suppressed by any means necessary.
Moreover, SCOTUS is under unprecedented pressure right now. Ruling in favor of Trump in any of the myriad cases involving him can result in serious political and even physical repercussions.
So would SCOTUS deign to spend any political capital on a tiny, Politically Incorrect, immigration patriot group that even Conservatism Inc. and Libertarianism Inc. have shrunk from defending? (Looking at you, Wall Street Journal, National Review, New York Post, Fox News, Reason magazine, LewRockwell.com, etc.)
So we have taken the alternative course:
Remember, after more than two years of exhaustive “investigation,” she has still not charged us with anything.
That is because NYAG James simply has nothing to charge us with.
Even her May 28 Opposition to Our Motion for a Stay simply boiler-plated long-refuted trivia such as that Lydia and I had not specified that we were married (we had); and that we had spent $114,000 buying Facebook ads to promote VDARE.com articles (we hadn’t, and even if we had, promoting our ideas is an entirely legitimate use of donor money), etc., etc.
Of course, the weakness of NYAG James’ arguments didn’t make any difference. The Court of Appeals aborted our appeal anyway.
Nevertheless, we presume actual litigation will require a higher standard. (The Trump New York State court atrocities notwithstanding.)
So there is a possibility that producing the redacted email will be the (terminally expensive) end of this nightmare.
But who knows? Maybe NYAG Letitia James will come after Lydia and myself personally. As in the case of President Trump, it appears that the New York State courts will let her get away with anything.
At VDARE.com, we have been constantly buoyed up by our loyal supporters. We are all too aware that there are many other deserving causes — including patriots who are actually in jail right now.
And we really don’t want to divert dollars that should go into saving the Historic American Nation, our primary mission, into a bottomless legal pit — which is one reason we have chosen not to appeal to SCOTUS.
Nevertheless, we know that some of our heroic supporters are particularly concerned that VDARE.com’s writers, donors and vendors not be doxed and that we continue, in whatever way we can, with our mission: to save the Historic American Nation.
VDARE.com’s online donations are crippled by the regulatory state right now, but you can still give via GiveSendGo or by snailmail.
We are profoundly grateful to you all.
Sincerely,
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NYAG Letitia James’s Crucifixion of VDARE.com
Peter Brimelow is the editor of VDARE.com. His best-selling book, Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster, is now available in Kindle format.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.