Vanished neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin must give up his whereabouts, a federal court in Montana ordered Wednesday.
Anglin, who runs the white supremacist website Daily Stormer, has been on the lam for a year, fleeing a lawsuit by a Jewish woman whose address Anglin posted online. The woman, Tanya Gersh, is suing Anglin for intimidation and emotional distress after Anglin encouraged his anti-Semitic following to call her family members or “stop by” her Montana home. Anglin’s attorneys have attempted to dodge the lawsuit by claiming he lives outside the country, and that he worries for his personal safety if he reveals his location.
A federal court isn’t buying it.
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Anglin has until February 16 to tell the court where he’s living, ruled U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeremiah Lynch.
The lawsuit against him originated in the Montana hometown of fellow white supremacist Richard Spencer.
Spencer, who has called for ethnic cleansing and shouted “hail Trump” to a crowd of followers throwing Nazi salutes, is from Whitefish, Montana. After Spencer’s profile as a white supremacist rose in 2016, Spencer’s mother became involved in a dispute with Gersh, a local real-estate agent. Gersh said she had simply decided not to work with Spencer’s mother.
But Spencer’s mother (or Spencer himself, Gersh’s lawyers claim) wrote a blog post accusing Gersh of harassment. Anglin quickly took up the story on the Daily Stormer. “Jews Targeting Richard Spencer’s Mother for Harassment and Extortion,” Anglin wrote. “TAKE ACTION!”
Anglin posted Gersh’s phone number, address, and contact information for her family.
“Please call her and tell her what you think. And hey—if you’re in the area, maybe you should stop by and tell her in person what you think of her actions,” he wrote, adding homophobic and anti-Semitic slurs about Gersh’s 12-year-old son.
The subsequent “troll army” bombarded Gersh with threatening phone calls, emails, and text messages. In April 2017, she partnered with the Southern Poverty Law Center to sue Anglin for distress and intimidation.
The neo-Nazi hasn’t been seen since.
Anglin’s lawyer Marc Randazza claims Anglin can’t face the lawsuit because he does not belong to any U.S. state. Randazza said Anglin fears for his physical safety if his address was revealed, even if it’s in court documents and not in a blog post, like Anglin did to Gersh.
Anglin’s lawyer entered court documents purporting to show that Anglin became a domiciliary of Cambodia days before Gersh filed her suit. Among those documents are a temporary, nonimmigrant visa for Cambodia, a tourist visa from Laos, and pictures of a Cambodian hotel where Anglin claims to live. Randazza submitted a picture of a motorcycle Anglin allegedly purchased, claiming it was proof Anglin intended to live in Cambodia long-term.
Gersh’s lawyers said Anglin’s claim to Cambodian residency was laughable.
“Defendant’s production shows nothing more than a tourist wandering through Southeast Asia in 2017, with motorcycle rides through Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia, extended visas to ease travel between them, and comfortable stays at seemingly lavish yet affordable hotels,” Gersh’s lawyers wrote in a response to Anglin’s lawyers. “But it certainly does not show that Defendant, a United States citizen, changed his domicile to any foreign country such that he can escape this Court’s jurisdiction.”
