Rachel Maddow: US Nazis Lose Big in Charlottesville Trial

Hours after the historic Charlottesville verdict, IFA attorneys Karen Dunn and Roberta Kaplan appeared on the Rachel Maddow show. The clip is not yet available, but a transcript of the interview can be found below or on msnbc.com. 

MADDOW: ...We also got a verdict today in another super high-profile, high-stakes trial of a very, very different kind. Charlottesville, Virginia, we have been watching this trial of nearly two dozen neo-Nazis a white supremacists and far-right groups that organized a white supremacist rally/riot in Charlottesville in 2017. This was the incident where president Trump said there were very fine people on both sides.

What this case has been is a civil case brought by plaintiffs against the neo-Nazis and white supremacists defendants. The plaintiffs are nine people injured or otherwise targeted at that event, and they wanted the defendants held liable for what occurred in Charlottesville in 2017, what these guys had organized and planned for.

Well, today after deliberating for roughly two-and-a-half days, the federal jury hearing this case, in fact, found those defendants liable. They found that the defendants must pay more than $25 million in damages to the plaintiffs. That had been the stated goal of the people who brought this case to try to basically bankrupt the neo-Nazi and white supremacist movement in this country. This will go some distance for that.

Now, the jury did deadlock on two counts. Deadlock means they couldn`t come to ooh unanimous agreement on two of the claims made by the plaintiffs in this case. Again, most of the claims here were decided in the plaintiff`s favor including $25 million in damages levied against the defendants.

The plaintiffs` lawyers today wasted no time in declaring themselves, quote, beyond thrilled with what the jury had decided, saying that justice was served today.

But they were equally quick to promise that on the two charges on which the jury deadlocked they`re going to seek a retrial for these white supremacist defendants on those two claims. This case was argued for the plaintiffs by two very high-powered attorneys, Roberta Kaplan and Karen Dunn who took it on behalf of the nonprofit group, Integrity First for America. It has been a long four-year process since the events of 2017 to bring all this to fruition. But today, they set out to do what they said they would do and what they spent all this effort, all of this deeply, deeply emotional fraught effort to get it done.

Joining us live from Charlottesville are Karen Dunn and Roberta Kaplan, the two plaintiffs` lawyers in this case.

Karen and Robbie, thank you so much for being here. I imagine you are exhausted. This has been a long trial.

ROBERTA KAPLAN, KAPLAN HECKER & FINK FOUNDING PARTNER: I think that`s fair to say, Rachel. Thanks for having us.

MADDOW: So it was something like three dozen witnesses on your side, three-and-a-half weeks of testimony up against all of these defendants, some of whom tried to pretend the case wasn`t happening and there was a default judgment against some of them. I want to ask you about all of that.

It has been such a difficult time for the plaintiffs to have to have to -- to have to get back through all of this and to explain what they went through, but it was just an incredibly hard case to bring. I wonder, now that it has come to this resolution, how satisfied you are in this verdict, how glad you are that you did this, how close this is to what you were aiming for from the beginning?

KAREN DUNN, PAUL, WEISS PARTNER: Yeah. So, Rachel, thank you for having us. We are thrilled beyond any imagination with this verdict. We came to Charlottesville to prove a conspiracy to commit racially motivated violence. We proved that as to each and every defendant we brought this case against.

We came to secure compensatory and punitive damages for our plaintiffs, and we did that. We secured that today. So we couldn`t be happier with the result that we got for the plaintiffs in this case, who we just came from seeing many of them.

They are brave, they are resilient, they are relieved and they have some measure of accountability and closure from this.

MADDOW: Tell me about the impact of this large damages award, because I look at that -- that monster`s ball, that rogue`s gallery of defendants in this case, the gentlemen and the organizations that you sued. I see a lot of things when I look at them, but I don`t feel like if I picked them up by the ankles and shook them upside down $25 million would fall out. So these are very large damages findings by the jury, but what`s the likelihood that this money will actually ever be seen or a significant portion of this money will ever be seen?

KAPAN: I think, Rachel, that we should have some confidence that a good deal of that money will be seen. I think Karen and I, speaking for us, we`re dedicated to make sure it happens. More importantly, I think the jury saw and hopefully the country saw the truth of who these people are and what they did and what they believe and how incredibly dangerous it is to our society, to us having a civil society.

This was four weeks of hearing about "Mein Kampf" and Hitler and the ethno state and the race war, and we persuaded the jury of the truth, which is that these guys planned based on their hateful beliefs to com and commit violence against racial minorities and that`s what they did and they celebrated it. Now they`re going to have to pay judgment as a result.

MADDOW: When you two started working on this case, when this case started to come together, how far of a distance did you come over the course of the trial between the start of this case and now in terms of what you learned about the so-called alt-right, what you learned about the status of the white supremacist, white nationalists and, indeed, neo-Nazi movement in this country? Did you feel like your understanding grew, became more serious, more nuanced in terms of the extent of that movement and its capabilities?

DUNN: Absolutely. I mean even for people like Robbie and me who spent four years completely immersed in this, we saw with clarity for the first time some of the most dangerous parts of this movement.

First of all, we saw the meticulous planning of what went on in Charlottesville, and we really only knew I think half of it before we saw the truth told on the witness stand at trial. We saw a theme emerge. We saw that people came to plow through counterprotesters with their bodies, with shields, and finally, as everyone tragically knows, with a car. It was all versions of the same thing.

We also got an admission today from one of the defense counsel, who after the verdict told a reporter that actually they had implemented a strategy to desensitize the jury to the hateful rhetoric and violence and just the racial epithets that were used by saying them over and over and over again.

So we knew that this was a strategy, and ourselves told the jury that this was happening. But the fact that this was admitted by one of the defense counsel after the trial just lays plain what is going on here and to what degree they were trying to misrepresent the situation to the jury, who did not buy it.

MADDOW: Today the jury did find in favor of the plaintiffs on most of the counts that were before them, but they deadlocked. They were able to come to an agreement on the first two counts that were put to them, which were essentially federal racially motivated conspiracy charges.

Now, you said, Robbie, after the hearing today -- excuse me, after the proceedings today that those counts will be tried again, that you will seek to retry those defendants on those counts on which the jury deadlocked. Can you explain how that works and what you mean by that?

KAPLAN: Yes. So essentially with respect to those two counts, Rachel, it is as if they never happened. A jury, I think wanting to get home for Thanksgiving, understandably were not able to reach agreement. That gives us the opportunity to go after the defendants on those counts again.

We fully intend to consider doing so. The defendants should not rest easy to think that they are not going to be found liable, not only for state conspiracy as they were found but also for federal conspiracy.

We have spent four years, we are willing to spend another four years if it takes that time, but I don`t think it will.

MADDOW: Let me also ask you about this, I believe it is seven of these defendants who effectively tried to pretend like the proceedings weren`t happening and refused to engage with these proceedings, refused to recognize the court. One of them, I believe, is the man who is serving multiple life sentences for having driven the car into the group of counterprotesters, killing Heather Heyer and wounding a dozen people.

Of those seven defendants who refused to engage, I know that -- and we reported here that the judge essentially issued a default judgment against them, and I know that the court will now act further to decide what`s the dispensation of those guys, what sort of damages they have to pay these guys who have had a default judgment issued against them.

Can you explain more of what that means? Because it is another big part of the sort of next steps here.

DUNN: Yes, absolutely. There are seven defendants against who we have entries of default, and the court is likely to be guided in its damages assessment by the jury`s verdict today, so that which obviously was substantial damages awarded, compensatory and punitives, so the court will be guided by that.

As to James Fields, the driver of the car, one extraordinary thing that happened in this verdict is that James fields was found to be part of a conspiracy with Richard Spencer, Jason Kessler, Chris Cantwell and the rest of the defendants in this case. So, the fact they said, we had nothing to do with this, we didn`t know James field, the jury found there was still a conspiracy among all of the defendants. So that is a very core part of the verdict that happened today.

MADDOW: Karen Dunn and Roberta Kaplan, two very accomplished litigators, even before you got to this moment. But if you had done nothing else in your lives except this, you guys always will be known as the attorneys that sued the Nazis and freakin won. Congratulations on this verdict. I know these are, as we have been talking about, these are in some ways first steps and there`s more to come. We will have you back to walk us through that when it happens. Good luck to you both.

KAPLAN: Thank you.

DUNN: Thank you so much.