David Duke To Judge: I Won’t Hand Over My Charlottesville Emails

Members of the Ku Klux Klan are escorted out of a planned rally on July 8, 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia. Image by Getty Images

By Helen Chernikoff February 27, 2018

Lawyers who are suing white supremacists for conspiring to foster and carry out violence at last summer’s “Unite the Right” rally are trying to get some papers from former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke — but he says it’s too much trouble, and too expensive.

Roberta Kaplan, who successfully argued before the Supreme Court to overturn ban on same-sex marriage, is one of the lawyers representing various counter-protesters at the rally, including people struck by the driver of the car who killed Heather Heyer. They’re suing Jason Kessler, Richard Spencer and others, alleging that the rally was a pretext for violence illegal under the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871 and the Civil Rights Act of 1866.

They are not suing Duke himself, but as part of the suit, they are demanding communications regarding the violence, financial support for the rally and meetings between him and other white supremacists.

Duke, who is representing himself, is refusing on the grounds that the request would subject him to “undue burden and expense.”

“Whatever burden he now claims does not outweigh my clients’ right to relevant information in Mr. Duke’s possession that relate to the defendants’ conspiracy to commit racially-motivated violence,” Kaplan said in a statement.

Contact Helen Chernikoff at [email protected] or on Twitter @thesimplechild

Helen Chernikoff is the Forward’s News Editor. She came to the Forward from The Jewish Week, where she served as the first web director and created both a blog dedicated to disability issues and a food and wine website. Before that, she covered the housing, lodging and logistics industries for Reuters, where she could sit at her desk and watch her stories move the stock market. Helen has a Master’s of Public Administration from Columbia University and a BA in History and French from Amherst College. She is also a rabbinical school dropout. Contact her at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter at @thesimplechild.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO