Lawyers seek to question neo-Nazi website publisher’s family

BATON ROUGE, La. — Lawyers suing a neo-Nazi website’s publisher asked a federal judge Monday for court-ordered permission to question the man’s relatives about his whereabouts.

Private investigators believe The Daily Stormer’s publisher, Andrew Anglin, is living in the Worthington, Ohio, area but couldn’t find him there last month, according to attorneys for a Muslim-American radio host who sued Anglin in August.

The lawyers want to question Anglin’s father and brother under oath and ask if they know where he is living, so he can be served with a copy of the federal lawsuit filed in Columbus, Ohio.

SiriusXM Radio show host Dean Obeidallah’s suit says Anglin falsely labeled him as the “mastermind” behind a deadly bombing at a concert in England. Obeidallah, a comedian and Daily Beast columnist, said he received death threats after the article’s June 1 publication.

Obeidallah’s suit says the site embedded fabricated messages in the post to make them seem like they had been sent from Obeidallah’s Twitter account, tricking readers into believing he took responsibility for the May 22 terrorist attack at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester.

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Obeidallah’s lawyers said their private investigators didn’t find Anglin at five addresses they visited in the Worthington area, where most of his family lives. Anglin “appears to be concealing his location,” possibly with help from his family, the plaintiffs’ attorneys wrote.

Anglin has posted on social media about Obeidallah’s suit, the radio host’s attorneys said.

“He is openly mocking the Court, often referring to this action as an ‘lolsuit’ (i.e., a ‘laugh out loud’ suit),” they wrote.

Anglin didn’t immediately respond Monday to an email seeking comment.

Anglin’s site takes its name from Der Stürmer, a newspaper that published Nazi propaganda. The site includes sections called “Jewish Problem” and “Race War.”

Obeidallah sued Anglin two days after domain name registration companies Google and GoDaddy yanked the site’s web address, effectively making it unreachable. The companies acted after Anglin published a post mocking the woman killed in a deadly car attack at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August. The site has struggled to stay online over the past two months.

In April, a Montana woman sued Anglin for orchestrating an anti-Semitic trolling campaign against her family. Tanya Gersh’s suit claims anonymous internet trolls bombarded Gersh’s family with hateful and threatening messages after Anglin published their personal information in a post accusing her and other Jewish residents of Whitefish, Montana, of engaging in an “extortion racket” against the mother of white nationalist Richard Spencer.

Gersh is represented by attorneys from the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center. In July, the centre’s lawyers claimed Anglin was “actively concealing his whereabouts.”

Obeidallah is represented by Muslim Advocates, a national legal and educational organization based in Oakland, California. His suit claims Anglin libeled him, invaded his privacy and intentionally inflicted “emotional distress.”

Michael Kunzelman, The Associated Press