Judge awards $4M over neo-nazi website
A federal judge awarded a Muslim-american radio host $4.1 million in damages Wednesday after he successfully sued a neo-nazi website operator who falsely accused him of terrorism.
Siriusxm Radio show host Dean Obeidallah filed the civil complaint against The Daily Stormer founder Andrew Anglin, who hasn’t responded to Obeidallah’s libel lawsuit.
The whereabouts of Anglin, who is a Worthington native, are unclear.
Obeidallah, a comedian and Daily Beast columnist, says Anglin falsely labeled him as the “mastermind” behind a deadly bombing at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, in May 2017.The award granted Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Edmund Sargus Jr. was much higher than requested in Obeidallah’s lawsuit: He was seeking $250,000 in compensatory damages and $1 million in punitive damages.
Sargus entered a default judgment last month against Anglin and his company, Moonbase Holdings LLC. Sargus announced the award from his Columbus courtroom after a Wednesday morning hearing.
The judge said he was convinced nothing in Anglin’s statements were protected speech under the First Amendment. He also issued an injunction ordering the materials about Obeidallah be taken down from the website and forbidding Anglin from discussing them further.
In his lawsuit, Obeidallah said the site had embedded fabricated messages to make them seem as though they had been sent from Obeidallah’s Twitter account, tricking readers into believing he took responsibility for the Manchester attack. That mix of real and fake tweets made the article all the more insidious, Obeidallah testified Wednesday.
Afterward, he received death threats and now worries about his safety and that of his family, he testified. In the lawsuit, Obeidallah said Anglin libeled him, invaded his privacy and intentionally inflicted “emotional distress.”
After the hearing, Obeidallah praised the ruling and the message it sends to Anglin “and others of that ilk.” Obeidallah
“That you’re going to be held accountable in our court system if you try to smear people, and try to destroy their reputation because they speak out against your hateful ideology,” Obeidallah said.
Among those who testified Wednesday was Andrew Anglin’s father, Greg Anglin of the Columbus area.
Greg Anglin acknowledged helping file paperwork to set up his son’s website and to receiving donations for it at a post office box. He said he last spoke to his son by phone about two weeks ago, but they didn’t discuss the lawsuit. Afterward, he declined to talk to a reporter about his son or his whereabouts.
Anglin still faces possible default judgments in four federal cases, including separate lawsuits filed by two other targets of his site’s online harassment campaigns.