Andrew Anglin, the neo-Nazi troll who has been playing cat and mouse with the law to avoid being sued, has a week to reveal his whereabouts, a federal court ordered Wednesday.
Anglin, who runs the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer, is being sued by Tanya Gersh, a realtor in Whitefish, Montana, after he incited an anti-Semitic social media troll storm against her in late 2016. Anglin targeted Gersh because she was embroiled in a dispute with Sherry Spencer (mother of alt-right thought leader Richard Spencer), who also resides in Whitefish.
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He published phone numbers, email addresses, and links to social media profiles for Gersh and her immediate family members, including her 12-year-old son. She received hate-filled messages vowing that she would be “driven to the brink of suicide.” In a Daily Stormer post from December 2016, Anglin called her son “a creepy little faggot” and urged his followers to harass him.
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Anglin is from Columbus, Ohio, where he is also registered to vote, and where the Daily Stormer is based. But, according to court documents, he claims that he’s moved to Cambodia, where he intends to remain permanently. Anglin’s lawyer Marc Randazza says that because he has renounced his Ohio residence and moved out of the country, the court lacks the jurisdiction to move ahead with the lawsuit.
Via his lawyer, Anglin submitted excerpts of his passport, which purportedly show recent tourist visas from Laos, as well as a temporary, nonimmigrant Cambodian visa. Anglin claims he is currently living in a boutique hotel, and submitted photos of the hotel as well as of a motorcycle he allegedly purchased as proof that he intends to remain in Cambodia.
Lawyers from the Southern Poverty Law Center representing Gersh are disputing his claims, saying that even if they were true, he was “behaving no differently from the millions of tourists in Southeast Asia visiting on temporary nonimmigrant visas, exploring the region on motorcycles, and staying at hotels without intending to make any of those countries their new home.”
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Anglin also claims that for reasons of personal safety, he cannot publicly file documentation revealing his exact current whereabouts.
But magistrate judge Jeremiah C. Lynch does not appear to be amused. Lynch says Anglin has until Feb. 16 to submit whatever proof Anglin deems necessary. Those documents will be reviewed in a closed-door session, after which the court will decide whether they should be sealed, redacted, or made public.
Cover: Andrew Anglin from the Daily Stormer
