{"id":1704067,"date":"2022-10-20T13:03:57","date_gmt":"2022-10-20T17:03:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1704067"},"modified":"2022-10-20T13:05:04","modified_gmt":"2022-10-20T17:05:04","slug":"free-speech-nonprofit-sues-former-jan-6-staffer-for-defamation-over-domestic-violent-extremists-smear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/free-speech-nonprofit-sues-former-jan-6-staffer-for-defamation-over-domestic-violent-extremists-smear\/","title":{"rendered":"Free-Speech Nonprofit Sues Former Jan. 6 Staffer For Defamation Over \u2018Domestic Violent Extremists\u2019 Smear"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">28<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Ffree-speech-nonprofit-sues-former-jan-6-staffer-for-defamation-over-domestic-violent-extremists-smear%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1704067&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>1st Amendment Praetorian, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting free speech rights, filed a defamation lawsuit on Wednesday against a former staffer for the Jan. 6 Committee and publishers of his insider story of the investigation that labeled the group of former veterans as \u201cdomestic violent extremists\u201d and a \u201cmilitant group,\u201d and portrayed the nonprofit as responsible for the violence that erupted at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>News <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/politics\/2022\/09\/25\/ex-staffers-unauthorized-book-about-jan-6-committee-rankles-members\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">broke<\/a> last month that a former senior adviser to the Jan. 6 Committee, Denver Riggleman, had penned a behind-the-scenes book purportedly detailing the inner workings of the Jan. 6 Committee. Riggleman\u2019s book, \u201cThe Breach: The Untold Story of the Investigation Into January 6,\u201d was released last month, with Esquire publishing an edited <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esquire.com\/news-politics\/a41396235\/the-breach-denver-riggleman-jan-6-excerpt\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">excerpt<\/a> of it.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The book and the Esquire excerpt both spoke of \u201cthe militant groups that took part in the attack, namely the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and 1st Amendment Praetorian,\u201d adding that the committee was looking at the storming of the building as a military operation. \u201cThe targets of our investigation were divided up into five major categories,\u201d Riggleman wrote, with one group consisting of \u201cdomestic violent extremists,\u201d which the former Jan. 6 staffer claimed, \u201cincluded militant groups like Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and 1st Amendment Praetorian.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Those statements were false and defamatory, according to the lawsuit filed by 1AP in a federal court in Virginia on Wednesday that named as defendants Riggleman; Hearst, which publishes Esquire; and the publishers of \u201cThe Breach,\u201d the Holt and MacMillan publishing companies.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMr. Riggleman\u2019s book pushes the Democrat talking point that military veterans who defend the First Amendment are violent extremists. We are not. We love America and it is our mission to guard its cherished values,\u201d a representative of the 1AP told The Federalist. \u201cRiggleman\u2019s arrogance and reckless disregard of basic facts is not surprising. This book is low on intelligence and full on propaganda,\u201d 1AP\u2019s representative added.<\/p>\n<p>Riggleman and the other defendants are not the first to falsely portray 1AP as \u201cviolent extremists\u201d and \u201cmilitant groups.\u201d In July, The Federalist reported that in the days before the long Independence Day weekend, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., told The New York Times that when the Jan. 6 Committee reconvenes public hearings in July, \u201che intends to lead a presentation that will focus on the roles far-right groups like the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers and 1st Amendment Praetorian played in the Capitol attack.\u201d According to the Times, \u201cMr. Raskin has also promised to explore the connections between those groups and the people in Mr. Trump\u2019s orbit.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Raskin\u2019s comments followed a year of the Jan. 6 Committee falsely portraying 1AP as \u201cright-wing, paramilitary, or even a militia.\u201d Lawyer Seth Abramson went further, claiming 1AP and its members were involved in the Capitol riot and are \u201cinsurrectionists\u201d or \u201cseditionists,\u201d resulting in the group filing suit in a federal court in New Hampshire against Abramson for defamation.<\/p>\n<p>Following Raskin\u2019s comments, Leslie McAdoo Gordon, a lawyer representing 1AP in connection with the Jan. 6 Committee,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8216;Mr. Riggleman\u2019s book pushes the Democrat talking point that military veterans who defend the First Amendment are violent extremists. We are not.&#8217;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":499,"featured_media":1704070,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1704067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1704067","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/499"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1704067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1704067\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1704070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1704067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1704067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1704067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}