In a lawsuit against two Charlottesville activists, white nationalist Christopher Cantwell is asking a federal judge to find that he was prosecuted maliciously.

Christopher Cantwell

Despite what appeared to be the possibility of a settlement, Cantwell, 37 — who came into the public spotlight after a Vice News documentary profiled him during and after the Unite the Right rally downtown last summer — filed a motion last week for partial summary judgment against Emily Gorcenski, arguing that she maliciously prosecuted him when she accused him of pepper spraying her last summer.

Cantwell currently faces two charges of illegal use of gas, and will go to trial in Albemarle County Circuit Court on Aug. 13.

Cantwell’s $1 million suit, filed in December, alleges that he sprayed neither Gorcenski nor Kristopher Goad, the other defendant, during the torch-lit white supremacist march on the Grounds of the University of Virginia on Aug. 11, 2017, and that both of them knowingly are prosecuting him falsely.

In his new motion, which only refers to Gorcenski, Cantwell is asking a judge to side with him without going to trial. It further argues that there is no dispute as to any of the facts.

In his summary of the facts, Cantwell’s motion argues that Gorcenski has a “hit list” of speakers from the Unite the Right rally, including Cantwell, and celebrates harm inflicted upon her “enemies.”

“Gorcenski celebrated the violence she brought about by marking her successes with emojis,” according to the motion. “‘Baked Alaska,’ a pseudonym for Tim Gionet, was pepper sprayed so badly that he permanently lost part of his vision. … Cantwell had arrest warrants out on him, the ‘x’ apparently signifying cell bars.”

“Gorcenski personally took credit for all of this by tweeting out to her 24,000 followers: ‘Don’t f*** with a trans girl.’”

The document argues that this is just one example of the evidence showing Gorcenski’s malice in her prosecution of Cantwell.

According to the motion, Gorcenski was affected by pepper spray from an unidentified individual called “Beanyman” and not by Cantwell. But, when Gorcenski saw a photo later of Cantwell holding pepper spray, she falsely accused Cantwell of spraying her and had no probable cause, according to the motion.

“The facts available to Gorcenski were utterly insufficient to justify a reasonable person in the belief that Cantwell unlawfully caused her bodily injury by a caustic substance,” the document states. “Gorcenski knew or should have known that Beanyman sprayed her, not Cantwell, because she was on videotape after Beanyman sprayed her.”

At the preliminary hearing for Cantwell’s criminal charges, one of the charges — unlawful bodily injury — was dropped. But Gorcenski maintained that Cantwell did not directly target her with the pepper spray. Instead, she said his spray affected her as he used it in the general area of a group of people.

In an interview with The Daily Progress following Cantwell’s hearing last year, Gorcenski said she was surprised that prosecutors brought charge in the first place.

“My accusation was never that Christopher Cantwell approached me directly with deliberate intent to injure me,” she said. “My accusation was that he used it in a public space and that I was affected by it.”

But Cantwell’s motion claims Gorcenski’s story changed over the days and months following that night at UVa.

On Aug. 12, 2017, the motion alleges that Gorcenski told the magistrate that she was shoved, there was a fight to her right and then the pepper spray affected her. On Aug. 17, Gorcenski spoke to a UVa police sergeant and told him that she saw a person get hit with a torch just before she was sprayed with pepper spray, the document states.

In October, Gorcenski told the FBI that she was shoved and a fight broke out before she felt her face burning and was hit in the head with a torch, according to the motion.

“Gorcenski’s differing statements show that she was stitching together a false narrative, and telling different people different stories, all with the intent to bring down the power of the state and federal governments on Cantwell,” the motion states.

In the final section, seemingly unrelated to the pepper spray incident, the motion states that Gorcenski has vowed to “show no mercy” to her political opponents. According to the document, on June 21, Gorcenski reportedly tweeted that “Nazis had deprived her of something and she therefore will ‘show no mercy.’”

The motion also alleges that Gorcenski spoke about denying food to anyone she thought was a Nazi and equated Nazis with “white Christian supremacy.”

“No mercy, starvation and body counts show Gorcenski’s bigotry, and malice towards them,” it states.

Cantwell is not currently asking for an assessment of potential damages, according to the document.

No hearing has been set for the motion yet.

(((Lauren Berg))) a reporter for The Daily Progress. Contact her at (434) 978-7263, lberg@dailyprogress.com or @LaurenBergK on Twitter.

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