TACOMA — Five people tied to a white nationalist group sued a Washington man last year who allegedly infiltrated the organization and released confidential information.
Since then, efforts to serve him with the federal lawsuit have been unsuccessful, including at a Tacoma address listed among his last-known locations, court records show.
The lawsuit was filed in July 2023 by five members or affiliates of Patriot Front in United States District Court, Western District of Washington. Patriot Front is described by the Anti-Defamation League as a Texas-based white supremacist group whose goal is to form a new state advocating namely for white men. The Southern Poverty Law Center calls Patriot Front a hate group and said it splintered from another white supremacist organization following the deadly 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
The suit alleges that David Capito II, who purportedly has changed his name, joined Patriot Front in July 2021 using a fake identity and under false pretenses. Capito took pictures of group members’ license plates and other personal information, recorded members with hidden microphones and cameras and exploited the group’s private chats and video links from its website, the suit said.
Capito, 36, and accomplices allegedly released and used confidential information — such as home addresses and places of employment — to harass members and threaten them where they lived and worked, the suit alleged. He and others are accused of trespassing on their property, making threatening telephone calls to their employers, slashing plaintiffs’ vehicle tires and putting up flyers in their neighborhoods.
The plaintiffs are: Colton Brown, a former electrician’s assistant in Washington who since moved out of state; James and Amelia Johnson who still live in Washington; Paul Gancarz of Virginia; and Daniel Turetchi, now of Pennsylvania, who lived in Maryland at the time of the allegations. The suit doesn’t specify the cities where the alleged wrongdoing occurred, but the Seattle Times previously reported that Brown lived near Maple Valley in King County and James Johnson was from Skagit County.
Brown and James Johnson were among 31 Patriot Front members arrested in June 2022 for planning to riot at a Pride event in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, the Seattle Times previously reported. James Johnson and four others were sentenced to five days in jail, according to the Associated Press.
The plaintiffs said they either lost their jobs or were forced to relocate because of Capito, whom the lawsuit described as a spokesperson for the Puget Sound John Brown Gun Club — a leftist antifascist organization created to counter white supremacist and far-right groups, according to media reports.
In 2019, 69-year-old Willem Van Spronsen, a club member, was fatally shot by police outside the federal immigration detention center in Tacoma where he allegedly had been carrying a rifle and using flares and Molotov cocktails, The News Tribune previously reported.
Capito, while using an alias, later wore a necklace fashioned from a bullet once belonging to Van Spronsen during a media interview, according to the lawsuit.
Capito has yet to be served with the suit but apparently not for a lack of trying, court records show.
In February, a private investigator hired by the plaintiffs’ legal counsel declared in a court filing that he had been unable to locate and serve Capito despite an extensive search and attempts to reach him through various phone numbers. His efforts included multiple visits between November 2023 and January to four addresses believed to belong to Capito — two in Seattle, one in Lake Stevens and another in Tacoma.
The investigator documented that he had visited a unit in the 500 block of South L Street in Tacoma and spoke directly to the occupant who reported they had never heard of Capito.
The property was purchased by MultiCare in August 2022 as part of its Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital expansion, according to Pierce County land records and MultiCare spokesperson Scott Thompson. The homes on the site were demolished in April 2023, Thompson said, or seven months before the period in which the investigator claimed to have visited in search of Capito.
Christopher Hogue and Glen Allen, attorneys representing the plaintiffs, did not return messages seeking comment and requesting contact information for their hired private investigator. An attempt to reach Capito on a number listed for him in public records was unsuccessful.
Late last month, Hogue suggested that Capito was hiding in Washington state and filed a motion in court seeking to serve Capito with the lawsuit using an alternative method: by publication. It means that a notice of the lawsuit would be published in a newspaper of general circulation.
“Plaintiffs have repeatedly and diligently attempted service, and Mr. Capito has concealed himself with the intent to avoid service,” the Sept. 26 motion said.
The plaintiffs requested 75 days to complete the service, in which their legal counsel plans to publish a summons in the Seattle Times for six weeks and afford Capito a necessary 60-day period to appear in court and answer the complaint.
In the complaint, the plaintiffs claimed that the group’s activism is sometimes provocative but also nonviolent and that its activism had prompted physical violence, threats and harassment from others.
“At a deeper level, this complaint seeks to vindicate the rule of law and basic principles of free expression for persons who espouse unpopular opinions,” the suit said.
The suit alleges Capito invaded the plaintiffs’ privacy and violated laws governing unauthorized access to computers. It’s seeking unspecified damages, legal fees and an injunction to prevent Capito from further using the plaintiffs’ confidential information, among other relief.
Capito’s alleged intrusion into Patriot Front was highlighted in an August story from The New Yorker, which told of “a growing number of far-left vigilantes who are infiltrating the far right.”
