Far-Right Grudge Match: 'Unite the Right' Organizer Sues Proud Boys Founder
Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes had suggested that Unite the Right organizer Jason Kessler may have been on the payroll of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Call it a far-right grudge match.
In one corner, Jason Kessler, the leader of the disastrous Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.
In the other, Gavin McInnes, founder of the notorious Proud Boys.
Kessler, a one-time member of the Proud Boys, and McInnes began openly feuding after the 2017 gathering erupted into violence. McInnes, not wanting to openly associate with neo-Nazis, had urged his Proud Boys to stay away.
And when the dust had settled, McInnes had Kessler on his podcast to chastise him for setting the stage for neo-Nazi Alex Fields to drive his Dodge Challenger into a group of antifascist protesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer.
“And I think this blood, the blood of this girl, I mean, it's obviously on the hands of the guy driving the car, but it's also on your hands!” McInnes told Kessler.
These two clearly do not like each other
Now, following the Trump administration’s indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center, the two far-right figures are once against butting heads. McInnes recently suggested that Kessler might have been on the SPLC payroll, and now the Unite the Right organizer is suing the Proud Boys founder for defamation.
McInnes “expressly acknowledged … that his accusation regarding SPLC payments was based on ‘vibes’ and not evidence,” Kessler wrote in the complaint that he filed on his own without a lawyer.
The lawsuit continued, “An accusation of criminal conduct made without evidence and acknowledged as groundless by its author constitutes, at a minimum, reckless disregard for the truth.”
Kessler, a resident of West Virginia, filed the lawsuit in the Circuit Court of Cabell County, West Virginia. An attorney for Gavin McInnes, who lives in New York, has asked to move the case to federal court in West Virginia.
(Hat tip to Molly Conger, creator of the Weird Little Guys podcast, who was the first person to stumble across the federal court filings.)
At the center of the lawsuit are questions about who might have been the undercover informant identified in the federal indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center as “F-37.” According to the indictment, the person was involved in a leadership group chat for Unite the Right.
During an April 22, 2026, podcast referenced in the complaint, McInnes was asked to speculate about who F-37 might be.
“It sounds like Jason Kessler,” the Proud Boys founder replied. “I’m 95 percent sure that Jason was getting SPLC money. But again, that’s just my theory, and I’m basing it almost strictly, almost exclusively, on vibes.”
But Kessler’s lawsuit says that, along with similar claims made by McInnes elsewhere, was all a lie.
“Plaintiff did not receive illegal wire transfers from the SPLC,” the complaint insists. “Plaintiff did not act as a paid operative, informant, or agent of the SPLC. Plaintiff did not orchestrate or stage the Unite the Right rally as a covert operation conducted on behalf of the SPLC or any other organization.”
As Molly Conger notes in her Weird Liitle Guys podcast, the details in the SPLC indictment about F-37 do not match the Unite the Right organizer’s history.
Kessler, who was filed liable by a civil jury for his role in Unite the Right, claims McInnes’ statements have resulted in a decline in sales of a book he wrote about Charlottesville, as well as “severe reputational injury” and “emotional distress.”
McInnes announced in 2018 that he was leaving the Proud Boys.
Richard Spencer also disputed allegations
In fact, as I previously reported, another key Unite the Right figure, Richard Spencer, appeared on the same podcast with McInnes and noted that the SPLC indictment does not claim that Unite the Right was an SPLC plot, as President Donald Trump and key MAGA figures have claimed.
“The fact is this indictment does not even suggest that,” the rally organizer added. “And this is, it's just a very self-serving thing for conservatives to now say, ‘Oh, I knew it was a hoax or something.’”
Meanwhile, in a new filing, SPLC attorneys have asked a federal judge to review grand jury transcripts and recordings to see if the panel might have been misled by prosecutors in the indictment of the legendary civil rights organization
.