This article has been greatly amended on January 2, 2023.
Intro
Some Background
The Daily Beast’s Propaganda
Inintial Post Millennial Reporting
Lawsuit Withdrawn
Pondering
The Punchline
Intro
On December 20th, 2021, two street terrorists lo$t $ome money and their law$uit.
You may remember Melissa ‘Claudio’ Lewis, the antifa who happily filmed her comrades physically attacking unarmed innocent people and children in a park to prevent them from exercising their human rights to free association to gather together in public to exercise their freedom of religion and freedom of speech (which is stochastic terrorism) on August 7th, 20211, with whom I’ve had some very funny communications2, who incriminates her comrades with her blundering bungles and who, along with an other antifa, filed a lawsuit against journalist Andy Ngo for publicly sharing tweets that they publicly shared.3
Can you believe this guff? Yep. Funny as fudge, but this is not a joke - but wait - there’s more!
They lost their lawsuit, which is no surprise, but it is funny nonetheless, and apparently they were scammed, duped, fooled, bamboozled. Also, Andy Ngo may take them to court to sue them for his legal costs.
Way to go, losers.
Don’t these people declare that property is theft? Intellectual property is property. It’s almost as if they’re not entirely sincere socialists. They believe that the government is fascist yet they tried to use the power of the state to deprive a person of their freedom to communicate.
It’s understandable how one might get confused by their incongruity and mistakenly think that they don’t actually believe what they say they believe and what they demand that we agree to believe.
I thought they subscribed to identity politics and consider ethnic minorities, immigrants and LBGTQIAAO+ people to be members of marginalized groups and I thought that antifa claims that they are needed to defend such people from police and other fascists. It’s as if they didn’t realize they were suing a gay Asian son of immigrants.
I mean, golly, but it’s almost as if they’re hypocrites.
Pardon the digression. Anyone of at least average intelligence could have told them that they had no chance of winning thir lawsuit and would only waste money while making their lawyer richer. That ambulance chasing lawyer has no shame. Apparently this lawyer is smart enough to $cam these idiot antifas but too stupid to know that their own reputation and future is forever smudged with the obvious fact that they filed a frivolous lawsuit that they had no chance of winning just to get some money from their mark$ - I mean - their client$.
Some Background
Antifa’s Grace Morgan apparently has not tweeted about this. But ’Mom Jeans’ Melissa has. Apparently too stupid to realize how she is making a clown of herself by doing so, she tweeted…
This suggests that this half-wit doesn’t understand the difference between a private company (Twitter) and the government! She also tweeted this which shows she was still proud of her brain-dead quest…
If you remember, Tim Pool had a good laugh over the prospects of her lawsuit. Well, she’s too stupid to realize how stupid she makes herself look when she amplified what Tim Pool said about her intelligence.
Right-wing provocateur Andy Ngô has been sued in federal court by two Portland-based photojournalists, alleging he violated copyright law.
In the lawsuit, filed Dec. 8 in the Oregon U.S. District Court, Grace Morgan, 33, and Melissa Lewis, 31, allege Ngô has profited from repeatedly snatching and reposting the original, firsthand videos they shot while covering leftist protests and civil unrest.
It seems that what Ngô really did was click the video sharing feature on Twitter. It’s not just perfectly legal, it’s a commonly used feature of social media.
They are seeking an injunction to stop him from any future acts of infringement plus $300,000 in compensation for damages, a lawyer representing the pair said.
Morgan and Lewis are far from the only independent reporters and videographers to take issue with Ngô’s social-media aggregation tactics. According to one list compiled by independent researchers, Ngô has been hit with Digital Media Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notices dozens of times, with many of the claims made in the last 18 months. Morgan alone has had the footage she shot at protests distributed without her permission by Ngô on 38 instances since 2020, she said, and blocking him hasn’t done her or Lewis any good.
Nope. By making her videos public and allowing them to be shared publicly, she gave implied permission to Andy Ngô and all other Twitter users.
Nor has it put a stop to the deluge of harassment they’re met with when Ngô repurposes their work.
Notice that here the Daily Beast consciously lies by omission. Andy Ngô has famously been physically assaulted by Antifa multiple times. See the notes for examples on video.4 Now back to the professional liar’s story,
In order to keep the steady stream of content flowing, Morgan and Lewis told The Daily Beast, he necessarily relies on footage shot not just by other journalists but activists and bystanders as well.
Are we to suppose they think we should be stupid enough to just believe that last bit because two antifas said so? That hardly seems sane or honest. That doesn’t seem like journalism, does it?
As a media figure, Ngô is well within his rights to comment or share the works of others. But from Morgan and Lewis’ point of view, Ngo has exceeded those boundaries.
Yes, and also by their view, men are women, street terrorism used to deprive people of their rights is antifascism, black is white, Ngô is far right and right is wrong.
By grabbing videos wherever he finds them on Twitter, he’s positioning himself as a one-stop news source for urban conflict, whether he’s on-the-ground or not.
OK… …and? If they did say that, then they are complaining about a lack of opportunity for mostly white street terrorists to physically attack a member of the “marginalized” about whom they pretend to defend.
“[Ngô] steals videos from everybody,” said Lewis. Morgan echoed those claims. “[Ngô] has stolen content from a lot of independent journalists from Portland and all over,” she said.
Often, those videos are presented with the context stripped or the truth obscured by Ngô, they claimed, all in service of a singular goal: pumping out viral-ready content portraying the left as inherently violent and dangerous, a product conservative audiences crave. Filing a lawsuit, then, is not just about putting an end to his alleged theft and subsequent mischaracterizing of their work, both Morgan and Lewis said. They believe they’re taking a stand on behalf of those who lack the means and the time to engage in litigation, or can’t afford to put themselves in Ngô's crosshairs. Not when, “his audience is so violent,” as Lewis described Ngô’s most rabid admirers.
Antifa exists to use violence to deprive people of their freedom of speech, their freedom to gather in public and so on. It would seem that she is complaining that by showing video of Antifa engaging in terrorism, people might feel inspired to stand up for the people Antifa physically attacks.
“Andy [Ngô] is a parasite who is living off the hard work of independent journalists,” Alan Kessler, a Portland copyright attorney representing Morgan and Lewis told The Daily Beast. Despite the frequent allegations of intellectual property theft, Ngô has been able to continue by “using copyright law in extremely cynical ways to shut down his critics… He’s able to weaponize the law.”
Kessler continued: “In this case, Andy is the Goliath,” and Morgan and Lewis are David. Ngô has the personal wealth, the backing of prominent figures on the right, and a seat kept warm for him on Fox News, all of which make litigation an daunting task, even before factoring in the at-times anonymous online trolls willing to take up his cause. Larry Zerner, a Los Angeles copyright and entertainment lawyer also representing Morgan and Lewis, put it more succinctly: “This is about getting him to stop.”
There you have it. Their own lawyer (according to This Daily Beast piece, at least) admits that their lawsuit is harassment via the law. They want deny him his right to freedom of the press. To put it terms they like to use, they are engaging in racism by trying to use harassment to prevent a victim of compounding marginalization (his identity lies in the intersection of being gay and being non-white and we can’t assume that he is not also transgender without being transphobic) from exercising their Constitutional (human) rights. They have used threats, physical violence, propaganda and now the law in attempt to deprive him of these rights. The Daily Beast continues,
In response to a request sent to Ngô for comment, Harmeet Dhillon, a Republican Party official and lawyer who served as a legal adviser to Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign, expressed confidence that Ngô, her client, would prevail. “This lawsuit is Antifa agitprop masquerading as a copyright claim, disconnected from reality both in fact and in law,” she said in an emailed statement. “In a word, this lawsuit is frivolous. These claims are destined to fail—again—and we look forward to that day."
They then include a tweet which is from Chad Loder who has since been removed from Twitter. The tweet, posted at October 18, 2021 at 7:28am stated,
NEW: I have documented dozens of sustained DMCA takedowns against Andy Ngo for his repeated, for-profit theft of copyrighted materials.
In addition, I have documented at least 138 stolen videos by @MrAndyNgo this year alone - which have not yet been reported to @TwitterSafety
Before it was removed, the tweet included the following two images. I have been unable to find clearer versions of these images. They seem to feature screen shots of tweets by Ngo with certain passages emphasized by added delineation in red.
The Daily Beast continues,
The lawsuit cites two videos which Morgan and Lewis posted to Twitter on Oct. 1, 2021 from protests in Portland and were recirculated with his own particular spin by Ngô a day later.
Twitter’s functions and terms of service allow for the sharing or even embedding of videos posted by other users, which Dhillon noted in her statement. “If U.S. copyright law depended upon whether the creator liked, or wanted critics to review their work, we might as well tear up the First Amendment because no journalist such as Mr. Ngo, would ever be able to critique anything the author didn't want them to,” she added.
All right, then what’s the problem? Let’s see how they spin this. They continue…
And for the most part, Twitter users—reporters or not—don’t take issue with others promoting their work or even offering harsh commentary. But those same terms imposed by Twitter also do not exempt Ngô (or anyone) from the applicable copyright law or revoke ownership of original material, according to the lawsuit.
Copywrite laws, it would seem, do not apply in this context and Ngô does not try to revoke ownership of the original material. So why would they even mention that unless they think you’re stupid enough to think that what they just wrote is somehow relevant or that they made a relevant point or something. Further down they write…
Enforcing those laws requires no small amount of work. Assuming the complainant spots the alleged theft, they can file a DMCA takedown notice with Twitter. The account in question then is given time to respond with a counterclaim. Should they do so, and if both parties remain at loggerheads, Twitter effectively washes its hands and sends the dispute to the courts. Frequently, this puts whichever is the less deep-pocketed party at a severe disadvantage. Ngô has reportedly availed himself of this right of late, too In October, leftist accounts accused him of filing DMCA notices for posting a photo of him sitting underneath graffiti bearing the name of a fringe far-right antisemitic Polish group.
By Lewis’ estimation, Ngô appropriated her videos “dozens” of times during the height of the protests in 2020 and 2021. At the time, Portland became a fixation among the extremely online right and, in turn, then-President Donald Trump, all of whom regularly painted the city as a hellscape besieged by the menacing left. Ngô was at the forefront of these efforts. Left-of-center movements ranging from Black Lives Matter to antifa have been lumped together as one or deemed “domestic terrorists,” as Ngô said when called to testify before a Senate subcommittee. According to the lawsuit, the act of blocking Ngô should have made it clear to him that neither Morgan nor Lewis had granted him permission to post the videos on his account. Additionally, the block made it impossible for him to scrape the URL without logging out first or using a burner. Filing DMCA notices and tweeted requests for him to stop also had no effect on Ngô’s behavior.
Notice that they offer no proof or even evidence that Ngô used a burner account to share their videos.
The first time Ngô mentioned Lewis by name on Twitter, on Nov. 2, 2020, he posted a screenshot detailing another, unrelated lawsuit she was involved in–a disability lawsuit—which revealed she was an epileptic and photo-sensitive. Close to two weeks later, several people who she characterized as being on the far-right chased her down during a protest at night and exposed her to strobe lights until she had a seizure. She is confident there’s a direct line between the events and his post.
Notice that here The Daily Beast is stating that it is a fact that she was chased and that she had a seizure due to their use of strobe lights but that they offer no evidence or reliable testimony. They then continue in this vain vein with the following claims without support.
Morgan, too, has been subjected to all manner of harassment from individuals she believes to be Ngô's fans. She’s received death threats; people have shown up at her place of work and her home; and immediate family members living in other states have been contacted by people she believes are far-right extremists. The harassment, Morgan claims, always pops up in direct correlation with Ngô mentioning her on Twitter. When reporting in the field, she knows she may very well be recognized, largely due to Ngô posting photos of her. On occasion, she’ll hear people shout her name.
All the while, Ngô has benefited from what both Lewis and Morgan characterized as the “dangerous” work being done by others. Lewis has been subjected to beatings by law enforcement, covered actions at an ICE facility, and been exposed to chemicals that cause reproductive health harm “Ngô didn’t have to do any of those things,” she said. “Ngô sat behind a computer and stole my work.”
Here again we see a lie by omission. It would be unrealistic to think that she doesn’t know that Ngô can’t cover antifa events on the ground because they attack him, even when he went undercover, they found him out, chased him down and attacked him.5
It is sick to ignore this and imply that he avoids covering antifa in person out of laziness rather than out of some shred of a sense of self-preservation. The propaganda piece contains the following tweet.
Both Morgan and Lewis stressed that the lawsuit had little to do with money. Neither expects whatever funds they receive, should they win, to cover their legal costs. Barring litigation, Ngô has little incentive to stop reposting content he had no hand in creating. After all, it led to him accumulating close to a million followers on Twitter, frequent TV appearances, glowing praise from Republican politicians, and a best-selling book.
Here again they are lying. He was made famous by those antifa who physically attacked him multiple times while he was out there actually doing real journalism with a camera at their riots. They go on…
The videos he incessantly posts—or the mugshots of leftists, or the videos of people, often people of color,
Wait! Is it racist for “people of color” reporting on “people of color” as they imply? No. It is not. The implication is stupid and an insult to the intelligence (of those who are intelligent, at least).
Yes, he’s been accused of that by lying brats. That only lends him credit.
are what have kept Ngô in a position of prominence.
Actually, it is antifa’s unforgivable actions that he shares with the public that has kept him a high profile journalist and afforded him the opportunity to discuss these things on television.
His written output, either at right-wing site The Post Millennial or op-eds penned for the New York Post and other right-leaning media companies, can’t compare.
In reality, his writing, particularly his book Unmasked - Inside Antifa’s Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy (2021) has earned him much acclaim. Once again, The Daily Beast is insulting your intelligence. They conclude,
They’re well aware that taking him to court means putting a bigger target on their backs. “Exposing your identity to Ngô is extremely, extremely dangerous,” said Lewis.
There’s a reason no one has been willing to do so until now. “It’s because people are afraid,” she said.
People are afraid of a passive, soft-spoken man that can be seen on various videos being attacked by antifa? Wrong. If she said that, she is lying. The Daily Beast lies and so does antifa. In an updated version of thier propaganda piece, they add,
UPDATE: On Dec. 21, lawyers representing the plaintiffs withdrew their complaint against Ngô. The case has been dismissed without prejudice.
Well, that’s hardly a surprise. Someone tweeted the following to the liar who wrote that,
The Post Millennial's editor-at-large Andy Ngo is facing a frivolous lawsuit filed by two Antifa "journalists" for retweeting riot footage of theirs using Twitter's video-sharing feature.
Two known Antifa "journalists" have filed a frivolous lawsuit against reporter Andy Ngo for retweeting riot footage of theirs using Twitter's video-sharing feature.
According to the copyright infringement lawsuit filed in the District of Oregon, Portland Division, for damages and injunctive relief, plaintiffs Grace Morgan and Melissa Lewis allege that Ngo has repeatedly taken the videos posted by the Antifa photojournalists on Twitter without their permission or consent in violation of their exclusive copyrights. In the filing, the plaintiffs claim that Ngo violated copyright laws for retweeting their videos, while still tagging and crediting them.
The plaintiffs are seeking an injunction plus $300,000 in compensation for damages, a lawyer representing the pair toldThe Daily Beast.
"This lawsuit is Antifa agitprop masquerading as a copyright claim, disconnected from reality both in fact and in law," commented high-profile attorney Harmeet K. Dhillon, founder of the Center for American Liberty.
Dhillon stated that the plaintiffs shared their videos publicly on Twitter, "a platform designed for exactly that purpose," and that Ngo commented on the publicly-posted content using Twitter platform tools, "not somehow surreptitiously downloading and uploading the clips as the plaintiffs falsely claim."
"If U.S. copyright law depended upon whether the creator liked, or wanted critics to review their work, we might as well tear up the First Amendment because no journalist such as Mr. Ngo, would ever be able to critique anything the author didn’t want them to," Dhillon fired back at the plaintiffs.
Dhillon noted that if the plaintiffs "wanted to limit the reach of their work to a narrow echo chamber of fellow travelers, they could have acted accordingly, but they did not." She called the outlandish claims "destined to fail."
A frivolous "Antifa troll" lawsuit filed in federal court against journalist Andy Ngo was quietly withdrawn after "an honest discussion" amongst legal counsel.
In the notice of dismissal pursuant to federal rules of civil procedure dated Dec. 20, plaintiffs Melissa Lewis and Morgan Grace's attorney Larry Zerner wrote that the suit is "dismissed by the Plaintiffs in its entirety, without prejudice."
"A meet and confer that yielded an efficient result!" Liberty Center founder Harmeet K. Dhillon tweeted Thursday of her client Ngo's legal victory.
"A Christmas miracle!" she added in Thursday's tweet announcing the win. "Ho Ho Ho!" she jested. Dhillon also issued kudos to her partner Ron Coleman "whose superior intellect, winning knowledge of IP law, and calm, problem-solving manner, capably put the kibosh on this nonsensical lawsuit alleging that two Antifans could make a federal case over a journalists'a proper use of Twitter."
Ngo thanked the Liberty Center, Dhillon, and Coleman. "The dismissed #Antifa lawsuit against me claimed I violated the rights of two Portland women because I had retweeted them," Ngo characterized the defeated legal maneuver.
12 days after Morgan and Lewis took the copyright infringement complaint to US District Court, the bad-faith effort intending to suppress Ngo's reporting failed.
This report also states,
The Post Millennial had investigated Lewis and Morgan's background, finding that they've advocated for far-left violent extremism in support of Antifa.
Lewis, who uses the Internet moniker "Claudio" on social media, describes herself on Twitter as an "antifascist, anarchist" writer and videographer in Portland.
She considers herself "a fighter" who takes active part in the protests-turned-riots, also rallying Antifa comrades on Twitter to take to Portland's riot-torn streets.
In addition to advertising Antifa "direct action" events, Morgan admitted to commiting a crime on Twitter. She has also distrubted riot gear to Antifa's forces and spent Election Day learning how to shoot guns with "Antifa super soldiers."
One of the lawyers who was representing Morgan and Lewis in the lawsuit, self-described "activist" Alan Lloyd Kessler, has spread disinformation about Ngo.
The Antifa-aligned copyright lawyer also called Ngo "a parasite who is living off the hard work of independent journalists" and "able to weaponize the law."
Similar to the Ngo lawsuit, Kessler has waged lawfare against political opponents, including Mayor Ted Wheeler for winning last year's Portland mayoral race against Antifa challenger Sarah Iannarone and Commissioner Dan Ryan for opposing a multi-milion dollar budget cut proposal to the city's police department.
Dhillon noted that she was preemptively blocked by Kessler on Twiter. Addressing the attorney, Dhillon tweeted: "well done sir, no doubt getting paid and avoiding sanctions even though you filed a patently frivolous lawsuit and got PR for it."
The Center for American Liberty had launched a legal defense fundraiser for Ngo, labeling the outlandish lawsuit "Antifa agitprop masquerading as a copyright claim, disconnected from reality both in fact and in law."
Following news of the dismissal, Dhillon lambasted the "Antifa PR squad" that ran hit pieces promoting the defective lawsuit in "a crudely choreographed fashion."
The Daily Beast, The Intercept, Daily Dot, and The Oregonian were among the media outlets Dhillon slammed. "Some argued with me about copyright law. Others just propagandized," Dhillon declared in the Twitter thread.
"Hey, @thedailybeast — what happened to that lawsuit dismissed three days ago? Why did the plaintiffs dismiss it? Want to inform your readers?" she fired back.
"Hey @dailydot — care you update your readers on how this puff piece you wrote for Antifa, didn't turn out?" Dhillon questioned the digital media company.
Dhillon continued the victory lap. "Oh and this gem from @theintercept — isn't it good journalism to follow up, guys?" she grilled the news organization.
Calling out The Oregonian and OregonLive.com, Dhillon asked, "did I miss the follow-up piece about the lawsuit dismissed three days ago? Don't your reporters want the public to know what happened to the 'copyright lawsuit'?"
The left-wing site had smeared Ngo as "a far-right provocateur" while simultaneously providing a sympathetic spotlight for Lewis and Morgan's woes.
Commenting on the negative press, Ngo stated he believes the suit was "motivated in-part by the militants knowing their allies in the press will immediately write smear pieces (fills up Google search results plus Wiki 'citations')."
Ngo said the author of the articles, The Intercept's senior writer Robert Mackey and The Daily Beast reporter Robert Silverman, "knew what they were doing."
Mere days after filing a federal copyright lawsuit against journalist Andy Ngo, the violent Antifa members have retreated to a corner to suck their thumbs.
She adds…
The Antifa attorneys, seeking $300,000 for Morgan and Lewis, probably got their bills covered, but the Antifa comrades-in-arms were embarrassed for them.
A little lower down…
#Antifa accounts react to the the news that the Portland Antifa members withdrew their frivolous lawsuit against me. They feel embarrassed by their comrades.
Much further down…
Two days after the lawsuit was dropped, Lewis lamented on Twitter that she had done some dumb, “impulsive” stuff before because she is a “people pleaser.” She announced she was seeing a therapist to work through her issues.@MrAndyNgo
She’s using the old Hollywood “I’m going to rehab” trick to explain her bad life choices.
Good luck, lady. We’d all be happier, however, if you simply stopped cheerleading cop attacks and all manner of uncivil behavior.
I noticed that along with the above tweet, Melissa also tweeted this which those who have been following my reports about Melissa and Alyssa will appreciate the humor thereof.
The Twitter account Pacific Northwest Antifa Watch pointed out that although they lost the lawsuit, it’s still a win-win for white Antifa members because they can lose and still say it was because of the white supremacist justice system! Everybody’s happy!
If one uses the government to harass people through the courts, can one claim to be an anarchist?
If one claims the system is fascist, can one claim to be anti-fascist as they use that system to deprive a person of their human right to freedom of speech and press (as enshrined in the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution?
What if one celebrates those who have physically attacked that person when that person simply tries to film them as they put themselves on display in public as they riot?
If that one person one attacked is gay, can one be a champion for LGBTUVWXYZ people?
If that person is not white, can one be anti-racist by their own standards by which any act against or criticism of non-white people is immediately labelled racist?
If we factor in the fact that they consider the political leanings of that person before deciding if acts/criticism of them is racist, does it discredit one more or less?
Can one claim to be a socialist if, rather than sharing the fruits of their labor with others, one uses the “fascist” system to sue that gay minority for capitalist money?
What if one promotes physical attacks on innocent people including gay minorities?
What if one stands back and films one’s comrades physically attacking passive people in a park including children of different colors including a baby in a baby stroller?
Well, one would not be a communist or an anarchist or against fascism, capitalism, racism and so on. But one would be Antifa’s Melissa “Claudio” Lewis.
The Punchline
It seems that Melissa eventually figured out that they were $cammed by their lawyer as we can see in the tweet below wherein she also consoled herself through virtue signalling. Basically, she says she was scammed but that it was worth her sacrifice to help protect her comrades.
I’d like to thank Morgan and Melissa and for the ongoing laughs.
See “Antifa Targets & Attacks a Baby, Children & Adults of Mixed Color - Who Does Antifa Actually Attack? #20” (written report here, video version here).
