White nationalists claimed WA man doxxed them. How a judge responded
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- A Washington man with Tacoma ties was sued by members of a white nationalist group.
- The man allegedly infiltrated Patriot Front, stole information and harassed members.
- A federal judge dismissed the case, citing a legal technicality.
A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit that accused a Washington man of infiltrating a white nationalist group and using confidential information to harass and threaten people in the organization.
Five members or affiliates of the group Patriot Front sued David Capito II, who apparently has ties to Tacoma, in July 2023. The suit alleged Capito used a fake identity and false pretenses to join, and then secretly gathered information from the plaintiffs by taking pictures of license plates, recording individuals with hidden microphones and cameras, and exploiting the group’s website to gain unauthorized access to private chats and video links.
Capito and accomplices allegedly released and used home addresses, places of employment and other information to harass plaintiffs and threaten them where they lived and worked, including by trespassing on their properties, making threatening calls to their employers, slashing their vehicle tires and putting up flyers in their neighborhoods, the suit said.
The plaintiffs either lost their jobs or were forced to relocate because of Capito’s “doxxing,” a term that means to maliciously expose someone’s personal identifying information, according to the suit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for Western Washington.
Capito, 38, who allegedly changed his name, apparently had been a difficult person to locate. For more than a year, the plaintiffs unsuccessfully tried to serve him with the lawsuit, including at a Tacoma address listed among his last-known locations, court records show. Ultimately, the court allowed the plaintiffs to publish a notice of the lawsuit in a newspaper. Legal counsel for Capito appeared in court for the first time last summer and sought to get the case thrown out.
In January, U.S. District Judge Richard A. Jones granted Capito’s attorneys’ motion to dismiss the case, citing a legal technicality, court records show. The plaintiffs claimed Capito violated the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, but Jones ruled that their argued loss of jobs didn’t meet the definition of a “loss” under the act, which is concerned with damages sustained by computer systems, data and the like, according to court records.
“Plaintiffs’ alleged harms are not the type of ‘technological harms’ contemplated by the CFAA,” Jones wrote in his ruling. “Rather, they are the downstream effects of Mr. Capito’s alleged use of Patriot Front’s information.”
An attorney representing the plaintiffs didn’t respond to messages from The News Tribune seeking comment Monday.
Attorney Matthew Kellegrew, who represents Capito, said in an interview that Jones’ ruling was “the right result” and that white supremacists were trying to use the legal system to attack someone for exercising First Amendment rights.
“Our client engaged essentially in an act of journalism at great personal peril,” Kellegrew said.
Kellegrew noted his appreciation for the court’s application of the law, but added, “I’m more so glad that these types of extremists were thwarted in their effort to use lawfare in this manner.”
Plaintiffs sued “to vindicate the rule of law and basic principles of free expression for persons who espouse unpopular opinions,” according to the lawsuit.
In Jones’ ruling on Jan. 16, he gave the plaintiffs 21 days to allege new facts to support their federal claim. With the deadline approaching, there had been no amendment filed as of Monday. Jones also declined to hear state claims that were filed in the lawsuit, including invasion of privacy and fraud. The plaintiffs could potentially bring those allegations forth in a new lawsuit in state court.
Kellegrew, who’s with the Civil Liberties Defense Center, said attorneys would be prepared to make the same arguments.
“We had a substantive defense to the case,” he said.
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 plaintiffs are named in the lawsuit as: Colton Brown, a former electrician’s assistant in Washington who moved out of state; James and Amelia Johnson who lived in Washington at the time the case was filed; Paul Gancarz of Virginia; and Daniel Turetchi of Pennsylvania, who lived in Maryland at the time.
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, according to previous reporting by The Seattle Times. James Johnson and four others were sentenced to five days in jail, the Associated Press previously reported.
In their complaint, the plaintiffs claimed that the group’s activism was nonviolent and prompted physical violence, threats and harassment from others. The filing said Capito was a spokesperson for the Puget Sound John Brown Gun Club, which media reports call a leftist anti-facist organization created to counter white supremacist and far-right groups.
Willem Van Spronsen, a club member, was fatally shot by police in 2019 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 allegedly wore during a media interview a necklace fashioned from a bullet once belonging to Van Spronsen, the suit said.
This story was originally published February 3, 2026 at 5:15 AM.
