Accused of threatening a witness, Voris turns to Alex Jones’ former porn lawyer

By Damien Fisher

Michael Voris’ media empire might be in trouble. 

Accused of hiding evidence, lying about on-air talent Christine Niles’ status as an attorney, and even threatening a key witness to keep him from giving a deposition, Voris saw his lawyers quit last month, weeks before the federal defamation trial over his Church Militant stories about New Hampshire’s fringe group Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary was set to start.

(N.B. A quick recap of the lawsuit can be found here. This article focuses on the seeming melt down happening to Voris’ defense.)

Now, Voris wants to bring in Massachusetts-based lawyer Marc Randazza. The problem? Randazza’s record of double-dealing which resulted in guilty pleas and formal discipline in multiple courts.

Randazza, who got in trouble for his actions in a lawsuit involving gay porno companies, fashions himself as a First Amendment crusader and is popular with Info Wars host Alex Jones, Neo Nazi publisher Andrew Anglin, and right-wing personality Mike Cernovich.

New Hampshire priest Rev. Georges de Laire, the judicial vicar for the Manchester Diocese, is suing Voris over defamatory videos and articles Voris published, and starred in. Voris operates Church Militant and St. Michael’s Media, which produces a news website and Youtube video programs.

Attorney’s for de Laire, Howard Cooper and Suzanne Elovecky, are not amused by Voris’ antics, and told the court Randazza’s hire is another tactic to try to tank the lawsuit without a trial. They now want the court to make Voris pay.

“Defendants have engaged in numerous bad faith tactics in this case. Their actions have deprived Father de Laire of critical testimony, derailed a firm trial date, and made this matter far more expensive and emotionally draining for him than it otherwise should have been. Defendants conduct has been so egregious that Father de Laire will shortly move for the entry of a judgment of liability,” Cooper and Elovecky wrote.

Cooper and Elovecky are asking the federal judge to block Voris from bringing Randazza into the case, and they might have precedent.

In 2019, as Jones was being sued by parents of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims, he tried to hire Randazza. However, the judge in the case ruled Randazza’s record of serious misconduct was too much. Randazza was not allowed to represent Jones in the Connecticut court, though his law firm stayed on the case. 

The misconduct cited in by the Sandy Hook case judge is that Randazza, while representing gay porno producer Liberty Media Holdings, reportedly also worked on the side for the company Liberty was suing. Records show Randazza even solicited a bribe from the company Liberty was taking action against.

“There needs to be a little gravy for me,” Randazza emailed an opposing attorney in a Liberty lawsuit. “And it has to be more than the $5K you were talking about before. I’m looking at the cost of at least a new Carrera in retainer deposits after circulating around the adult entertainment expo this week. I’m gonna want at least used BMW money.”

A fuller picture of Randazza’s history can be found here. In 2018, he pleaded guilty to violating the attorney code of ethics in Nevada. This resulted in reciprocal discipline in other jurisdictions, and the fact Randazza has to disclose his past conduct when he starts a new case.

The reason Voris is even thinking about hiring Randazza in the first place might have to do with another lawyer involved in the de Laire lawsuit, Marc Balestrieri.

Balestrieri is a conservative canon lawyer who once tried to get Sen. John Kerry excommunicated.

He’s also accused of being the real author of the original anonymous article Voris published attacking de Laire in January of 2019. Balestrieri represents the Feeneyite Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary based in Richmond, New Hampshire in their fight against Church sanctions. 

Balestrieri disappeared this summer before he was supposed to sit for a deposition with de Laire’s lawyers. The disappearing act came after Voris sent Balestrieri a threatening text message, according to court records.

Backing up a bit, Voris kept Balestrieri’s connection to the article hidden from de Laire and his lawyers for more than a year as the case worked its way through court. It was only in April of 2022 that Voris conceded that he himself was not the author. Eventually, Balestrieri was outed and made a defendant in the lawsuit.

Or he would have been. Balestrieri dodged process servers for months, even running into the woods to evade a server who tracked him to a conference for canon lawyers, according to court records. 

The process server watched as Balestrieri called a friend who picked him up near the woods so they could drive away. Finally, in October of last year, Balestrieri was found in default in the defamation lawsuit. When the case is finally resolved, Balestrieri will have to pay damages to de Laire.

Interesting side note: according to court records, Voris loaned Balestrieri around $54,000 in June of 2022. The two would later claim this money was to help pay medical bills for Balestrieri’s sick mother. 

Balestrieri stayed out of sight until he made a surprise appearance during a June 15 hearing in the United States District Court in Concord, seeking to have the default judgment lifted. Balestrieri does not have a lawyer, and did not seem to understand the way courts work.

Balestrieri was surprised when Judge Joseph LaPlante told him he was not going to lift the judgment and ordered  him to give deposition as a witness. However, Balestrieri told LaPlante he was eager to clear up lies that had been told about him.

True to form, Balestrieri hemmed and hawed before finally agreeing to a date for the deposition. But, Balestrieri refused to give LaPlante or court staff his address. Balestrieri claimed he lived a “nomadic lifestyle.”

The prospect that Balestrieri would give a deposition under oath, and say he was not the author, presented problems for Voris. Voris had said in his court pleadings he did not question Balestrieri’s sources, and trusted the canon lawyer to tell the truth in his reporting.

Already, though, Balestrieri had told at least one person he never wrote the articles at the center of the defamation case. Chief of the Slaves, Louis Villarubia, also known as Brother Andre, had disclosed in his deposition that Balestrieri was claiming he was not the author.

Villarubia testified that he was concerned when he learned in June of last year for the first time that his canon lawyer, Balestrieri, had written the articles. Villarubia questioned Balestrieri about the authorship and the conflict of interest. 

“And I said this is a problem, that Michael Voris said you wrote the article and you’re our canon lawyer. And (Balestrieri) said ‘I didn’t write the article.’ He vehemently denied authorship of the article,” Villarubia said during his deposition. “I simply thought that that should be on the record. Obviously, Marc’s chosen not to defend himself, but I have this information, and I thought that this should be part of the record.”

Villarubia further speculated Voris wrote the article with Balestrieri.

After Villarubia’s deposition, Voris and his Church Militant teams scrambled to find evidence linking Balestrieri to the articles. This would result in Voris tripping up himself, and Church Militant co-host Christine Niles. In June and July, Church Militant produced emails and other evidence they say proves Balestrieri’s authorship. 

This new evidence backing Voris’s version of events arrived three months after the discovery in the case closed. And a lot of the evidence Church Militant produced were documents they claimed could not be found when previously ordered to do so, according to court records.

Among this new cache of documents was the threatening text message Voris sent Balestrieri on the day of the June 15 hearing. In it, Voris makes it clear Balestrieri must take the credit for the article and not claim otherwise.

“Marc – you are committing perjury. You know you write that article. What you don’t know is this morning we found proof – your digital fingerprints – all totally documented – on that article. Remember the email address – TomMoore@Churchmilitant.com.? We have all the receipts. You go through with this and we will rain down on you publicly. You are a liar, and a Welch,” Voris wrote.

The “welch” insult raises questions in light of the $54,000 loan.

On July 11, Balestrieri called lawyers for de Laire and left a voice mail informing them he would not attend the deposition. He did not give any reason.

The other problem the new evidence presents is Christine Niles’ statement and work status. Along with the June evidence Church Militant found, Niles supplied the court with a signed statement on July 13 laying out the proof that Balestrieri wrote the article. She claims they were able to link him to the pseudonymous email account, tommoore@churchmillitant.com, as well as drafts of the original article using Google docs. Balestrieri had reportedly used the Tom Moore pen name for years when he wrote articles for Voris.

The excuse for why Niles and Church Militant did not hand over the information linking Balestrieri to the article as previously ordered is an oversight on her part.

“In all sincerity, I forgot that he did not email me the article, but shared it through his Google Drive under his alternate email tommoore@churchmilitant.com,” Niles wrote in her statement.

Niles’ statement is not great for Voris on another front. In it, she makes clear that she is not a practicing attorney, and does not work as an attorney for Church Militant. Niles is an investigative reporter, according to her statement. That’s new to de Laire’s attorneys who say they were given the impression Niles was in-house counsel for Church Militant.

“This comes as a surprise as St. Michael’s Media d/b/a Church Militant and Defendant Gary Michael Voris have repeatedly claimed privilege over conversations with Ms. Niles, including those that pre-dated litigation and did not include trial counsel,” Elovecky wrote in an affidavit.

(Voris’s real name is Gary.)

For the record, Niles is an attorney who is licensed to practice law in Indiana and listed as “Inactive in Good Standing,” according to court documents. Voris’ lawyers tried to refute the accusation they improperly hid Niles behind attorney-client privilege.

“Mr. Voris never refused to answer any question concerning his communications with Mrs. Niles, on the basis of attorney-client privilege, even though he could have,”  Kathleen Klaus, Voris’s now former lawyer wrote.

According to the deposition transcript, it was Klaus who stopped Voris from answering a question about a conversation he had with Niles due to privilege. 

By August, the new evidence was causing fallout and the trial was scheduled to start Sept. 6. Lawyers for de Laire were demanding Voris submit to a new deposition to answer under oath exactly who write the article, and that Niles also make herself available for a deposition.

Instead, Klaus and Voris’s other attorney, Neil Nicholson, quit the case. Their Aug. 10 motion to leave does not detail why they are no longer representing Voris, but gives clues. 

“Recent events that have transpired in the litigation have created an unwaivable conflict between Counsel and their clients … Counsel believes this conflict bars them from taking any further action on behalf of their clients,” Klaus and Nicholson wrote to the court.

Klaus and Nicholson cite New Hampshire’s Rule of Professional Conduct for attorneys 1.7 (a). That rule, concerning conflicts of interest, states lawyers cannot represent clients when there is a concurrent conflict of interest. That’s defined as: (1) the representation of one client will be directly adverse to another client; or (2) there is a significant risk that the representation of one or more clients will be materially limited by the lawyer’s responsibilities to another client, a former client or a third person or by a personal interest of the lawyer.

Voris does have a New Hampshire lawyer engaged for representation, Richard Lehmann. 

It’s been an otherwise rough year for Voris and his crew at Church Militant. This spring, the mini-media mogul was forced to lay off 19 staffers and put the nightly program,  Church Militant Evening News, on hiatus. A former staffer claims the company enacted an “austerity” program to save money.

“Phones were removed from reporters’ desks, health benefits were canceled, essential equipment such as printers were not replaced. There was a freeze in hiring and travel,” former Church Militant employee Kristine Christlieb states.

The staff cuts saved Church Militant about $1 million in salary, according to Christlieb.