Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, sued the anti-immigration nonprofit VDARE on Wednesday, saying that the husband and wife who run the group had drained more than $1 million from its coffers to pay themselves and to buy a medieval-style castle in West Virginia.
Peter and Lydia Brimelow, VDARE’s leaders, are longtime opponents of immigration whose blog has become a bridge between mainstream Republicans and the more overtly racist elements of the far right. Mr. Brimelow, 77, has referred to himself as the “god-uncle” of the alt-right, the dissident white nationalist movement that emerged during President Trump’s first term.
At the same time, Ms. James said, the pair had treated their tax-exempt charity as a “personal piggy bank,” using its money to pay for club memberships, international travel, home renovations and payments that benefited them and their relatives. She asked a New York state judge to force the Brimelows to pay back what they had taken, plus penalties, then dissolve VDARE and disperse its assets to other charities.
“Charities are intended to serve the public, not to bankroll castles or pad personal fortunes,” Ms. James said in a statement.
Ms. James, a Democrat, regulates charities registered in New York.
VDARE was established in the state in 1999. It is named after Virginia Dare, who was the first English child documented to be born on the American continent, in 1587. She has been adopted as a white supremacist icon.
In 2022, Ms. James sued VDARE for refusing to comply with subpoenas for documents. A state judge later found the nonprofit in contempt of court because of its slow cooperation, imposing tens of thousands of dollars in penalties that Ms. James said the group had not paid.
Last year, Mr. Brimelow announced in a video on social media that he was shutting down the VDARE website and resigning from the nonprofit, formally known as the VDARE Foundation. He blamed Ms. James’s investigation.
“VDARE has been murdered by the New York state attorney general, Letitia James,” he said in the video. “She’s not charged us with anything — it’s important to know. She’s simply battered us to death with an enormous, ongoing, intrusive, quote-unquote investigation.”
Mr. Brimelow did not immediately respond on Monday to a question about Ms. James’s lawsuit. Ms. James contends that the group has not formally dissolved, and has even continued to fund-raise after Mr. Brimelow’s message.
VDARE published a website where mainstream anti-immigration writers were interspersed with some overt white nationalists. Its writers included Kevin MacDonald, a California-based psychology professor whose work has been celebrated by neo-Nazis like David Duke; and Jason Kessler, who served as the chief organizer of the violent far-right rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017.
Mr. MacDonald, the author of the book “Separation and its Discontents: Toward an Evolutionary Theory of Anti-Semitism,” has sought to justify antisemitism on logical and historical grounds.
But Ms. James said that much of the group’s spending was actually funneled back to the Brimelows. She said the nonprofit paid Mr. Brimelow a salary of up to $345,000, rent for office space in the Brimelows’ Connecticut home, and for some home repairs there.
Then, in 2020, the nonprofit bought a castle.
The 9,300-square-foot home in the resort town of Berkeley Springs, W.Va., had been built in the 1880s with a medieval-style turret and battlements. Ms. James said that the Brimelows moved into the castle, using a charitable asset for their personal benefit. She said they did not seek permission from the group’s board, which at the time consisted of relatives and close friends of Peter Brimelow, or disclose that fact in public filings.
Ms. James said the pair later moved into a cottage in another part of the property, which was improperly shifted from the nonprofit’s control to a private company started by Lydia Brimelow’s father.
Eventually, the lawsuit says, the Brimelows shifted ownership of the castle itself to a separate nonprofit they ran, which was registered in West Virginia. That nonprofit now rents the castle out for public events, and pays small salaries to the Brimelows.
The result, Ms. James said, was to siphon assets and money out of VDARE and into the hands of the Brimelows, their relatives or another nonprofit beyond Ms. James’s reach. In many cases, Ms. James added, the Brimelows did not seek the approval of VDARE’s board members, as required, before agreeing to transactions that benefited themselves.
Ms. James said that violated the pair’s duty to safeguard VDARE’s assets for the public good, a requirement under law for nonprofit leaders.
The suit asks a state judge to bar Peter and Lydia Brimelow from serving as directors of any New York nonprofit, and to declare that they “have looted or wasted VDARE’s charitable assets.”
The allegations in this suit echo those that Ms. James made in a 2020 lawsuit against the National Rifle Association, which ended with a jury concluding that N.R.A. leaders had misused nonprofit funds for their own benefit. In both cases, Ms. James was claiming to defend a conservative nonprofit against its own longtime leaders, saying they had put their personal benefit above the group’s mission.
Last month, The New York Times reported that the Justice Department was investigating Ms. James over that lawsuit, which weakened a longtime ally of Mr. Trump’s.
David A. Fahrenthold is a Times investigative reporter writing about nonprofit organizations. He has been a reporter for two decades.
Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump.
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