Minnesota attorney plays soldier’s role in anime war

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A rural Minnesota attorney has played a pivotal role in what has been described as the American anime movie industry’s first major #MeToo challenge.

Nicholas Rekieta, of Spicer, Minnesota, has leveraged his popular—and potently populist—YouTube channel to solicit more than $249,000 in donations for a GoFundMe legal-defense campaign.

The money is helping voice actor Vic Mignogna pay a lawyer in Texas to sue two women who took to social media to accuse him of inappropriate behavior toward women.

The fiancé of one of those women also was sued, as was Funimation, the Texas-based anime-film distribution company that dropped Mignogna’s contract after the allegations went viral in January. The entire case is playing out in Dallas.

Mignogna sued the four defendants on 20 counts of defamation, conspiracy and tortious interference. They campaigned and conspired to derail Mignogna’s career as an English voice actor for Japanese-made cartoons, he claims.

His legal gambit appears mostly to have fallen flat; a judge dropped 15 of the charges on Sept. 6. Eleven days later, the judge sent the five remaining counts into mediation, scheduled to begin Oct. 3.

The drama began almost immediately after the release of Mignogna’s latest feature, “Dragon Ball Super: Broly.” The anime, with Mignogna as the title character, grossed nearly $13 million in its first three days, making it one of the most popular anime features ever released in the United States.

One day after its release, an anonymous Tweet from someone dubbed “@hanleia” accused Mignogna of being “a homophobic rude a…hole” who has been “creepy to female fans for over 10 years.”

Monica Rial, herself a voice actor, reposted that Tweet, reviving rumors that had swirled around the actor for years. Eventually, the post got shared more than 4,000 times. It launched the so-called “kickvic” social media movement, in which users unleashed a torrent of vitriol toward the actor.

On Feb. 11, Funimation dropped its contract with the actor and a bevy of anime conventions canceled Mignogna’s paid appearances.

Mignogna initially was both apologetic and defiant, saying the charges were untrue but apologizing to anyone who felt he had been out of line. He promised to act differently in the future.

That didn’t quell the thousands of anime fans who rushed to Mignogna’s defense, sparking an online flame war between the #MeToo movement and anime devotees that has raged for months. A group of attorneys, critiquing the case through the #LawTwitter hashtag, also has been sucked into the controversy.

Rekieta, an opinionated rural lawyer whose YouTube video channel has more than 75,000 subscribers, was among those drawn to the case.

Connections

In April, with Rekieta’s GoFundMe drive financing his legal fight, Mignogna filed suit.

The relationship between Rekieta and the actor is hard to gauge. Mignogna said in a deposition that he didn’t know the young Minnesotan before Rekieta launched his fundraising campaign. He also said the GoFundMe drive was entirely Rekieta’s idea and added that it was Rekieta who suggested that Mignogna hire Texas attorney Ty Beard to represent him.

The relationship between Rekieta and Beard is not so mysterious.

According to a codicil supplied by one of the defendants’ attorneys, Beard is the executor of Rekieta’s grandfather’s estate. Louis Walter Owen, who died in 2016, was a wealthy engineering consultant who donated money enough for Dallas-based Christus Trinity Mother Frances Hospital to build a new heart center.

His grandson, Rekieta, is among Owen’s beneficiaries.

The attorney’s “Rekieta Law” YouTube channel bills him as “a lawyer who lawsplains legal topics to the Internet, fueled by whiskey and rage.” On Feb. 11—the same day that Mignogna lost his Funimation contract—Rekieta began using the platform to defend Mignogna.

His near-daily web show, apparently broadcast from his home, often lasts two or three hours. As the Texas #MeToo case has played out, attorney Beard has appeared as a guest several times.

Rekieta’s own online commentary ranges from calm, almost cerebral analyses of both sides’ legal strategies to roughhouse attacks on the defendants and their attorneys.

“I think it’s fantastic that you have to spend tens of thousands of stupidity dollars to fight this in court,” he said at one point, directly addressing respondent Toye. “If you would have settled, I would have been done talking about this case a long time ago, you idiot!”

Another time, he gave a guest speaker a platform to describe, step-by-step, how she systematically “doxed” a woman who took part in the social media flame war surrounding the case.

“Doxing” means digging up and publishing the home addresses, phone numbers and even cars owned by people so that others can target them for intimidation and harassment, often in person.

In that April 9 broadcast, Rekieta never suggests that his audience should follow suit. But he does suggest that doxing is easier than most people think and that it’s almost inevitable for anyone who engages in social media debate.

“It’s something that people need to consider when you are going to talk online about something,” the lawyer said. “Someone eventually is going to look for you. It’s a numbers game.”

Rekieta did not return multiple phone Monday calls seeking comment for this piece.

Escalation

Sean Lemoine, an attorney who represents Rial and Toye in the suit, said the open warfare between the #MeToo and anime communities predates Rekieta’s arrival to the conflict.

But the abuse that people have dished out has increased exponentially since Rekieta started using his YouTube channel to agitate for the actor, Lemoine said.

Even Tarrant County State District Judge John Chupp was targeted. Police forwarded to Chupp an email, which he revealed in court on Sept. 17. It called the judge a “brain dead moron” and expressed the hope that someone “accuses him of rape.”

“When people start uprising,” the email said, “I hope your court is the first thing targeted.”

At one point in the litigation, Lemoine filed an anti-SLAPP motion seeking to depose Rekieta in the case. A “strategic lawsuit against public participation” (SLAPP) case is a nuisance suit, often filed by people of means to silence others with less wealth, Lemoine said.

Lemoine said he wanted Rekieta to explain his motives for financing Mignogna’s defense. That might help the court determine whether the case was a mere harassment suit, Lemoine said. However, Chupp never ordered Rekieta deposed.

He got an answer nonetheless. On July 9, after the motion was filed, a furious Rekieta took to YouTube to explain his involvement and ridiculed Lemoine for not already knowing the answer. “There are hundreds of hours of video of my motives for contribution to the GoFundMe war chest,” Rekieta said.

“The biggest one is I just don’t like any of the defendants,” he continued. “I think they’re terrible people and I want to see them ground into dust.”

In a brief Sept. 17 hearing, Chupp ordered the two sides into mediation. The only thing that will quell the open warfare, he said, is for the two sides to agree on a resolution. If the court imposes a ruling ending the case, he fretted, the fighting and abuse might continue for years.

No ethical lapse

A number of attorneys following the case on #LawTwitter have criticized Rekieta’s behavior, some calling it a conflict of interest.

Lemoine said he finds the Minnesota attorney’s conduct personally offensive and wonders whether he has violated Minnesota’s Rules of Professional Conduct for attorneys.

The short answer, two Minnesota legal ethics experts indicate, is no.

Bill Wernz, of counsel at Dorsey & Whitney and a legal ethics expert, would not comment directly on Rekieta’s case. But he did offer that lawyers have great freedom to conduct themselves however they want—when not representing a paid client.

Rule 8.4 includes a catch-all clause saying that lawyers “shall not engage in conduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice.” But being a public instigator doesn’t necessarily violate that rule, Wernz said.

“Disputes with neighbors and nastiness to people—profanity and all kinds of things that don’t seem like Atticus Finch—aren’t necessarily prejudicial to the administration of justice,” he said.

Chuck Lundberg, an ethics attorney who served 12 years on the Lawyers Professional Responsibility Board, agrees with his colleague.

He said that doxing, in most cases, probably is not illegal. Meanwhile, Lundberg sees nothing obviously amiss with Rekieta helping the executor of his grandfather’s estate get work—either on Rekieta’s or on Beard’s end.

Critically, he said, Rekieta has declared that he is not on the actor’s legal team. So his YouTube platform, which addresses a topic of clear public interest, falls under his protected First Amendment right to speak his mind.

“Nothing obviously unethical is jumping out at me,” Lundberg said in an email Tuesday.