New Patriot Defender legal aid service champions free speech, gets labeled 'alarmist'

A Florida-based legal service created last year to assist people claiming they were being "canceled" may need its own assistance as it is says it was shunned by a social-media giant and a nationally recognized distributor of corporate press releases.

The for-profit business, Patriot Defender, was launched in the fall by conservative political commentator James "Buck" Sexton, Florida security expert and businessman Ross Thompson and two other partners.

Their idea, Thompson said, was to create a "free speech insurance fund" where people pay a membership fee to then access lawyers and money if their livelihood or reputation is ever "threatened" because of a statement they have uttered, posted or written.

"The first line of defense should always be our First Amendment. But who comes to the rescue when you stand up and say, 'Hey, I believe this' or 'I want to do this' ?" Thompson said. "We will step in and pay for your legal defense. We step in and pay legal fees, arrange the lawyers."

The monthly fee is $10 a month, and Thompson said the network already counts more than 2,500 lawyers across the United States. The company's financial exposure per case is capped at a maximum $250,000. Since launching last fall, Thompson said the service is logging an average 1,500 new clients a month.

Patriot Defender says it was called 'alarmist' and 'fear-mongering'

But Thompson said Patriot Defender has itself been stiff-armed.

When the company submitted a bid to have its own page on Facebook, Thompson said the social-media platform rejected it. Thompson also said PR Newswire, based in Chicago, "canceled" their request to circulate the company's news release.

Thompson shared an email he said he got from PR Newswire, signed by customer content services officer "Jacqueline G.," that stated: "After an editorial review by our management team, we have determined that this news release is not suitable for distribution over PR Newswire due to fear-mongering and alarmist language. The distribution of this release has been canceled."

Thompson also shared the email he said he received from Facebook about the suspension of the business entity's page. It read: "Your Facebook account has been suspended. This is because your account, or activity on it, doesn't follow our Community Standards on account integrity and authentic identity."

An attempt to get comment from PR Newswire, submitted through its media inquiries URL, was not answered. An effort to obtain comment from Facebook, also through a URL for media requests, was unsuccessful as well. The email from Facebook that Thompson provided did offer a link to the platform's Community Standards policies but did not indicate which provision it felt Patriot Defender failed to abide by.

"It's been a fight to get the business out there," Thompson said of the rejection by Facebook and PR Newswire. "We were told to take a hike."

A news release Patriot Defender issued did contain blunt, and partisan, assessments.

It stated: "In a country that has never been so divided, conservative Americans live in constant fear and unease, worried that the radical left or Biden government will not only come after their guns but their way of life and the beliefs they hold dear."

It concluded with a quote from Thompson in which he said he is concerned with "realities" including "radical left rioters destroying the businesses of hard-working Americans" and "our daughters being forced to compete and even change with biological males."

It also championed the plight of two men involved in high-profile confrontations as minors: Kyle Rittenhouse, who was acquitted in the 2020 shooting of three people during civil unrest in Wisconsin, and Nick Sandmann, who was involved in a 2019 standoff at the Lincoln Memorial that went viral.

Thompson insists Facebook, and PR Newswire had no right to "censor" his and the company's views.

"The fact of the matter is you're saying my language is being censored by you because to you it's 'alarmist,' " he said. "A free speech company being censored for its language — call me crazy, but it's not right."

He added that the irony that a business geared to defend free speech and inclusion is meeting resistance proves its need.

"It's the first time anybody had to," Thompson said. "It's probably the first time there's ever been a market for it, to be honest with you."

U.S. free speech politics a fraught landscape

Patriot Defender is stepping into a flinty and politically fraught marketplace as Americans everywhere grapple with speech and commentary that some say is honest and sincere and others say crosses the line.

Conservatives, in particular, have railed at the backlash against comedians who lost gigs for jokes said to be "politically incorrect," Christian bakers who refused to serve LGBTQ+ customers, pharmacists who did not want to fill prescriptions for the Plan B abortion pill and parents who spoke up at school board meetings on matters related to gender and bathroom policies.

They have argued that people in seemingly all walks of U.S. commercial and public life face pushback, from ostracizing to job loss, because of statements made that were deemed to be discriminatory or judged to have failed to meet a community standard.

The acrimony is certainly bipartisan.

The beer brand Bud Light, the top-selling brew in the country, faced a virulent boycott principally from conservatives after posting an advertisement featuring a transgender woman last year. The popular fast-food chain Chick-fil-A also faced antagonism after right-wing activists tweeted that the company had hired a vice president for its diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

The retailer Target saw its second-quarter sales drop after conservatives held back from making purchases in opposition to the stores' selling of Pride month merchandise.

And across the country, progressives and others supportive of a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict say they face recriminations simply for calling for an end to hostilities.

Scholars and others point out that free-speech rights have historically been a flashpoint in America. In the 1919 Schenck v. United States case, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. famously wrote that the First Amendment was not absolute and did not give people the right to falsely yell "fire" in a "crowded theater."

During the 1950s Red Scare, the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee blacklisted an untold number of Americans who held, or were suspected of harboring leftist views or were sympathetic to communist ideals.

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Thompson says Patriot Defender is nonpartisan. But it's particularly concerned about 'woke, leftist' persecution of conservatives.

Thompson insists Patriot Defender is not a partisan outfit. He points out that he, Sexton, and their two partners all served in the military or intelligence capacities in which they encountered dangers in defense of every American's constitutional rights and way of life regardless of their views.

"This isn't exclusively conservative. Anybody can be a part of it," he said. "We'll stand up for anybody's First Amendment right."

Thompson insists the service is intended to help ordinary Americans, from teachers to small business owners, who don't have the financial means to defend themselves. In his view, Patriot Defender is a commercial version of a conservative Judicial Watch or the American Civil Liberties Union — with one major difference.

"A nonprofit gets to pick who they get to protect," Thompson said. "This democratizes the idea that 'I want to be protected.' I don't have to call and hope that there is some charity there."

But Thompson also showed a particular concern with conservatives he said face retribution and recrimination from government agencies as well as from "some woke, leftist group" seeking "to go after them," damage their reputations, or get them fired from their job just for expressing their views, proclaiming they are Christian or even saying they voted for Donald Trump.

The company's public materials especially emphasize that preoccupation saying "losing your income, property, reputation or freedom is a real concern" held by conservative Americans.

The ban from social-media marketing, he said, "just shows that we're either doing something right, because it scares them, or the system is rigged against conservatives."

Antonio Fins is a politics and business editor at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at afins@pbpost.com. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Patriot Defender legal help touts free speech, gets labeled 'alarmist'