EXCLUSIVE
Editor’s note: This story includes quotes in which the subject uses offensive racial slurs and references to racial terror. The Barbed Wire does not condone the use of such language, but believes them to be newsworthy, important context. Any racist language has been censored with hyphens.
This is a story about white nationalism, taxpayer money, and the right to fair representation.
But it’s also about the rabbit-hole of right-wing extremism, a $100 million libel lawsuit, and an alleged “assassination plot.”
Let’s start with the basic facts: A North Texas lawyer notorious for his involvement with far-right extremist groups — and his legal representation of members of white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups — is working as a court appointed attorney in Denton County, according to records reviewed by The Barbed Wire.
Forty-five-year-old Jason Lee Van Dyke lives in Decatur, about 40 minutes northwest of Fort Worth.
Van Dyke has taken at least three dozen clients as a court appointed defense attorney in the Dallas suburb of Denton County in recent years. In addition to being the preferred lawyer for Patriot Front, a North Texas-based neo-fascist white nationalist group known for their public marches and racist propaganda vandalism targeting marginalized communities, Van Dyke has an extensive history of personal involvement with far-right extremist groups: He was at one time the national chairman of the Proud Boys. He also pled “no contest” to a prior criminal charge for lying to a law enforcement officer and has past disciplinary actions from multiple state bar associations.
Despite this background, court records indicate Van Dyke began to work as a court appointed attorney representing criminal defendants in Denton County at least as early as 2024. Many of the cases were assigned in 2025. Out of all those cases, 17 of the clients are white, ten are Black, four are Latino, one is Asian, and three are of unknown ethnicity. At least 17 of those cases are ongoing.
The Barbed Wire was only able to reach two of Van Dyke’s clients, both of whom declined to speak on the record, citing his ongoing representation of their cases.
The Sixth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution provides that people accused of crimes have the right to legal representation, including having a publicly appointed attorney if they cannot afford one. (Those rights were strengthened in 1963 in the Supreme Court ruling on Gideon v. Wainwright.) Denton County does not operate a full-time public defender’s office, and court appointed attorneys like Van Dyke are brought in to represent clients who cannot afford a lawyer.
But Van Dyke’s direct involvement in and close association with far-right extremist groups that espouse racially discriminatory ideologies, his past use of racial slurs, and his prior “no contest” plea for a crime involving what the state calls “moral turpitude” all raise concerns about his suitability for the role of a court appointed defense attorney — particularly one representing clients who are people of color.
“That’s a major concern and it should raise a red flag,” said Gabriel Rosales, state director of Texas LULAC — the nation’s oldest civil rights volunteer-based organization, which “empowers Hispanic Americans and builds strong Latino communities.”
“Someone should go in and investigate these cases,” Rosales told The Barbed Wire.
For his part, Van Dyke dismissed the concerns.
“You could pull as many cases as you want,” Van Dyke told The Barbed Wire in an hour-and-a-half-long interview by phone on Wednesday. “You could try to figure out which ones are white and which ones are not. I guarantee you’re not going to find me treating those clients any bit differently than how I treat everybody else, because it doesn’t matter.”
In fact, Van Dyke told The Barbed Wire he’s working as a court appointed attorney in multiple counties — not just Denton — though he would not identify which others, and we were not able to independently verify his claim by press time.
Slurs, Threats & Involvement in Far-Right Extremism
Van Dyke describes himself as a “strong constitutionalist and conservative who has also gained notoriety for representing the so-called ‘dissident right’ in a variety of ways.” On his law firm’s website, he distances himself from the viewpoints of some of his clients, stating that “his representation of a particular client does not constitute his endorsement of that client’s views or activities” and that “he views it as his sacred responsibility to protect the right of unpopular groups to peacefully speak, assemble, organize, and petition.”
But Van Dyke has a history of making racist statements and violent threats.
“I don’t waste my breath on n—— like you,” Van Dyke posted on his now-banned Twitter account on December 29, 2014 in response to another user. “I hang them.” (Hyphens added by The Barbed Wire.)
In another post, Van Dyke shared an image of a noose and said, “Look good and hard at this picture you fucking n—–. It’s where I am going to put your neck.”
When another user asked Van Dyke why he hates Black people, he defended himself by saying “I don’t hate black people. I hate n—–. There is a difference.”
When asked about these statements on Wednesday, Van Dyke disavowed them, stating that they have been cited out of the context of a legal battle and online feud between Van Dyke and a group of hackers engaged in revenge porn.
“I’m not excusing what I said,” Van Dyke told The Barbed Wire. “What happened is I lost my temper…This was not me going around finding African American people and calling them the n-word. I was provoked.”
In addition to his personal use of racial slurs and racist threats, Van Dyke’s involvement with far-right extremist groups goes further than the typical attorney-client relationship. This is particularly true for Patriot Front, the white nationalist organization founded in 2017 following the deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
He has hosted members of Patriot Front at his home, has a tattoo of an eagle with a Patriot Front slogan on his shoulder, has trained Patriot Front members to fight, and participated in their private chat room under a pseudonym. And he has represented the leader of a neo-Nazi fight club in North Texas that is linked to Patriot Front and is a part of a larger network of “active clubs,” one of which has posted photos of Van Dyke with members of the group.
“I mean, generally, you don’t get tattoos unless you’re personally involved,” said Scott Ernest, a former white nationalist who now runs the Center for Extremism Prevention and Intervention, in an interview with The Barbed Wire. “I wouldn’t, for example, get a tattoo of the Democratic Party because I’m not a member.”
Van Dyke was also a one-time leader and previously the general counsel for the Proud Boys, a fascistic street gang the FBI has described as an “extremist group with ties to white nationalism” that saw several of its members charged with crimes and two leaders sentenced to prison for their involvement in the January 6, 2021 breach of the U.S. Capitol.
“I am unapologetically fascist. I despise democracy,” Van Dyke posted on X in June. (Though his previous account was banned by Twitter, he was able to create a new one, which is verified with a blue check.) “We need less democracy, not more.”
He has represented the leader of the Aryan Freedom Network, a Texas-based neo-Nazi organization, in a lawsuit against anti-fascist activists who spied on the organization’s 2022 conference in De Kalb, which Van Dyke attended.
“The friends that I have and my alleged political involvements on my own personal time have absolutely nothing to do with my law practice,” Van Dyke told The Barbed Wire.
Van Dyke also previously attempted to join The Base, a neo-Nazi accelerationist organization the FBI labeled a terror group and was the subject of several federal convictions for firearm crimes and hate crimes. In a conference call with Base leaders that was first reported by Vice, Van Dyke said “there’re plenty of people in the Proud Boys who don’t believe that Jews have a place in this country and they want to put a stop to it, and whenever someone talks about doing something, they’re immediately shut down or banned from the band, from the group, because, you know, the boys don’t want to have that image.”
In his interview with The Barbed Wire this week, Van Dyke claimed that he was attempting to infiltrate The Base because he believed a man with whom he was engaged in a lengthy — and vicious — legal feud was somehow involved.
At the time, Van Dyke was under probation for a criminal charge for making a false police report.
“I didn’t get off probation until February of 2021,” Van Dyke said. “This is stuff that would have happened while I was on probation. So obviously I had to be very careful about what I said in that article. What I’m at liberty to say now, which I was not at liberty to say then, was that I was trying to infiltrate The Base. Because at the time, my entire life at that time was devoted to beating Thomas Retzlaff.”
(There is no mechanism for retroactively penalizing someone for violating the terms of their probation, if that is, in fact, what Van Dyke was admitting to.)
Who is Thomas Retzlaff? Great question. In March 2018, Van Dyke sued Retzlaff, a man with his own criminal past, in a $100 million libel lawsuit over accusations that Van Dyke was a Nazi and a pedophile. In a filing in that case, Retzlaff’s attorney argued that Van Dyke had attempted to orchestrate an “assassination plot” to kill Retzlaff, citing a police report that discusses an audio recording obtained by the FBI. The recording features Van Dyke saying he had “members of the Proud Boys Arizona Chapter” surveilling Retzlaff.
“I’m not going to sugarcoat it — this man in the course of the past year has completely dismantled my life,” Van Dyke told the Denton Record-Chronicle in 2019. “All I want is this man to leave me alone.”
The libel case was dismissed in November 2020.
Then, in September 2021, police found Retzlaff dead and ruled it a homicide but never identified a suspect. Van Dyke, who publicly celebrated the news of Retzlaff’s death, has repeatedly denied any accusations of involvement. No arrests have been made in the case.
“Every September 2, I would celebrate,” Van Dyke told The Barbed Wire. “That was the day that he died. I’m not doing that anymore. I’m commemorating that day with nothing now, because I’ve moved on.”
Criminal History & Legal Disciplinary Actions
In 2019, the State Bar of Texas suspended Van Dyke’s license for three months with probation after he threatened to kill Retzlaff. At the time, the pair were still engaged in a lengthy legal and personal feud.
In April 2020, Van Dyke received an 18-month partially probated suspension from the Texas Bar as a result of his 2019 nolo contendere plea on a 2018 charge of making a false police report. He was sentenced to 24 months’ deferred adjudication community supervision, with special conditions, which means he never served jail time.
In December 2020, the District of Columbia Bar issued an order of reciprocal discipline related to that same criminal case, backdated to be effective in May 2020. In April 2023, Van Dyke’s law license was also the subject of a disciplinary action in Georgia for the same reason, but because he voluntarily stopped practicing law in Georgia in 2019, and was also disciplined in Texas, his suspension was deemed retroactive to February 2020 and he was immediately reinstated.
The question of whether that history — or Denton County’s rules — precludes him from representing court appointed clients is a complex one, to say the least.
Because Denton County does not have a full-time public defender’s office, indigent clients are provided court appointed attorneys. All lawyers who’d like to represent those clients in exchange for taxpayer money must apply and meet the minimum qualifications in order to be approved.
In Denton County, the Indigent Defense Plan states “attorneys must not be currently under indictment or charged with a criminal offense involving moral turpitude.”
Per a 2023 Georgia Supreme Court filing regarding the suspension of Van Dyke’s license to practice law in Georgia, Van Dyke’s 2019 no contest plea on a criminal misdemeanor count of filing a false police report was “a crime involving dishonesty and moral turpitude, and relates to his fitness to practice law.” In Texas, lying to a police officer or making a false report is also considered a crime of moral turpitude, according to the Robertson v. State decision.
The Denton County Indigent Plan’s use of the word “currently” indicates that only a charge in an ongoing case could make an attorney ineligible, not prior admission of a crime of moral turpitude like Van Dyke’s.
Another qualification is that “an attorney may not have been the recipient of any public disciplinary action by the State Bar of Texas or any other attorney licensing authority of any state or the United States within the last three years.”
Van Dyke contends that his history does not put him in violation of those rules, since he is not currently charged with a crime of moral turpitude — and since his first client as a court appointed attorney in Denton came more than three years after his last bar disciplinary action.
“The misdemeanor court judges vote as to whether to put somebody on the court appointed wheel,” Van Dyke said. He told The Barbed Wire that at least one of the judges is aware of his prior criminal conviction.
“That case from 2018 to 2019 that was in Denton, it was with Denton County criminal court number five, with Judge Coby Waddill,” Van Dyke said. “Waddill is still a judge in County criminal court five, so he would have had a say when they voted on whether they add me to the wheel.”
According to the Denton County Indigent Defense Plan, court appointed attorneys may be removed or suspended by a majority vote of the judges for a number of reasons, including when an attorney “no longer meets the Misdemeanor Qualification Requirements” or fails “to act in compliance with the rules of ethical conduct or the Lawyers Creed.”
The Denton County Indigent Defense Office responded to The Barbed Wire in a written statement: “To the best of our knowledge, all of the attorneys currently on the Denton County Court appointment list meet the Minimum Attorney List Qualifications in the Denton County Statutory County Courts Indigent Defense Plan.”
In essence, technically Van Dyke appears to be eligible to serve as a court appointed attorney in Denton.
However, his apparent conflict of interest in representing people of color whilst espousing racist views raises serious concerns about whether he can fairly take on clients without discriminating against them.
A Matter of Trust
“Trust is the foundation of any attorney-client relationship, especially when a person is facing jail or prison,” said Jessica Brand, a former public defender and founder of the Wren Collective. “To fight their case at trial and sentencing, the accused has to provide their lawyer with deeply personal, often traumatic, information about their life and background. Establishing that kind of trust is going to be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for someone with a lawyer so closely intertwined with a far-right group that spews racist rhetoric.”
Van Dyke told The Barbed Wire that he treats all of his clients equally, that he works to get the best outcomes for them, and does not mistreat them on the basis of race. During his interview, Van Dyke even offered to put one of his employees on the phone to prove his point.
“I’ve got one of the people that works for me right here,” Van Dyke said. “Her name is Miss Sloan. She’s an African American woman. Why don’t I put her on the phone, and I’ll step out of the room, and you can ask her whether I mistreat any clients on the basis of race.”
When asked if Van Dyke’s history of involvement with far-right groups has ever been an issue for his court appointed clients, or if any of them have perceived to have been mistreated by Van Dyke, Sloan said, “No, I don’t think so.”
(To be completely clear, Van Dyke was well aware that Sloan’s on the record account as his professional subordinate would likely be printed in this story, and it’s hard to imagine that Sloan didn’t know that.)
Though neither of the clients who spoke to The Barbed Wire were willing to comment on the record out of fear that doing so would impact their representation, it’s also true that we did not uncover any evidence that Van Dyke’s personal and political beliefs have materially influenced his interactions with his court appointed clients or the outcomes of their cases.
Van Dyke said he hasn’t gotten complaints, and that if he did, he would agree to request a different court appointed attorney.
“And the reason I’m going to do that is because I cannot effectively represent a client that doesn’t trust me,” Van Dyke said. “And at that point, if a client wouldn’t trust me, then that means that I can’t effectively do my job.”
On that point at least, he and Brand seemed to agree.
From the perspective of Scott Ernest, the former white nationalist who now runs the Center for Extremism Prevention and Intervention, Van Dyke’s apparent ongoing involvement in far-right extremism doesn’t necessarily mean his work is compromised.
“His personal views potentially affect his work, but not necessarily,” Ernest said. “When I was a white nationalist, I worked in hospitals, and I regularly had to take care of undocumented immigrants.”
Nevertheless, Ernest is concerned by Van Dyke’s position in Denton County.
“Jason used to be a lot more outwardly racist, outwardly white nationalistic,” he said. “Maybe he’s gotten to a point where he is taking a step back and thinking that because of his employment and future he needs to clean up his act. But that’s not becoming a former extremist. If he actually takes a stand against it, that would be a different story, but I’m not seeing anything in him that tells me that he’s moved on.”
“I wouldn’t be comfortable having him as my court appointed lawyer,” Ernest said.
Deputy Managing Editor Leslie Rangel contributed to this report.
Correction: This story previously stated that Van Dyke was convicted on a criminal charge. In fact, he pled no contest to making a false police report and was sentenced to 24 months’ deferred adjudication.