Antifa Thugs Who Assaulted Reporter Andy Ngo Ordered to Pay $300,000

An Oregon circuit judge has ordered three left-wing Portland activists who violently attacked and beat guerilla reporter Andy Ngo during a 2019 protest to pay $300,000 to Ngo, who was hospitalized after the attack and claims to have lasting brain injuries.

The three defendants — Katherine Belyea, Madison Allen, and Joseph Evans, whose name has been legally changed to Sammich Overkill Schott-Deputy — each owe Ngo $100,000, according to a ruling by Multnomah County Circuit Judge Chanpone Sinlapasai after a brief hearing on Monday, according to the Oregonian newspaper.

A ruling in Ngo’s favor was never really in doubt, as the three defendants did not respond to a court summons and did not show up in court. A judge ruled last month they had lost by default.

In an interview with National Review, Ngo said that Sinlapasai’s ruling, awarding him exactly what he’d asked for in his lawsuit against the three defendants, “feels like a small vindication” after a jury ruled against him in a civil trial against two other defendants earlier this month.

“She gave the full amount that she could, the full amount that I requested in my lawsuit,” Ngo said. “That’s quite telling. It’s such a different outcome from the jury verdict.”

Ngo has also acknowledged that collecting the money awarded to him could prove difficult.

“This is part of the reason why you don’t see victims of Antifa suing them, a lot of them are losers with no assets,” he said. “So, they escape accountability in the criminal-justice system because they carry out criminal activities in jurisdictions where there are [progressive] district attorneys like [Portland’s] Mike Schmidt. And civilly, they also escape justice because the resources that it takes to go through this legal process are immense.”

“I cannot overstate how much it takes in resources to try to hold these people accountable civilly,” he added.

Belyea, Allen, and Schott-Deputy attacked Ngo while he covered a violent Antifa protest in downtown Portland on a Saturday afternoon in late June 2019. They punched Ngo, hit him with signs, and threw milkshakes at him. A video of the attack when viral.

“Those who wish harm on me, they always reference it as the ‘milkshake incident,’ to mock my injuries and celebrate it,” Ngo said during the hearing, testifying by remote video, according to the Oregonian. “The near-death experience, for it to continually be a joke to violent extremists, it’s distressing and it’s scary.”

Ngo, his lawyer Dorothy Yamamoto, and the Pittsburgh-based Center for American Liberty legal nonprofit, argued that the attack on Ngo was no joke, and that he was seriously injured in the attack and sustained “lasting and significant physical injuries.” Ngo was hospitalized with a brain bleed, and he posted photos online after the attack showing bruises and scars on his face and neck.

Ngo told National Review that he suffered a traumatic brain injury in the attack, and that he suffers from cognitive deficiencies affecting his memory, which impacts his work as a writer and speaker.

“The viral video that everyone’s seen many, many times only captured part of the assault,” Ngo said. “In fact, maybe the worst part wasn’t captured on video, which were the repeated hits to the head that happened just before that video starts.”

Ngo’s lawsuit against Rose City Antifa focused on the 2019 attack and another attack in 2021 that occurred after he was exposed while doing undercover reporting on an Antifa riot in Portland. Ngo told National Review at the time that he was dressed in Antifa-style “black bloc” gear, including goggles, but he was outed after real Antifa members noted that he wasn’t engaging in violence and that his body language was different than that of other rioters.

Someone pulled off his mask and yelled, “It’s him! Get him! Get him! It’s Andy!” Ngo recalled in 2021. He fled, and was pursued by a mob, whose members attacked him and beat him in the head. He eventually found shelter in a downtown hotel, but Antifa members discovered him there. He ended up escaping through an employee exit and was transported to the hospital.

Ngo’s lawsuit targeted two of the activists involved that night, John Hacker and Elizabeth Richter. The weeklong trial in early August was marked by serious security concerns and accusations of intentional jury intimidation. “There were Antifa thugs roaming the hallways,” Ngo said, adding that he had to have a large security presence to get in and out of the courthouse safely. “On the last day of the trial, the judge informed us that there was apparently an attempt or attempts to identify the jurors. And so the court made the decision to seal the jury roll.”

The jury of six men and six women eventually cleared Hacker and Richter of civil liability. Hacker and Richter’s lawyers argued that while their clients disliked Ngo, they did not harm him that night.

“I wonder how much intimidation had a role,” Ngo said of the verdict. When asked if he was considering an appeal, Ngo said he was weighing his legal options.

Another defendant, Benjamin Bolen, settled privately with Ngo, according to the Oregonian. Last month, a circuit judge ruled that Ngo could not directly sue Rose City Antifa because it is not a discrete legal entity, the paper reported.

In 2021, Ngo published a book, Unmasked: Inside Antifa’s Plan to Destroy Democracy. Ngo’s critics have accused him of being an online provocateur.

Ngo and his legal team have alleged that over the years Antifa leaders in Portland have engaged in a campaign to intimidate and harass Ngo, a Portland native, including attempting to break into his family’s home. Ngo said that as a result of the harassment and the attacks, he was forced to leave Portland, where he has family, roots, and a support system.

“One of the ways I suffered is I’m not able to be on the ground as I was before,” he told National Review “So, the quality of my reporting suffers. I really liked being a field reporter.”

However, he said, he wonders if after years of reporting “I’ve said all I needed to say about Antifa.”

“The movement is largely still the same, it organizes in the same way,” he said. “It’s up to the public, citizens, lawmakers, politicians, society to determine if they are okay with this type of fringe, vigilante extremists organizing in American cities and being protected by corrupt politicians and corrupt systems.”