Far-right figures in Charlottesville court over deadly violence of 2017

More than a dozen accused of civil rights violations related to racist mayhem in trial that has driven judge to exasperation

Two blocks from the oak and boxwood trees slowly turning amber in the downtown Charlottesville park that saw one the most violent political confrontations of the Trump era is the tightly-secured federal courtroom where the origins of the racist mayhem that struck over that mid-August weekend in 2017 are now being forensically examined.

Close to four years after the event, a sprawling civil lawsuit alleging a conspiracy to commit racially motivated violence against nine residents of Charlottesville during the white-supremacist Unite the Right march and rally is drawing together some of the most notorious figures of America's alt-right movement.