The report, authored by former federal prosecutor Tim Heaphy, was also sharply critical of Charlottesville and state police preparations for the deadly rally.

The report from law firm Hunton & Williams says the council’s efforts to relocate the Unite the Right rally from Emancipation Park to McIntire Park made planning for the ill-fated rally more difficult for city and public safety officials, some of whom appear to have pushed back against the idea, according to the report.

And while the report says the city managed to keep the public fairly well-informed ahead of the Ku Klux Klan rally on July 8, officials and community members told investigators the city failed to meet the community’s expectations for information before the event, which resulted in scores of injuries and the deaths of a counter-protester and two Virginia State Police troopers.

The report says the city “unduly interfered” with the operational planning for the rally, a situation made worse by the decision to try to relocate the rally within two weeks of Aug. 12.

“City Council should not have injected itself into the process of deciding where to hold the Unite the Right rally,” the report says. “That decision was informed by both legal analysis and operational planning, neither of which is the province of the elected City Council.”

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The city’s elected officials were pressured to act in the weeks leading up to the rally. Community members said they were fearful of potential violence and disorder, and argued that the city had ample cause to cancel the event, citing threatening and violent statements made by prospective rally-goers.

The report says the city failed to share information with the public in a timely manner before the Unite the Right rally.

“Uncertain as to where the event would ultimately take place, City leaders were unable to provide specific details about street closures, safety measures, and other important information,” the report says. “They left important questions from the business community, neighborhood groups, and interested citizens unanswered.”

The report also asserts that a community outreach initiative that was proposed by city police Capt. Wendy Lewis was rejected by Police Chief Al Thomas.

Lewis, according to the report, suggested that the police department send a letter to every group likely to attend the event, requesting that they “sign a written commitment to nonviolence and return it to Chief Thomas.” Lewis suggested the letter, which also would reiterate mutual respect for First Amendment rights and nonviolent civil disobedience, be shared with news media.

“Chief Thomas never took her letter idea seriously, and he privately derided her public communications proposal as ‘Wendy’s propaganda campaign,’” the report says.

Mayor Mike Signer told Hunton & Williams investigators that city staff “promised” to hold a town hall meeting ahead of the rally to provide information about the city’s security plans and the legal issues related to the event. “The event never happened because, in Signer’s words, employees ‘ran out of bandwidth’ and ‘were all crazed.’”

Ahead of the rally, the city hired public relations firm Powell Tate to provide strategic communications support and counsel to coordinate media engagement from Aug. 8 to Aug. 15.

The report says the firm never provided “messaging” advice to the city and was barred from the command center on Aug. 12, but emails obtained by The Daily Progress show the firm did provide the City Council with talking points ahead of a council meeting following the rally.

Powell Tate and another firm, Edelman, which assisted the city of Orlando, Florida, following a mass shooting at a nightclub there last year, were expected to continue supporting the city on a pro bono basis following the event, but work agreements were never signed with either firm.

City officials said Edelman continued providing media monitoring reports until the end of October, but Powell Tate, which mostly assisted the mayor in coordinating and planning media interviews in the week following the rally, did not continue helping the city.

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As the council sought out ways to cancel or relocate the rally, the city’s attorneys said that prohibiting the event or attempting to relocate it could invite a legal challenge. Despite the prospect of violence at the event, state and local law enforcement officials said the threats were just “noise” from activist groups that were expected to protest the event, the report says.

The city’s attorneys said basing any decision on those complaints and allegations would not provide “a valid basis for any decision to cancel the permit without violating the First Amendment.”

With McIntire Park in mind and believing that the city attorney’s approach to the issue was too conservative, the councilors continued to push to relocate the event. The report says Councilor Kathy Galvin was the only one to defer to Thomas, who told the council that relocating the event to McIntire Park would make things only “marginally better.”

Galvin did not respond to requests for comment Saturday.

Thomas said he was concerned that it would become difficult to alter the developing operational plan for Emancipation Park, and that resources would need to be directed to both parks in case the rally organizers disregarded the city’s wishes.

Signer recommended hiring outside counsel to provide advice on the matter. The city hired the firm Boies Schiller Flexner for a flat rate of $30,000.

Amid the push to relocate the rally, City Attorney Craig Brown “warned” the mayor that having the council involved in “administrative functions” could make the councilors personally liable in potential litigation.

Despite his concerns, Thomas ultimately told City Manager Maurice Jones that he should move the event.

In the city’s system of government, the city manager is in charge of all operations, while the mayor, who is elected every two years by the council, is primarily responsible for managing council meetings.

“Chief Thomas told us that he was concerned that continued opposition to the move would result in City Council firing the City Manager,” the report says.

The specter of job termination resurfaced on the day of the rally and continues to haunt a few top-level city officials following the publication of the Hunton & Williams report.

After a confidential memo regarding a closed-session meeting that was held about two weeks after the rally was leaked to The Progress, Jones released a statement that said Signer threatened to fire both him and Thomas twice on Aug. 12 because the mayor had been barred from entering an operational command center.

About an hour before The Progress published a story on the contents of the leaked memo authored by Signer, the mayor suggested in an email to Jones that the public relations firm the city hired could help the city handle the fallout from the memo leak.

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 “Over the weekend of Aug. 4-6, Signer corresponded with [Boies Schiller Flexner] regarding the appropriate basis and analysis for requiring the move to McIntire, which focused on logistical concerns based on the high numbers of attendees rather than concerns over threats of violence,” the report says.

After the city announced on Aug. 7 that it would only provide rally organizer Jason Kessler with a permit if the event were held at McIntire Park, the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia and the Albemarle County-based Rutherford Institute on Aug. 10 filed a lawsuit on Kessler’s behalf.

As the city prepared its legal defense, Thomas and other members of the city’s operational command staff appeared to hope, according to the report, that the city would lose the case so that they could focus simply on maintaining control at Emancipation Park.

“That position was made clear to Capt. Lewis when she suggested that Chief Thomas include actionable intelligence CPD possessed about the violent intentions of the Unite the Right attendees,” the report says. “According to Capt. Lewis, Thomas responded he did not want his affidavit to ‘look too good.’”

The report says Thomas denied leaving anything out of his affidavit, and attributed any omissions to the lawyers working for the city.

The report also says Thomas permitted the violence to unfold during the rally so that an unlawful assembly could be declared, another assertion that he has denied.

The evening before the rally, a federal court sided with Kessler and said the city could not rescind the permit for the event in Emancipation Park.

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In an email Saturday evening, Signer deferred questions about Thomas to Jones, saying Jones has “the sole authority and responsibility to address questions of staff accountability.”

Signer said he disagrees with Heaphy’s critique of the relocation effort, contesting the characterization that the effort to move the rally “took place at the last minute.”

In the leaked council memo, Jones was criticized for not acting sooner on the council’s desire to relocate the rally. The memo states that Signer met with Jones to discuss the idea on July 13 and spoke with Thomas about it on July 21.

“This was a leadership call in a tough circumstance, and I believe we acted appropriately and in the interests of our public,” Signer said. 

“In hindsight, it’s clear that it definitely complicated things. If I had to do it over again, I think we’d probably not do it,” Councilor Kristin Szakos said of the attempt to relocate the rally.

Szakos was reluctant to criticize Thomas. “I’m not going to leap to judgment. [But] it’s certainly very concerning,” she said about the report.

Councilor Wes Bellamy declined to discuss the report, saying the council will respond to it during a public hearing scheduled for 7 p.m. Monday.

Councilor Bob Fenwick was critical of the report, saying that the city’s recovery efforts are now set back because Heaphy chose to “second-guess virtually every city decision made under tremendous pressure.”

Fenwick said he thinks the report was unfair to the city and failed to appropriately investigate or hold the Virginia State Police, which helped in the Aug. 12 security operations, accountable. The report, however, says that the state police were also responsible for many of the operational failures.

Regarding the effort to move the event to McIntire Park, Fenwick said it was a “chance worth taking” to help keep the public safe.

“Our citizens are not stupid or ignorant of our basic rights,” he said.” We were just bewildered that in this case the law protected the white supremacists, [the] KKK, Nazis and communists — not us.”